Introduction

Hi, my name is Krystle Robin Armand. I am currently a senior at Westborough High School who will be attending the University of Connecticut in the fall as a Nursing major. I would like to think that I am very outgoing and a year around athlete, whether it be playing volleyball during one season or just going to the gym during off-seasons. I live with both of my parents who are in their low fifties and my older brother, Chris, who is going to be a junior at the University of Connecticut this upcoming fall. This year, I chose to take Facing History and Ourselves as one of my History electives as a second semester senior. The first reason that I took this course was because the teacher was Mr. Gallagher. I had Mr. Gallagher as a teacher my sophomore year in high school and found to gain a lot of respect for him and like him as more than a teacher, but as a person. Another reason that I chose to take this course was because I had heard nothing but good things from previous students who had taken this class. My brother had taken it two years ago and continuously told me that I “NEEDED” to take this class senior year. He never specifically told me why. He always said that he couldn’t put into words and that I would just have to see for myself. This intrigued me. Also students that graduated from WHS last year told me that it was their favorite class and that the perfect teacher was teaching it. How could I resist! I needed to take this class. Now I will tell you a little about what this Facing History and Ourselves Course is about. This course is about facing the truth about what happened in history and being able to become a better person from gaining the knowledge. It looks at racism and prejudice across the world, and how events related to this led up to the Holocaust. This course makes you question your ethical and moral decisions that you make every day and realize what kind of person you are, and what kind of person that you should be. Throughout the course you follow a “scope and sequence” which later allows you to develop civic agency. Civic agency is being able to have an emotional, moral, and intellectual connection to a part of the course content that allows one to look at events in the context of what happened instead of through the lens of today. Therefore, one will know why they are there and why these events occurred. By learning about the Holocaust to the extent that you do in this class, you realize why people should never be bystander. Because to be a bystander is to allow what you see to happen and to not do anything about it which is why events such as the Holocaust occurred. This is an amazing course and I wish that more students at Westborough High School were able to take it.