Woodinville High School has an enrollment of 1,708 students in grades 9-12 and an enviable academic performance of 96% graduation rate (in top 5% in WA), overall student testing rank in top 10% with reading proficiency of 90% (top 5% in WA) and math proficiency of 71% (top 20% in WA).  Minority enrollment is 28% of the total.

My presentation by Zoom was organized by (English and multilingual learner) teacher Rebekah Sandusky to a small group of students all of whose families are and/or themselves are originally from different countries or are first generation Americans.  Thus their first language of each one was other than English, the majority being Spanish but also Thai, Portuguese, Chinese, and others.  As this might be the first time that some of these students were learning about the Holocaust, the teacher arranged for them a showing of video “The Path to Nazi Genocide” and reading of Elie Wiesel’s Night culminating in an in-depth discussion of genocide.  The overarching question during this unit has been: “How can genocide be prevented?” 

Ending the presentation was a thoughtful and rewarding Q&A.  As there was not enough time to answer all posted questions when the class ended, the teacher continued the Q&A by asking me the questions one-by-one and recording my answers for subsequent review by the students.

Jeff Grossman of the Holocaust Center for Humanity introduced me to the students and managed my PowerPoint on Zoom, and Jeff Smith of Facing History and Ourselves joined us as a guest listener.