For English teacher Katrina Gotschall, the goal of the O’Neill High School Holocaust Remembrance Project is to allow rural Holocaust literature students to bear witness to what they have studied in their classrooms. A mini-grant made it possible for them to travel to Washington, DC and spend a day at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where they used writing as a method to explore and reflect upon the various aspects of the exhibitions. In conjunction with the USHMM visit, the groups also visited the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian “Treaties” exhibit, and honored fallen veterans at Arlington National Cemetery, where they viewed the Changing of the Guard.
Visits to several other museums and sites of interest, as well as a night tour of the monuments, rounded out the trip itinerary. At each stop, students paused to write, following the “writing marathon” model of The National Writing Project. On the final evening of the trip, each student chose one piece of writing to read to the group, and then submitted it for publication on the class website.
