Educational Holocaust Site Trips Helps Hepworth Bring History to FHS Students

Jennifer Hepworth took a small educational requirement and turned it into a full class at Falcon High School. Beginning in 2023 the Colorado Department of Education required holocaust and genocide to be included as part of a class. 

Hepworth took her love of history and proposed an entire class on the holocaust and genocide. “I have my masters in World War II studies and Holocaust education.”

In class, Jennifer Hepworth reads to her students from the book Night by Elie Wiesel. 

“I've always found it very interesting even within World War II, which I love. I lived in Germany as a little girl, my dad was military, and it just kind of sparked this interest, so I wanted to pursue it,” Hepworth said. 

“It's important to me to teach the historical pieces and what we can learn from these things because it's still so relevant. I feel it's important for students to realize how we got to that point. We talk a lot about what's called the pyramid of hate. I want to help the students understand what can happen if we allow the prejudice and biases that we all have, to really escalate to that point. We talk about how things progressively just escalate, to the point of genocide,” Hepworth said.

The interest in the students is also growing. “Last semester I had three sections. This semester I have four separate classes,” she said.

Teaching the same class most of the day could get monotonous for some, but Hepworth embraces what the students bring to their own education.  

“I feel like each class takes on its own personality,” she said. “I kind of follow what my students like, the questions that they have and the things that interest them. We'll explore it if it's something appropriate for us to explore. If it's not something that I feel like I want to expose all of my students to, I'll let them have resources that they can explore on their own. They are very curious.”

Hepworth’s interest in this historical topic brought her to two different organizations, Yahad-In Unum and Echoes and Reflections. Both groups awarded her with trips to Poland last year to study the holocaust first hand last year to be able to share what she learned with her students. 

During one of the trips she met with two holocaust survivors and people from the community. 

“As an educator, I was even able to learn things that I hadn't known and things that I didn't really fully grasp. Especially when I met with the eyewitnesses. Within a few years, these eyewitnesses are going to be gone. We learned more about their specific stories and camps that they had been to,” Hepworth said. 

In Warsaw, Jennifer Hepworth stands at the monument marker for Arie Wilner, a member of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  Hepworth was able to research and learn about Wilner prior to her trip. 

She visited the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. 

“There is something so powerful about standing in these places where so much tragedy happened,” she said. “I remember walking out of Auschwitz and the thought that just kept coming to me is, there's just no place for hate. There's just no reason that we should be persecuted for your beliefs.”

“We had a Polish guide that was with us who was able to really explain a lot about what life was like for the locals as well. And it was a whole element that I didn't really know much about. So really just kind of putting all the pieces together. It was really important for me to get the bigger picture, to get how it all fits together, and really learn a lot about Poland itself,” Hepworth said.

Reflecting on her time in Poland, she said. “The trips, it just makes it so much more meaningful. Now I feel like I can teach about it so much better than I ever could have before. It brings this level of renewal for me as a teacher, kind of like an excitement of what I can share with them.” 

Hepworth has been teaching for 10 years, the last three at FHS. She is the "Teacher of the Year" at FHS. 

Story by Joel Quevillon