Use Your Words

Use Your Words

By Sam Futrell & Rebekah O'DellEducation
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Use Your Words episodes

  • Ted Lehman: A Life Interrupted

    The date is September 1st, 1939, and it’s a normal day for 12 year-old Jewish Ted Lehman. He is visiting his grandmother in Zawiercie, Poland when word begins to spread that the Nazis are invading. In that moment and the years after, everything changed for Ted. The life as he knew it stopped and a new, horrible one began. 

    10 min
  • Edna B. Ipson: A Mother's Journey from Concentration Camps to Liberation

    Edna B. Ipson, her children and her husband Israel were some of the only 500 Jews living in Lithuania to survive the Nazi extermination there. Our student Lila takes us through the horrific and unbelievable story of Edna's life, showing us that Edna lived her life for her children before during and after the Holocaust. Through ingenuity, luck, and sheer force of will, Edna and Israel were able to save their family from Hitler's final solution, ultimately allowing her son Jay Ipson to move to Richmond, Virginia and co-found the Virginia Holocaust Museum. 

    7 min
  • Samuel Althaus: Where Is God?

    In this episode, seventh grade student, Liam, recounts the harrowing story of Holocaust survivor, Samuel Althaus. Separated from family, Samuel was relocated countless times and survived both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau concentration camps. Liam details life in concentration camps, and how prisoners worked together to survive.

    19 min
  • Welcome to Season 6!

    We, Rebekah O'Dell and Samantha Futrell, are just thrilled to welcome you back to Use Your Words for our SIXTH season! We are so excited!  Particularly, we are excited to introduce you to our new Use Your Words host, Reid McBride. In this episode, Reid, Sam and Rebekah take you through this year's seventh grade Holocaust and WW2 podcast project. Students created these podcast episodes in the midst of a global pandemic and quarantine, without ever stepping foot in our physical the classrooms during the course of the project. This created many challenges for everyone involved, but it also led to some surprising successes. Listen to find out how we structured this project and how you can repurpose it for your own classroom-- in person or online. 

    43 min
  • S05 Episode 9: Fifty Years of Change in Richmond, Virginia
    Emerson wants listeners to know more about how Richmond has changed in the past fifty years. In this episode, her family history and what Richmond was like when her mother and grandmother lived inside the city. They compare the differences between that time period and now from two residents' perspectives.
    14 min
  • S05 Episode 8: River of Life
    In this episode, Preston talks about the Huyard family and how they have made their home in Virginia. Relax and listen to stories of farm life and growing up in an Amish household. It is really cool to hear the stories of these intertwined families and how their stories are brought from their youth into the 21st century.
    22 min

About Use Your Words

From the publisher's feed

This is Use Your Words, a seasonal podcast featuring the voices and perspectives of middle school students. Each season, lovable, insightful, awkward middle schoolers craft episodes on topics they’re…