Oceana High School Using “Transitional Justice” in Exploring International Human Rights

Facing History's website recently featured an article from the Pacifica Tribune about Oceana High School (OHS) teacher Laurie Hughes, a Margot Stern Strom award winner and long-term in-depth Facing History teacher. But what the article doesn’t highlight is the other activity on that campus related to Facing History’s impact. Laurie’s juniors get Facing History through American Studies—but the sophomores she used to teach are now taught by two newer teachers who joined the OHS staff over the last two years. Jen McEnany and Karen Lichtenberg are also veterans of Facing History seminars, and their students now experience Facing History in full measure, not only through Holocaust and Human Behavior, but in an advanced study of Transitional Justice.

These teachers and their students use the online module in their studies of both Rwanda and South Africa—and then in a culminating independent research project where each student identifies an international human rights issue of choice, such as the plight of child soldiers in Nigeria, The Cambodian Trials of Khmer Rouge members, human trafficking in multiple societies, and more. Students explore their chosen topic on human rights abuses using categories from the transitional justice toolbox. Each student then creates not only a physical “toolbox” for addressing their chosen issue, but an actual plan that involves “taking a stand” themselves, ranging from fund-raising to knowledge raising, and from individual advocacy to organized and collective advocacy.  

Oceana is located in Pacifica and serves a diverse student body of 550 students. Their principal, Carol Pemberton, openly expresses gratitude for the school’s connection to Facing History. The school is also about to participate in Facing History’s Small Schools Network, and as part of that project, they will share “best practices” connected with Facing History’s work with other small schools across the country.

Read the full article about the sophomore projects by Jean Bartlett from the Pacifica Tribune, published June 3, 2009.

For more information about this lesson and project, check out Building a "Toolbox for Difference".