An instructor from York Christian School traveled to Armenia to learn more about the “forgotten genocide” in July through a scholarship program to advance her studies and teaching.
History instructor Jackie Kemper, 49, of West York, began her career as a Holocaust educator after being encouraged by her 4 grandparents’ World War II stories.
Something about her clicked when Kemper traveled in 2008 around Europe, visiting historic sites like Auschwitz, Berlin and Dresden with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“It actually replaced my teaching,” he said, explaining that he had incorporated what he had learned about it into his teaching, just as he will incorporate what he learned on his recent trip to Armenia.
Kemper expanded his study of genocide in 2016 while preparing for his master’s degree, when he first heard about the Armenian genocide, in which between 662,000 and 1. 2 million Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 died, either in massacres and murders or through systematic mistreatment. exposure and hunger.
There is one thing that still moves her: Kemper does not forget to listen to a quote from Adolf Hitler in that class, who supposedly said that nobody forgets what happened to the Armenians, which means that nobody forgets the Holocaust.
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Kemper delved into the Armenian genocide, incorporating it into the courses he taught. In her classes, she used resources such as homework fabrics about genocide. The program, created through the task’s executive director, Roxanne Makasdjian, an American of friends, designed to help teach Armenian youth about genocide.
The task of schooling the genocide sent letters about the first scholarship program to Armenia, and Kemper implemented and won one of the 15 places of the program.
She remembers hearing that her background made her one of the most qualified candidates out of two hundred candidates.
“Even though I taught genocide, and taught it for a few years, I still felt like I didn’t know as much as I could,” he said.
Kemper flew in July for 10 days to Armenia. There, he studied genocide in the morning and learned about culture in the afternoon. He saw ancient sites in the afternoon, added the country’s first church, and saw how Armenians seek to repair their heritage and teach their young people about genocide.
“Armenians are so strong that they fight, protect their nation,” he said.
Kemper noted that she also sought to be more informed about Armenian culture, not just the genocide.
“These other people are resilient,” he said. And their culture deserves to be celebrated. “
Kemper now feels he has a greater knowledge of genocide and will incorporate his wisdom into his courses on Holocaust literature, global history and fashion history.
“I did (the fashion history course) more focused on the Armenian genocide,” she said of her previous classes. “Because it’s called ‘forgotten genocide’ for a reason. No one talks about it. “
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Two of his recent students, seniors Tirzah Miller and Eden Taylor, said they had heard about the Armenian Genocide before Kemper’s classes but didn’t know the details. Or they were surprised by what they learned. Taylor said the horrors she learned moved her. to a large extent. Miller looked for a longer segment so he could go deeper.
“People don’t know,” Miller said. I assure you that most academics at the school probably won’t necessarily know what we’re talking about, and that’s just the saddest part. “
He added that Kemper presented it with all the evidence that the genocide occurred, but others continue to deny it. Kemper said the genocide creates a lot of tension because of the geopolitics involved.
Taylor said Kemper’s way of training context, why the genocide happened and why it’s vital to him, helped. He left elegance thinking that more people needed to communicate about the genocide.
Kemper will also share what he has learned with other instructors, as required by his scholarship. You are researching how to do this locally and will team up with some other instructor to teach in other states.
Kemper knows that genocide is a difficult subject to teach and understands why many get nervous about it. It is also difficult to traumatize students.
“It makes you nervous because you’re talking about death and destruction,” he said, adding that genocide is a sad and complicated issue. “We teach it because we think it’s a vital piece. “
To be more informed about your trip, youtube. com/watch?v=89uR8uAd37w
– Contact Meredith Willse on mwillse@yorkdispatch. com or on Twitter at @MeredithWillse.
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