What We Did

We began with a silent conversation in response to panels and excerpts from Maus. This allowed us to generate questions, like the one above, which became touchstones for our collective inquiry.

Those questions led us to explore the history of the Holocaust by partnering with Rosanne Bernard, who shared interview data she collected as an interviewer for the Shoah Project, including the testimony of one of grandfather of one of the students in our class. We also partnered with a comics artist, Rebecca Roher, who led a series of comics making workshops for us. We aimed to approach comics making as a mode of inquiry, a place for students to think through their questions and responses to the text, not just in its content but also its form.

As part of our engagement with comics art, we spent some time drawing ourselves in animal form. Since Spiegelman chose to draw different nationalities as different kinds of animals, we wanted to surface some of the questions of identity raised by that choice. The process of thinking through how to represent ourselves as animals became a way to interrogate Maus and our responses to it.

What it Looked Like

Students’ Creative Responses

What Participants Said

“I feel like, you can know the statistics and know the stories (of the Holocaust). But like, this felt more personal. I kind of felt like it really happened and kind of not just know that it happened; I can kind of feel it emotionally.” - Student, Delta Senior Alternative School

“I’ve been really moved by all the insights I’ve had from (the students) the past few weeks that are helping me think about how I’m going to move forward and commit to the kind of work we’re called upon to do when we hear (these) testimonies.” - Teacher Candidate, OISE — University of Toronto

”I feel like, we as a group, as a community, entered a different type of sacred space today, interacting with stories, with testimonies.” - Teacher Candidate, OISE — University of Toronto