On Tuesday, November 14th, Mrs. Stangherlin’s fourth period class was asked to participate and create a memorable introduction about Gerda Weissman Klein, a Holocaust survivor. The twist was that we had two class periods to complete this task. We were in charge of this project and each student contributed time and effort to create an emotional presentation. The class was divided into separate groups in which they each had a special task to complete. Tommy Bonser, Jesse Beahm, Steve Wagner and Steve Kinsell found information about Gerda’s childhood as another group consisting of Tony Abraham, Gabby Synder, Amanda Muth and Avery Markle were asked to look up pictures of the concentration camps that she was sent to. Caitlin O’ Donnell, Matt Whitehead and Jake Bassham watched her biography and took notes on the information. Justin Weilnau was in charge of editing all the voice-overs for the videos while everyone read each of their stories about Gerda. Deaven Freed and Kelsey Reube then put the rest of the slide show together and then presented on Thursday, November 16th, 2 days later.

Some individuals such as Kelsey, Justin and Mrs. Stangherlin herself, had to put extra time of their own into the project. Kelsey took time out of her study hall to revise the slide show and make sure it looked all right as Justin had to revise all of the voice-overs and make them louder or quieter, and fit them in with each of the slides. Mrs. Stangherlin had to edit all of the stories about Gerda just to make sure the information was correct. When it came to the day when we would present our introduction, the feelings were crazy. Kelsey had to practice going through the slides and getting all of the voice-overs to play, while Justin controlled the microphone. Mr. Tom Smith was also a lot of help because he took care of all the set up for the video conference and he toggled us back and forth between showing our presentation and the video conference itself.

Speaking for our class, we had enjoyed the rush, the excitement of getting this project done on time and making it wonderful. Everyone in this class always talks about how Mrs. Stangherlin’s class is unlike any other but in a good way. It always is a fast pace and keeps us interested. Most of us had never even known you could make a video conference and go international with it. All of us just found that amazing. Gerda Weissman Klein, a now famous Holocaust survivor, and thousands of other people were able to see the work of our class and who we were. If there were more projects involving technology like this, we feel that everyone would find school much more appealing, just like we do in Mrs. Stangherlin’s class.

Deaven Freed
Caitlin O’Donnell
Kelsey Reube