MAIT 402 Response #3

When I was a freshman in college I was required to read The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. The Sunflower is a short ninety-nine page non-fiction story dealing with an incident in which Wiesenthal, an inmate at a concentration camp, was asked for forgiveness from a dying Nazi soldier. This work stuck with me because 1) I have always been fascinated with the Holocaust (Go figure! I'm a Catholic, Mexican-American) and 2) the book and assignment required a lot in introspection. When it was my turn to teach college freshman I knew I had to teach The Sunflower. I wanted my students to have the ability to really question themselves, their values and express them concisely and eloquently. I also wanted them to be able discuss the topic with others and persuade others if necessary.

My first task was to impress on students the magnitude and severity of the Holocaust. To that end I visited the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum website http://www.ushmm.org/, where they have an entire section titled Education which has amazing resources including a short overall history (10 pages) and a chronology (16 pages). Images and short summaries beginning in 1933 and ending in 1948 are scattered throughout both documents.

My second task was to engage them in a seminar style discussion. Luckily for me, this required little to no scaffolding because of SMC seminar program. Also provided for me was the question to begin discussion as Wiesenthal's final line in the story asks readers, "What would you do?", after Wiesenthal explains that the meeting left him speechless and when asked for forgiveness he just walks away from the dying SS soldier.

My third task was to arrange for the class debate after our discussion. I separated the class into 2 groups, asked them to choose a group leader and then presented the debate format we would be using which was the same format used by the SMC Debate Team. The closest web link I could find to explain the format was http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/debformats.html#policy. Using the book, their own views and outside resources such as laws, psychology articles, quotes from authors/speakers from other genocides and religion my students were able to conduct (in my opinion) an amazing debate which encompassed not only critical thinking about the writing, but of human nature, personal motives and materials which color our perspective. After the debate, each student wrote a persuasive essay ( 1,000 words minimum). It was wonderful to read about how the debate and their research influenced their initial answer to Wiesenthal's question.