Goals for a community-based history project. This resource consists of slides created for the Windows on History (which focused on a project culminating in building a website), a graduate course for teachers, supported by the Library of Congress TPS Program at CES. Find more resources on how to organize local history civic engagement and service-learning projects at http://emergingamerica.orgprograms/windows-on-history/.

The subject of American Indian history and culture is generally not emphasized significantly in American history curriculum and classrooms. Without more focused study on the culture, history, politics, and society of the indigenous first peoples of the United States, a truly holistic history of America is impossible. The following primary source set focuses on material culture produced about and by American Indians.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 sparked U.S. involvement in World War II and generated a reactionary movement against Japanese Americans. This primary source set focuses on reactions in the United States following the attack. Images include Japanese-Americans being moved, the signing of Executive Order No. 9066, and “evacuation sales” held by evacuees. The set also includes two activities to drive student understanding and promote interest in the subject.

The topic of immigration is just as controversial today as it was at the turn of the twentieth century. In this one-day lesson, students will immerse themselves in the attitudes and opinions of many native-born Americans (Nativists) who did not welcome the arrival of immigrants from certain countries. Students will use music and political cartoons from the period to wonder, investigate, and construct new understandings of the popular opinions towards immigrants at the time.

In this lesson students will learn that incurring a disability at work was a common occurrence of the Industrial Revolution.  This lesson integrates disability history content within a larger 14-day unit on the Industrial Revolution. The lesson plan provides a series of activities that highlight the importance of children and adults with disabilities in 19th century workplaces, and the ways primary source photographs provide information and inspire critical questions.

In this lesson, students will explore several primary sources addressing the treatment of people with mental illness at Blackwell Island in New York in the mid to late 1800s.  After analyzing the sources, students will discuss our responsibility and the responsibility of government to people with mental illness and cognitive disability. Period film, photographs, maps, and a written account by pioneering investigative journalist Nellie Bly animate the lesson.

The lesson invites students to think about what life was like as a disabled veteran of WWI and to connect to background knowledge as well as personal experiences. The teacher will provide historical information and guide the class in a read-aloud from the perspective of a soldier wounded and recuperating in Italy from Ernest Hemingway’s “In Another Country.”

The instrumental role Dorothea Dix played in reforming prisons and mental institutions, and the actions of Horace Mann in his campaign for free public education are at the center of this lesson. How did improvements in conditions for people in the public charge, whether prisoners or people institutionalized because of disability, come about? How did the the idea of who gets to be educated change? By focusing attention on the strategies used by these social reformers, the lesson engages students in critical thinking about the methods of reformers as well as their goals.

Care for veterans is relevant to understanding war and the role of government, and is critical to disability history. In this lesson, students gather information through a variety of primary sources on the experiences of veterans from the War of Independence through today. They ask, ‘How has U.S. government care for veterans changed over time?’ Using their evidence, students develop a proposal to today’s Veterans Administration that outlines how veterans should be cared for. 

This lesson guides students in exploring the Great Depression of 1920-1940 with a focus on the Dust Bowl, migrant workers, and the status of people with disabilities. The lesson is conceived as a research project in preparation for reading John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men”, and could also be an interdisciplinary unit linking American History, English Literature, and Disability History. It can be co-taught by the subject teacher and the Special Education