"The dream begins, most of the time, with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs you and pushes you on to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth." — Dan Rather

To teach his English class to write well, Doug Green used his experience broadcasting. It gave his students a present and even urgent application to their writing. It worked. It worked well. CHSTV was born and honed. Within a few years, it was churning out good writers, confident students, award-winning broadcasts and future journalists. But what was the next plateau? And what was the sharp stick to get there? Good writing should broaden the mind, spark self-discovery and kindle veracity.

Two years ago, Green and his assistant, Janna Bollinger, were in Germany instructing teachers about broadcasting when Green found a sharp stick in Dachau. As a subject, history can be flat and impersonal if taught from an uninspired teacher or a wearisome book. The next level was to take his students to Germany to learn through the filmmaking process.

That was the raw beginning of We Must Remember a CHSTV documentary on the Holocaust. The project would become not just a writing and filmmaking project, but a history lesson, a foreign language tutorial, a cultural emersion and a political awakening.

Students had to write an essay to be brought on board and there was a parent meeting so the commitment was understood. Sixteen students were chosen, and each of them raised or rattled $3600 out of their parents for the trip. They had to attend weekly German lessons. They began arduous research, in books and on film, teasing out of this dark time a journalist’s questions; What? Where? When? And the much harder, how? And why?

The students themselves became part of the story. What they learned and how they responded made it more relatable to kids their age. And they were able to meet with German high school students. The Carlsbad kids may have had grandfathers who fought in Europe, but their German counterparts' grandparents were there and what they knew and what they did were a matter of degrees.

One of the biggest impressions on the American students was the lack of national pride. "They don't fly flags," student John Tipton said. Jerry Chen added, "Here, every single house has a [American] flag." In Germany they only come out "to support their local soccer team or during the World Cup." This caused the CHS students to reflect on the shadows of our own history: slavery, Native Americans and Japanese internment.

The Carlsbad students arrived at the death camps (Dachau, and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland) first as tourists. They had to feel the place. They had to get a sense of the story. They had to make connections between their research and the actual blood ground. They had to come to terms with the dark spirit of the place.

"Dachau is more rebuilt and sterilized. Auschwitz and Birkenau have been left more as it was," Brent Roach said. There were new incongruities. "Without war," Chen said, "there is life." Trees and flowers have come back. But Krysta Mortland said of Auschwitz, "It was weird because there were no birds. It was eerie." Some wanted to get a sense of the camp by themselves and some didn't want to be left alone.

Stateside, the students interviewed Holocaust survivors before and during the shooting process. The real people made the story more real. "David was unforgiving," Rory Gallagher said of a survivor. Another implored, "Can you tell them what our people endured." Chen said a survivor named Edith exclaimed, "I'm not a survivor, I'm a thriver!"

The initial footage bought more opportunities. Viewing uncut footage brought a standing ovation from a school board meeting. A survivor group donated $1000. The project has brought in $206,000 with the biggest boost being a $100,000 grant from the Leichtag Family Foundation. This enabled a second trip and another to Washington D.C. to shoot for two days in the Holocaust Museum when it was closed to the public.

"There were a lot more tangible items in the museum," Elann Mash said. The recreated barracks have actual bunks from Auschwitz. The camps are memorials to see and reflect; the museum is intended to teach and inform. The film crew also gained access to the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives. They had watched other documentaries, but these archives were invaluable. Gallagher said of the hours of footage they watched, "It was tough." Roach added, "Very emotional." Dakota Adan said, "It was hard when it was children." They agreed it was good to see it all, but they had to pick age-appropriate material and to "show without showing it," Gallagher said.

They had children in mind. One of the goals is not just the final 28-minute documentary, but to create an extended DVD with curriculum as teaching material for middle schools. That puts Lisa Posard back to fundraising. It costs about $25 to sponsor a school. They would like to offer the schools the learning materials free of charge.

Once the project is done—this spring—what do these students walk away with? "I was already a bleeding heart liberal so it just added to it. I think about more local stuff," Roach said. Some students have joined the Gay-Straight Alliance, peace walks, become involved with Kids for Peace and Invisible Children and they've started to reflect on other holocausts: Rwanda, Burma, Darfur.

"Whatever we learned about it [the Holocaust] before, there was a detached feeling. This brought out the passion." The students were able to translate from the German a universal awareness. That was the higher level. That was the next plateau Green pushed and poked his students toward with truth. His students have now become our teachers.•