Educator helps students build historical empathy

(April 5, 2024)

Fairfax County Times

“Empathy adheres and maintains in our day to day life as a skill that radiates in all directions,” said social studies teacher Farrell Kelly.

Kelly is the only Northern Virginia teacher of 30 educators selected for the “Making Holocaust and Genocide Education Relevant Through Inquiry and Classroom Application” program with the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) at Penn State University. He has a strong interest in questions of ethics and human rights. The nearly five-month program which included a weeklong residency, webinars, and individual meetings covered a range of themes including historical empathy—the ability to perceive, emotionally experience, and contextualize a historical figure’s lived experience.