UPDATED WITH NEW RESOURCES - This lesson uses primary sources to explore one of the most remarkable cultural meetings in history: Spanish sponsored Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans from the Taino population in the Caribbean. Two key primary sources in this lesson are a letter from Columbus to the King and Queen of Spain and a 1562 map of European attitudes toward the New World. With guidance from teachers, these documents can spark inquiry from students and encourage increased understanding of the relationship between the Spanish and the Taino. 

In the following lesson plan students will examine several primary source images and documents related to Civil War wounded. From the sources, students will develop a narrative about changes in the responsibilities of the federal government in response to the enormous numbers of wounded Union soldiers. This lesson can stand alone or kick off a research project. 

See the online exhibit How Civil War Transformed Disability. Use the Exhibits pull-down button above. 

This two-day lesson is based on students acquiring a better understanding of the effects the Great Depression had on migrant workers and their children as portrayed in the novel: Esperanza Rising. The use of photographs, as primary sources, will support understanding of this time period, as well as provoking oral discussion among English Language Learner students. As a summative assessment, students are asked to write a paragraph explaining their increased understanding of the time period through the use of primary source documents.

Find more resources on how to organize local history civic engagement and service-learning projects at http://emergingamerica.orgprograms/windows-on-history/. The following resource is a set of slides created for the Windows on History graduate course for teachers, supported by the Library of Congress TPS Program at CES.

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 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 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.

This is a great simple civics lesson with three distinctive case studies: marchers with disabilities who took over federal buildings in a historic sit-in in 1977 (the 504 protests), young American volunteers in the Spanish Civil war in 1936, and a 12-year-old mill worker who was inspired to lead a walk-out in 1898. The lesson addresses new content in the 2018 US History II Framework for Massachusetts as it asks students, “did the protesters go too far” and invites them to consider the constitutional underpinnings of individual and collective civic engagement.