Speak Up, Speak Now!®

Speak Up, Speak Now!® is an outreach program of The Florida Holocaust Museum.  It is a multi-session program currently offered at various middle schools in the Tampa Bay area.

The FHM staff and volunteers engage middle school students in discussions and activities that examine concepts such as: identity, us and them, bystander, upstander, universe of obligation, prejudice, stereotypes and propaganda. The teens hear from guest speakers that include: Holocaust survivors, law enforcement officers and community activists.

The core of the program is Holocaust history from  which, under the educators’ guidance, students draw age-appropriate lessons that are relevant in their lives today.

Throughout the program, students create artwork that can be displayed at the school.

The program is free to all schools. To book the program for your school, please contact us at education@thefhm.org.

Here are some comments from SUSN participants:

“The project has made me think about me. It made me think about what I stand for. How I look at myself is changed now. I also never took into consideration of how I did towards others. I learned a lot about the Holocaust, it’s a life lesson we will remember. I have a new point of view on it too.”

“I really like what we was learning about. The Holocaust made me look at everything in the world a little more different. It made me think of how what I do may affect the future. I think all of the speakers was very good at speaking their stories. I feel like it made my world around me seem different because it makes me rethink of what I do.”

“Students in school need the “SUSN” program because today racism, bullying, and discrimination is an extremely huge part of the way kids treat others here in this school, so I think it would really benefit them and help them understand that it is not a joke and they need to take it seriously.”

“The thing that taught me the most was seeing the pictures and thinking how many separate individual lives were destroyed. This helped me to realize each life is its own treasure.”

“I think it is important to be an upstander because there is so many times where we see someone being bullied or we see something wrong happening and we know that it is wrong, but sometimes we just decide to stay quiet about it. But I think it’s important to be the change that you want to see.”

 

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