Within Martin County Schools, the recurring theme for the 2023-2024 school year has been expanding opportunities for all students. 

To challenge students who are ready for more, the district added an opportunity for 8th-grade students to take English I in middle school. Credit for the course is the foundation of their high school transcript.

“Martin County Schools has greatly increased curricular opportunities for our students,” said Dr. Michelle White, Superintendent of Martin County Schools. “We have added three high school credits at the middle school level, including this English 1 course, and more than 20 RMS eighth-grade students have accepted the challenge! We are excited to see the great things that are happening.” 

Brandon Woody, a veteran English teacher who has taught at the high school level, accepted the challenge to teach this initial group at Riverside Middle School. 

“The kids seem really excited about being in English 1 and meeting the rigorous requirements,” according to Woody. “They are engaged and invested in their learning and want to dig deep and master content, learn about other perspectives, and make real-world connections.  They are showing maturity and insightfulness beyond their years,” he added. 

The first in-depth project for the class has been centered around reading “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s memoir based on his own Holocaust experiences in the German concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  The memoir, published in 1956, focuses on events of 1944-1945 near the end of World War II. 

“The class utilized  K.W.L charting - determining what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned regarding the Holocaust,” said Woody. “Students asked to know more about the camps even before reading about them in Weisel’s book.”

He explained the “deep and thoughtful questions” asked by his students encouraged Woody to bring technology into the lesson to help answer questions. 

“The students have expressed how seeing the locations has helped them visualize the events and experiences depicted in Wiesel’s novel, Night,” he said. 

Woody took students on a virtual tour of the prison camps via a virtual reality viewer. The images brought to life many of the things Weisel described, but before this - students could only imagine. 

 Students from the English I class shared their view of the experience. 

“It was an amazing experience,” said Isabella Tudor. “It was very interesting seeing the different camps. It's hard to believe the prisoners lived like this.” 

Kamari Brown weighed in. “I felt that I was actually in a camp, and it helped me really picture what Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel went through.”

Jillian Powell hopes these lessons can change the future. “I felt that it was so cool and interesting to be able to see the things those people had to go through and see daily. It was such an important time, and knowing more about it makes me feel like maybe I could help to stop something like that if it ever tried to come back up.”

Students then took what they had learned to prepare group presentations on one of the concentration camps. Each group shared their presentation, looking and the historical significance of the camp and the events surrounding each site. The experience took students far beyond a standard eighth-grade English assignment.

“This is just the beginning,” said White. “We are continually looking for ways to provide more opportunities for every one of our students.”