More Thoughts on Homework in the History Classroom

Back in October, I wrote a post about homework and the specific problems faced by history teachers. In it, I think I asked more questions than I posed answers. So in today's post, I'm going to revisit the topic. But I'm warning you, I still have more questions than answers.

Part of the problem, for me, anyway, is that much of the education literature about homework focuses on questions of how it helps or hinders students' acquisition of specific skills. Does the homework allow students to practice skills learned in class? 

While we certainly do teach skills in history class, they are not the kinds of skills like practicing math problems or conjugating the past tense of a verb in a foreign language class that lend themselves to homework. Analyzing documents, evaluating evidence, considering multiple perspectives, etc. are the kinds of skills better done in class with a teacher's guidance.

Or are they? Certainly, we could give students a document to read or examine the night before. We could ask a question about it.  For example, look at this assignment which is a speech by Roosevelt about conservation I discussed in an earlier post. Could students do this for homework? Probably.

But that always raises the question of whether we need to give homework. Would we be assigning this so students could "practice" the skill? Or is it just because we don't have time in class to do the full lesson? And is the latter a justifiable reason? If so, now we would have the opportunity to jump straight to a discussion of Roosevelt's policy without having to spend so much class time going over the text.

Another problem is that a lot of the homework I have given in the past involved reading. While sometimes I like students to read in class, I have found that reading aloud can be painful and time consuming. (I hated doing this as a kid. I did not like volunteering to be the reader, and I found it slow-going to have to listen to others.) But it is hard to base a lesson on reading if you can't count on your students to have completed it. I discussed this point before (see #3 in my earlier post on homework).  For some help, see the comments under this post from TeachingUSHistory, "The Problem of Class Discussion". There are a few good suggestions from college professors that would work for high school or middle school as well.

Or, an idea I had: How about having our students come up with the questions for the reading? What if they didn't even have to answer them, just ask them? I LOVE coming up with questions for reading assignments and get a kick out of thinking up especially good ones. So what if students did the same? I think you would have to model this, because when I did a lit circle last spring, I had students bringing in very rote types of questions, despite my instructions for coming up with a variety of types of questions.

One technique I like is to explain the difference between "thick" and "thin" questions. This is not my idea. A quick google search of thick vs. thin questions will result in a lot of resources, such as this one about close reading. To model this, you could provide students with one example of a "thick" question for a reading you give them, and then challenge them to come up with two more. You can do an activity like this in class, and have students analyze each others' questions. Determining what makes one question "better" than another requires a lot of critical thinking from students, and guiding them through it will help students see the difference. Providing sentence stems will help, e.g. "What larger issue does ____ raise about _____?" or "What is the historic significance of _____?" (Note that you have to have taught what is meant by the term, "historical significance" too.) "How does the author compare ________ ?" or "What does ____ suggest about _____?" "How would you compare the central problem as explained by ___ to ______ which we discussed in the last unit? Teaching students how to ask and write good questions could be one of the most useful things you can teach them.

A few days ago, I came across some helpful ideas in a book, Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us about Motivation and Mastery, by Kathleen Cushman. She wrote the book with the help of students, and it is enlightening to consider what our students think about their own education (something that, sadly, we don't do often enough).  I have recreated part of the chart below (and changed the order to fit my discussion below):

Is Our Homework Really Practice?

Deliberate practice looks like this...	but homework often looks like this:
It has an express purpose.	We don’t know the point of doing it.
It involves attention and focus.	We can do it without thinking.
It's geared to the individual.	Everyone gets the same homework tasks, no matter what each person needs to work on.
It leads to new skills.	We don’t use it for anything after it’s done.

(see p. 118 in the book)

So if we wanted out homework to look more like the column on the left, what could we do?

With regard to the first point in the chart, it should go without saying that we understand the purpose, and that we are able to explain it to students.

Second, my idea above about having students come up with questions--if they are good ones--would certainly involve attention and focus. What other kinds of assignments would do this?

What about gearing to the individual? Most of us don't do this, because unlike, say in math class, where some kids get it and others don't get it yet, in history, it is unlikely that some will know the content and others won't. And since our content is tied so closely to the skills, it is hard to separate this out in an homework assignment.

But one way we could do this is offer up different questions--either assign them to different kids (some need the more "factual/recall" type, others may be capable of more analytic questions) or offer a "menu" so that kids can choose for themselves which questions they would prefer to answer. I will try to come up with an example of this for another post.

The last column above points out--rightly, I think--that students rarely see a use for their assignments for anything in the future. Of course, you could have students fill out a chart or take notes on a bunch of stuff and then "use" it for a quiz, project, debate, paper, etc. But I think the criticism strikes at something deeper than that. What could we create in order to make a few smaller assignments (not just homework, but also in-class activities) lead to one larger project or, to use the lingo, "summative assessment"? If our final, summative assessment is one big essay question, or a few essays, or a DBQ, could all the little pieces help them with that? Could they use the smaller, formative assignments as they take the summative one (i.e. an open note sort of test?)

So that brings me back to the concept of flipping the class: might we record some of our lectures, or use some of the many pre-existing ones online for students to watch at home, so that during class we can spend more time analyzing documents?

Here are some "ready made" video resources for flipping your class:

• Ken Halla's U.S. History Teachers blog today offers up a good one: click here.
• John Green's crash courses are available here from youtube.
• Keith "Hip" Hughes videos here on youtube.

This still leaves the problem of access to videos. It is also true, for all the raving about "don't just lecture, lecture, lecture and talk, talk, talk," I have been in classrooms where students groan, "ugh, another document." Sometimes, we can err on the opposite side.

For more ideas, do check out some of the links I gave on my last post about homework. And PLEASE, do comment on this post. Do you have any thoughts on the topic? Any great ideas for thoughtful homework assignments? Or have you eliminated homework? Why? Why not? What do you use it for? I hope to revisit this topic and would love to include ideas from readers. (And more answers, too.)

One last thought: 

There is also the problem not enough people seem to want to discuss, cheating can be rampant, perhaps in some schools more than others. Check out this article from the Huffington Post. And this one in ScienceDaily is really worth reading (very brief). It was referenced in the appendix of the Kathleen Cushman book I mentioned above. It points out that high-achieving students are the ones most likely to cheat, and claims that the best way to reduce cheating is to change the climate of the classroom. A feat easier said that done, but definitely worth contemplating.

W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Black Americans during the Progressive Era

I hesitated about the title of this post. I fear it sends the message,"time to talk about two important Black men before we get to Martin Luther King" and minimizes the importance of so many other people and issues. So please understand I don't mean that before reading on.

In my last post about the Progressive Era, I pointed out that the Progressive Era was noteworthy as the beginning of conservationism in America, and yet the environmentalists of the Progressive Era had fundamental disagreements about what conservation means.

Similarly, it was clear that Black Americans faced many difficulties during the period from 1890 through the 1910s and action needed to be taken. But while Blacks agreed that changes needed to be made to improve Black lives, they did not always agree about how that should be done. Progressives like W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington are the two most well-known black leaders of their time and their views differed dramatically, not unlike the opposing views of Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, who both considered themselves conservationists. And of course, there were Progressives who were white who supported one or the other of them, and white Progressives who supported neither. So both this post and last support the reality that the term "Progressive" is a very loose one.

Teachers often focus on W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. And for good reason. But before I get to them, I note that the spotlight on these two tends to obscure other important Black leaders and events. George Washington Carver is one of them. While looking for something else pertaining to Black History Month, I came across this interesting article about Carver from NPR's codeswitch blog.

Langston Hughes

Also, for the record, I am writing this on the birthday of Langston Hughes, not only the best poet for teaching about civil rights, but also a fascinating character (put his autobiography, The Big Sea, on your summer reading list!). And I urge you not just to rely on his famous poem "A Dream Deferred," but on many others. The problem with this poem, like the last part of King's "I Have a Dream" speech is that they are so overused by teachers (my son has read "A Dream Deferred" 3 years in a row in English class! So unless you are teaching second grade, they have likely already read it. And check out today's Google Doodle:

I

While he really becomes famous in the 1920s, and thus, you might be better off delaying a discussion of him until you get to the 1920s, I bring him up in this post because one, today is his birthday. Two, he once worked for Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month and that is just an interesting coincidence for today. Three, he is a child of the 1910s and this must have colored his poetry. And lastly, this is a great opportunity for an interdisciplinary connection you can make with some of your fellow English teachers, and creating any sort of interdisciplinary connection takes time. Here are few links to interesting info about Hughes and his poetry are below.

• poetryfoundation.org
• reflections from Providence Journal
• poets.org

Ida B. Wells and Lynching

Another important individual to focus on during this period is Ida B. Wells Barnett, a muckraker and crusader against lynching. Read here for some background information about her. You can use her to focus a lesson about lynching. I mention lynching not without a good deal of trepidation. It occurs to me that teaching about it could possibly be the most controversial lesson you teach all year. Ironic, isn't it, that you could go on and on about all sorts of horrors during the Civil War, the Indian Wars or even the Holocaust, but there's something particularly disturbing--to me, anyway--about lynching because it is a subject that is rarely touched on in U.S. history textbooks or classes (see the chapter by Loewen I refer to below). It is an ugly part of American history that is widely ignored or hushed up. I discussed the difficulties of teaching about it in an earlier post (scroll down to: 4. How much detail to go into about the horrors of lynching and racial discrimination?) which you may want to check out if you didn't see it originally.

Resources for thinking about and teaching about lynching:

• rise of Jim Crow teaching unit - if I have not yet mentioned this resource, my apologies. This link is for the New Jersey State Library's unit on Jim Crow in their entire curriculum for African American history, designed for high school students (but definitely adaptable for middle schoolers!). A must see.
• chesnuttarchive.org - has background info and links to tables and statistics about lynching. The whole website is about Charles Chesnutt, a multiracial writer.
• teaching ideas from a Yale University teaching institute
• chart of lynching statistics
• gilderlehrman.org - teaching unit & resources
• strangefruit.org - website created as a memorial about lynching victims

NAACP and their campaign against lynching:

• NAACP.org
• U.S. House of Representatives website about NAACP and lynching

Although not recorded until 1939, Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit" is a historically significant performance. Based on a poem of the same name (also not published until well after the Progressive Era), it describes lynching like nothing else can. Might be worth showing to students.

(Or you could try this contemporary version by Jose James, which I saw live a few weeks ago at his concert in Hyde Park, Chicago. Indescribably moving.) 

And now, one more digression before I get to Washington and DuBois.

I am currently teaching the social studies methods course this semester, and one of the key messages I am trying to send to these teachers-to-be is that there is no substitution for a solid background in your subject area. I can give them all the strategies, methods and cool ideas in the world, but unless they know some history, those things will do little for them or their students. Hopefully, they have gotten a good start in the 3+ years of college education they have already had. But 30+ credits in history (only some of which is likely in American history) is not enough to give them everything they need to do a good job of teaching.

I am learning new things all the time and am constantly amazed by all that I don't know. (For example, just last semester, when teaching 8th grade U.S. history I learned about new information we have about the Cuban Missile Crisis. As I had not taught about that in quite some time, this was new. And it significantly changes how we can understand this crisis. But more on that when we get to the Cold War).

Why this digression? I think one of the reasons we have a tough time with the period 1890-1920 (or even later) of African American history is, that unless you have taken an African American history course in college or grad school, or have read a lot on the period, it is unlikely that you know a whole lot about it. For me,  99% of my worst lessons were lessons on topics that I did not know very well.

So one suggestion I have for you, if this is one of your weak areas, are a few short articles/chapters listed below. Together, they make a good "crash course" that will help you understand and develop a few good lessons on the period.

• Eric Arnesen, "Reconsidering the 'Long Civil Rights Movement,'" 2009. Historically Speaking 10 (2): 31-34. Happily, this article is available online here.
• chapter 10 of James Loewen's Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited about Doing History. This chapter is about what historians refer to as "The Nadir" or low point, for African Americans. Other chapters in this book are also very useful, so if you can, you may want to buy it. But you may also be able to get your school to buy it for you or get it through your public library.
• You obviously don't have time to read all of Leon Litwack's 640 page book, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow by the time you have to teach about this topic, but happily, you can read an brief excerpt here and a longer essay (but still only 19 pages) that is either from the book or published before the book, I'm not sure. The last two pages have an interesting insight about the Washington vs. DuBois "debate."

Washington and DuBois

There are so many resources on the web about these two, that I am declining to list them. Instead, I'd suggest you just google "washington and dubois" and you will find more than you need. If you don't have time for that--one of the problems for teachers, right? It's finding the time to actually read all those resources!--then you can simply check out the stuff below.

Update 6/1/15: just found this article from NPR on better understanding the legacy of Booker T. Washington.

I adopted this from a colleague who adopted it from this DBQ used on an old AP U.S. History exam. I begin a lesson with some brief biographical info on the two men. Then I had students draw a chart in their notes so we could compare the biographies and views of the two men after reading some of their writings, noting similarities and differences.

You can find the documents here.

And here are some key questions (big questions, discussion questions, essential questions, whatever you'd like to call them) that I like to use in class along with these documents:

1. Which strategy (Washington's or DuBois's) do you think is most appropriate given the historic circumstances? Do you find one more appealing for today's circumstances? Are they the same? Different?
2. What do you have to know or consider in order to answer the above question?
3. In what ways does this difference of opinion compare to the different approaches of the Antislavery movement and the American Colonization Society? How is the question each group/person dealt with similar/different? How have the historic circumstances changed? (You can do this again when you get to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X).
4. Washington's approach seems to suggest it is better to work with the situation you are in in order to get to where you would like to be, while DuBois seems to suggest it is better to work towards the situation you would like from the start. This is probably a bit simplistic, but what do you think? And which approach do you prefer? Why? Which might be more successful? Is there a difference between the one you prefer and the one you think might be more successful? Why or why not?
5. When you think about the importance of education, which do you think is more important, a practical education which will specifically prepare you for a job? Or a liberal education (history, arts, sciences, literature, math, humanities) which prepares you in a more general way? How did you make your decision? Is one of the choices more appropriate for some people over others? Why or why not? What does this say about equality, equality of opportunity and socio-economic class in America?

Yes, that last one is a killer, isn't it? But I have had THE most interesting discussions with students about it. Give it a whirl....

Parting thoughts--

Don't forget about the Great Migration and the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. I will do a separate post on this when we get there.

And a reminder, if you're looking for more resources on African American history, check out the website from the New Jersey State Library that I mentioned above.

The Progressives and the Environment: the Beginning of the Conservation Movement

As I've already mentioned, there are LOTS of topics that could potentially be studied in a unit on Progressivism. Why pick one over another? I like to spend a couple of days on the environment--a topic less often addressed by teachers, I think--for a few reasons. First, the care of the natural environment is a central concern in our society today and one that students seem to care about a lot. Global warming, the Keystone oil pipeline, fracking and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are all in the news today. Two, there are not a lot of other places in the curriculum where the environment comes up. And three, the Progressive Era marks a key "turning point" in American thinking about the environment.

For starters, 1916 marks the passage of the Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (though not the first national park--that was Yellowstone in 1872). According to this law, the goal of the NPS would be:

"....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." 

I am hardly the first to point out the inherent contradictions of this statement: does "conserve the scenery" and keeping it "unimpaired for enjoyment of future generations" mean the NPS might have to restrict current public access and "enjoyment"?

The National Parks have been described by environmentalist and writer Wallace Stegner as, "the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." The creation of the NPS is certainly a milestone moment in American history and worth considering. (See below for links to Ken Burns documentary on National Parks).

The essential question that comes to mind is, why now? Why in the early 20th century do Americans and their government begin talking about the environment in a way that they hadn't before? How did our views about the environment change over time?

One way to begin a lesson on this topic is to have students play around with some key words, considering what they mean, how they are different and their own views:

• environmentalism
• conservation
• preservation
• wilderness
• nature
• green (not the color, obviously)
• reclamation

Another way to begin is to use a few quotations about environmentalism and conservation. Pick a few from any of the websites below. Something from Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Wallace Stegner, or Stewart Udall are all good choices.

• goodreads.com/quotes/tag/environment
• quotegarden.com
• brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_environmental

The DBQ I put together and used with students focuses on this question:

How and why did the government's policy toward the use of natural resources change during the Progressive Era?

 To answer the question, obviously students need to understand 3 things:

1. What were American views/govt policies on the environment before the Progressive Era?
2. What influenced the shift? i.e. why did policies change?
3. What were those new policies? i.e. how did they change

To answer these, you can go back to the "beginning"--the period of initial contact between Europeans and Native Americans. William Cronon is the historian who has probably best explained the different points of view in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. For a brief summary, you can look here. One of his key points is that Europeans viewed land as property, something one owns, versus the New England Indians who were more likely to eschew land ownership in favor of usufruct rights, in which people "owned" only what they use on the land (e.g. hunting and gathering).

But I usually just go back to the nineteenth century, with a simple in class activity in which students look up a few bits of information about the topics below (most textbooks will work for this, and "a few bits" is all they usually have):

• manifest destiny
• Homestead Act of 1862
• Pacific Railway Act and government subsidies
• destruction of the buffalo

Then students consider what implications this has about how the American people and the government thought about land, conservation and the environment. Middle schoolers and high schoolers can do this, though middle schoolers may need either a little prodding, or you can do one of them together. Their ability to do it depends a little bit on what your textbook says about each of these things. If you don't like what your textbook says, find a different one, or write up your own "definitions" of them.

Then it's time to examine the shift. For this part of the lesson, I use two things:

1. maps:  one that depicts the "closing" of the frontier and the extent of settlement (your textbook probably has one). Here are some links to ones you might like: docstoc.com, lib.utexas.edu, and here's a GIF one from the US Census.
2. Frederick Jackson Turner and the "Closing of the Frontier Turner" thesis. Read more here and here or here. Even though it has been discredited, it was considered important at the time. I'm not sure I would use this with middle schoolers. Too theoretical. I think the maps are enough. Here is the document and questions on Turner that I use in class.

Combining the above with the significant droughts of the 1890s, you can start to understand the shift.

And then along come Theodore Roosevelt. My last post has resources where you can find more on his love for the wilderness and experiences with nature that led him to take an interest in preserving the environment just as the time seems to ripe for Americans to take a similar view.

I like to use Roosevelt's 1907 message to Congress as a document with students to understand the evolving view of conservation (vs. the preservationist view of folks like John Muir). Here is my edited version to use with high schoolers, and here is a shorter one to use with middle schoolers or younger/less able readers in HS. Both have the link to the PBS website where I found it.

And then lastly (this would not all be on the same day, mind you), I like to use the story about the debate over damming the Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite to provide a water source for the city of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It is a fascinating story and marks "the first time that competing claims of wilderness and civilization were put to the test before a national audience." (That's from my notes, but I'm sure it came from a book. Perhaps it's from the classic book on wilderness, Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind, now in its fourth edition. There's a whole chapter on Hetch Hetchy.)

The anti-dam folks, led by preservationist John Muir, made arguments that the pro-dam folks were putting commercial interests ahead of wilderness. Muir had been the driving force behind getting Yosemite turned into a national park in 1890 and had been camping with Roosevelt there in 1903. Muir was adamant about the importance of preserving the valley as it was:

"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

Muir's friend and ally in the fight, Robert Underwood Johnson claimed, "this is a fight between the sordid commercialism on the one hand and the higher interests of the whole people on the other."

But the really interesting thing about the debate over Hetch Hetchy is that the proponents of the damn were not anti-wilderness. In fact, many arguments were made that putting a dam in would make the wilderness more beautiful. Read no further than the first few statements by U.S. Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot in response to California Congressman John Raker to get a sense of the argument.

You have several options for how to teach about this. You could construct an elaborate debate like this one that I found online, or use some of the many materials there to construct something simpler (and shorter). Other resources you can use to create your own debate or historical inquiry or even just a short lecture that dramatizes the events are below:

• testimony about the Hetch Hetchy debate
• hetch hetchy info from the Sierra club
• primary sources about Hetch Hetchy from National Archives
• John Muir on Hetch Hetchy
• Gifford Pinchot's testimony on Hetch Hetchy

Ken Burns has taken Wallace Stegner's statement about the national parks idea and turned it into one of his outstanding documentaries, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. For an overview of this documentary, click here and for the episode by episode synopsis, click here.

The last section of Episode 2 focuses on the debate over Hetch Hetchy. Read more here (midway on the page). Earlier in Episode 2, the three main characters of the debate are introduced: Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, as well as Theodore Roosevelt.

A few more resources:

• The Evolution of the Conservation Movement - from the Library of Congress's American Memory collection
• If you'd like to see the DBQ I created, you can email me and I will send you the link.
• Current news about Hetch Hetchy and more here.

"A Steam Engine in Trousers:" Teaching about Theodore Roosevelt

I bet if you polled U.S. history teachers about their favorite presidents--not necessarily the ones they thought was the best, but their favorite--Theodore Roosevelt would top the list. He is not as great as Lincoln or as noble as Washington, or maybe even as successful as his cousin and biggest fan, FDR, but when it comes to the power of personality, he has to win the prize. The title of this post comes from a quotation I heard on Ken Burns's recent and marvelous documentary, The Roosevelts. I couldn't figure out who actually said it, but it is a brilliant metaphor for our most energetic and strong-willed presidents who had tremendous influence on the Progressive Era. A question worth pondering, would the Progressive Era have become what it did without the impact of such a powerful personality in the White House?

Roosevelt is one of the most colorful presidents we have had, and the examples of interesting facts and anecdotes is long.

• He was the youngest president to assume office (but not the youngest elected; that was JFK)
• He is the first to be known by his initials.
• He is the first president to have ridden in an automobile and an airplane. 
• The first president to have visited a foreign country while in office--the newly-independent Panama to inspect the Panama Canal. (The story about how the U.S. got control over the Panama Canal is fascinating--and controversial. I would include it in a unit about late 19th century imperialism. I will do some posts on that in the future, so more on TR and the Panama Canal later.) 
• He was a prolific writer. Click here for the list of books he wrote. 
• He was the first American and the first American president to receive the Nobel peace prize. Read his acceptance speech here. 
• He was a big-time family man. Interesting info about his children in the White House available here and here. Middle-schoolers will find this especially interesting.
• He was a witness to Abraham Lincoln's funeral. 
• Prominent Republican Mark Hanna's quip on TR being chosen for McKinley's Vice-Presidential running mate: "There's only one life between that madman and the Presidency."
• Many students know that TR and FDR are related, but they don't usually understand how, nor do they always know about Eleanor. This family tree will help explain that. And what they also don't know is that what seems like a rather distant relationship to us (how many of you know your 5th cousins?) was not so distant in the Roosevelt family. Long before FDR married TR's niece, Eleanor, he knew and greatly admired his 5th cousin. The Oyster Bay Roosevelts (TR) and the Hyde Park Roosevelts (FDR) traveled in the same social circles and were together on many occasions, which is how FDR met Eleanor in the first place. They had known each other since childhood.

There are also a number of interesting events/aspects of his young life that I think are worth sharing with students because of the influence they may have had on some of his future decisions as president and for becoming helping him become president in the first place. The items below also help humanize this out-sized historical figure. And making the past seem alive and full of real human beings is what helps students relate to history.

1. His family, like so many others, was split by the Civil War. His mother, "Mittie" (Martha) Bulloch, was from Roswell, Georgia. She grew up in a large plantation, Bulloch Hall, as a member of Georgia's planter class. The family owned slaves, and Mittie herself has a personal slave, Lavinia. The main reason Theodore Sr. (TR's father) hired a replacement rather than fight in the Civil War was to avoid having to fight a war against Mittie's family. But his failure to fight for his country was something that would always bother TR about his father, whom he otherwise worshipped. This partly explains his determination to fight in the Spanish-American War and his organization of the Rough Riders. Mittie herself was a colorful and lively woman, and it has been suggested that the character of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind may have been inspired by her.

2. It is well known that young Theodore suffered terribly from asthma. There are accounts of his beloved father walking with him in his arms throughout the night, or taking him outside for a ride in the night air. Theodore Sr. devoted enormous attention to helping his son with this terrible affliction. He told his son that he would have to "remake his body," which he did. And this slight, sickly little boy became the toughest, most macho president we've ever had.

3. Young Theodore loved the outdoors, nature and was profoundly curious. He collected all kinds of animals and other specimens, some of which were donated to the American Museum of Natural History (well-known to your students because of the hit movie, A Night at the Museum). Read about it here. He also made donations to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington. See this article.

4. I also like to share with students the profoundly tragic experience of losing his beloved young wife, Alice, and his mother on the same day, February 14, 1884. His wife died two days following the birth of a daughter, also named Alice, which was hours before the death of Theodore's mother. For an excellent account which also shows a picture of Roosevelt's diary entry for that day, see this post from RareHistoricalPhotos.com (could be very useful for lots of other topics--see the list of categories/topics on right). The post also has an excerpt from a tribute wrote about Alice and mentions that he never spoke of her again. I like to tell the story because its poignancy humanizes Roosevelt. It also adds to our picture of Roosevelt as someone who overcame personal tragedy and setbacks. And finally, it helps explain the significant role of wilderness in his life, which led him to become so engaged in the beginning of the conservation movement.

5. Roosevelt's experiences out west also brought him into contact with people and a life very much outside of his upper class New York world. This certainly would have influenced his ability as president to connect with a wide variety of people. You can read here about his experiences in North Dakota. The Ken Burns series (see below) also has a good, brief section in Episode One about this transformative experienc.

None of the above is to suggest that Roosevelt is without criticism. As many others as pointed out, he often took liberties with the Constitution. (See this lesson from the Bill of Rights Institute). Many conservatives and Republicans of his day saw him as a traitor to his social class and business interests. His involvement with the revolution that created an independent Panama is a prime example of U.S. imperialist. In fact, TR was an imperialist. I think it is critical, when presenting material on "heroic" and well-liked presidents, to point out these flaws to students. You don't have to do it on day one, but our students should be made cognizant of the flaws of our greatest men and women. The point is not to "take 'em down," or to present an overly critical view of history (as history teachers are so often accused of doing by conservative politicians). The point is to help students understand that real people and real events in history are messy and complicated. And today's lionized presidents--even Lincoln--may have been roundly disliked and criticized by people of their day and from our perspective today.

Another interesting negative point about TR: Roosevelt was the first American president to invite a black man--Booker T. Washington--to a formal dinner at the White House. He was strongly criticized. Though he would meet with Washington again, and invite other black officials to White House receptions, he never again invited a black man (or woman) to dinner again. Read about it here. I don't think this means that Roosevelt was racist, but it certainly reflects the racism of the time, and Roosevelt's recognition of the importance of this symbolic action. Raising these sorts of controversies and inconsistencies with students further helps their ability to recognize the complexity of historical analysis.

And another: our greatest "conservationist president" was a big-time hunter. Students often find this inconsistent. But there are even more interesting issues raised during Roosevelt's presidency about conservation during the debate about Hetch Hetchy. More on that in another post.


Ken Burns's epic recent series, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, is a wonderful resource to share with students, or for background material for yourself. There is a page with resources specific to teachers here. If you go to this page, you can filter the videos by person (TR, FDR and ER) and then click on the one, "Theodore Roosevelt's Personality." It's a 3 1/2 minute clip with amusing anecdotes that shed light on Roosevelt's immense personality. If you want more, you could precede this with another clip, "Theodore Roosevelt Early Years," is also about 3 1/2 minutes and describes TR's experience at Harvard and his marriage to Alice Lee (but doesn't go on to her death).

One idea you could try, instead of just showing some of the many cool video clips out there in order to tell them about interesting TR is, is to let students watch them individually (e.g. in your computer lab, if you have one, or at home if they have access) and ask them to comment on which aspect of TR's personality or time in his life do they think most shaped who he became as president. (I suppose you might have to do this after they learn about his presidency. But you could show the videos first, have them think about the question in advance, and then go back to the videos afterwards.) In addition to Ken Burns's film, there are lots more out there on youtube and elsewhere.

As you would expect, there are a number of resources on the internet for learning more about TR.

There are all the usual places:

whitehouse.gov

history.com

biography.com

millercenter.org (see the links to all the brief essays on right)

Library of Congress/American Memory

and here are the more specialized ones:

theodorerooseveltcenter.org - digital library project to collect a variety of resources. Also has useful virtual exhibits, including detailed timelines of his life and experiences, famous quotations, an encyclopedia that is organized around major themes of his life and presidency, and links to other library collections such as Harvard's and the Library of Congress.

theodoreroosevelt.org - has a brief biography and links on the left to other aspects of his life, e.g. TR the hunter, the family man, the conservationist, etc. and an article about how the teddy bear came to be named for TR.

www.theodore-roosevelt.com - I cannot seem to find who/what organization sponsors this website, but it seems to have links to EVERYTHING Theodore Roosevelt ever did, said or wrote and every other website and author that has mentioned Roosevelt. If you can't find what you're looking for from the links I have provided, you will find it here. 

Things named for Theodore Roosevelt:

• Two major parks (and probably countless minor ones, including a little known one in Chicago's South Loop where my kids used to play; are named in his honor because of it's location adjacent to Roosevelt Road and because Roosevelt praised Chicago's south neighborhood park system) -- Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C.
• A species of elk found in the Pacific Northwest--the Roosevelt Elk--is named after TR. 
• And, for Chicago folk: Roosevelt Road (goes all the way from the lakefront to the town of Geneva, IL) was named for TR in 1919, after his death. (Roosevelt University was named for FDR). I'm sure that plenty of other towns, cities and states have things named for TR, but of course you have to check and see which Roosevelt.

About Mount Rushmore, a site not without some controversy:

You can read "official" info about why TR is included on it here, from the National Park Service. But I think this response from the Straight Dope is a little more enlightening.

The list of outstanding biographies of TR is also long. I have a mild obsession with all the Roosevelts. Just a few of my favorites are at right. Two off the beaten track ones: If you haven't read it, The River of Doubt: Theodore 

Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard is a great summer read. Tells the hard-to-believe-it's-even-true story of the poorly planned post-presidency trip down the River of Doubt in the Amazon with his son, Kermit. Also, The Roosevelt Women: A Portrait in Five Generations by Betty Boyd Caroli is a great resource for learning more not only about the usual suspects--TR's wife, Edith, and his niece, Eleanor--but also about his mother and influential sisters. Some have argued that, but for her gender, Roosevelt's sister, Bamie, would have been the obvious choice for the presidency. I learned so much about TR from reading about his family, but the book also serves as a powerful reminder about the role women (albeit in this case, elite women) have played in history.

History & the Movies: Selma

March 2025 update: Check out this article that talks about the Eyes on the Prize episode of Selma. In it I found this link to John Lewis's reaction to the film (written back in 2015). 

Also, if you are looking for more Civil Rights resources, see my post, ""The Top 8 Mistakes Teachers When Teaching the Modern Civil Rights Era."

Jan 2024 update: check out this "looking back" on the film Selma article from The Root.

June 2020 update: See this guide to films/documentaries to use when teaching about Civil Rights by the Hasan Kwame Jeffries, history professor at Ohio State University.

March 6 update: Hooray! One of my favorite podcasts recently took on this issue. Check out BackStory with the American History Guys recent episode about history & the movies.

Jan 17 update: In response to one of my tweets, I was alerted to this helpful resource from
teachingforchange.org, "The Selma Voting Rights Struggle: 15 Points from Bottom-Up History and Why It Matters Today." Thank you to the ZinnEdProject.org for alerting me to it. Also, check out "Ten Things You Should Know about Selma before You See the Film" from CommonDreams.org.

And here is the link to read the transcript of the telephone conversation between LBJ and MLK on January 15, 1965. This is the key area in which the film's interpretation differs significantly from actual historic record. The film makes it seem like LBJ is really dragging; the transcript shows that LBJ wanted MLK to create the rationale to help LBJ move Congress (and public opinion) towards passage of voting rights bill.


Original Post:

I don't usually teach about the modern Civil Rights movement until April, but if your students are going to see the new movie, Selma, it will be soon, so I figured I'd get this post in the bank, so to speak, right now.

I haven't even seen the film yet--hope to soon--but as soon as I heard it was coming out, I started to wonder these questions:

1. How historically accurate will the film be? 
2. What inaccuracies will there be and will they matter?
3. I always liked showing episode 6 of the outstanding Eyes on the Prize documentary: Bridge to Freedom which is about the march to Selma. Will teachers still use documentaries instead of full-length feature films? Would students be bored with a documentary if they've seen Selma? Will they see the feature film as "truth" and then question the story told by the documentary (keeping in mind that documentaries, just like history books, also have their own "versions" of history and leave certain points out and others in)?
4. Who will students respond to more, the real MLK as seen in Eyes on the Prize and other documentaries or the actor who plays him, David Oyelowo? How could any actor top the man himself?
5. When we internalize fictional accounts of history, what is lost? what is gained?
6. What larger questions does this raise about who "owns" history? How do the stories and versions of history we tell ourselves shape our understanding of the past?

Because I haven't seen the movie yet, I don't have my own opinion to share, but lots of other folks have. So below are a few resources I've pulled together which may be useful for you to read so you can address the questions and comments from your students. I'm sure there are many more out there, but it's a start.

• Ken Halla, on his US History Educator blog posted on this today. See his Resources on Selma, including some excellent ones from the LBJ Library.
• Elizabeth Drew, "'Selma' vs. History," in New York Review of Books - about how LBJ is portrayed as being more opposed to MLK than he really was.
• A few resources from NPR (National Public Radio), on their Code Switch blog, a site devoted to issues of race, culture and ethnicity:

reactions in Selma to the movie

"Selma backlash misses the point" - from Tufts University history professor Peniel E. Joseph. Really interesting. Says, "The real problem many critics have with this film is that it's too black and too strong." Ouch. 

"The Selma Criticism for How It Portrays Lyndon B. Johnson: Is It Fair?

• from the Washington Post: "The Movie Selma Has a Glaring Flaw"
• from Slate.com: "What Matters in Selma" - offers a contrary view from critics who claim the characterization of LBJ is flawed
• "Oscar Films and the Prison of Historical Accuracy," from Vulture.com, the entertainment branch of New York Magazine.
• From The Nation, "What 'Selma' Gets Right-and Wrong-about Civil Rights History"
• From The Huffington Post, "Why 'Selma' Got It Right"
• CNN.com: "From Selma to Ferguson and back: Has Anything Changed?"

An idea I'm thinking about, for when you do teach the Civil Rights movement: some sort of historical inquiry where students examine clips from some of the above articles and the historic record of Selma to make their own determination of either the accuracy of the film (this would require that students have seen the film, either on their own or a viewing that you arrange after class or something) or their own editorial about the extent to which historical accuracy in this film matters.

And for when/if you use Eyes on the Prize to teach about Selma or other parts of the Civil Rights movement, see the Study guide for Eyes on the Prize from Blackside Productions, the makers of the Eyes on the Prize. 200-plus page guide to the full film series with questions for each film.

Progressivism Continued: One way to Tame the Tyranny of Coverage...Plus, a few thoughts on Paris

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 James Loewen, in his book, Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited about Doing History, gives outstanding advice to history teachers in chapter 1 which is titled, "The Tyranny of Coverage." In it, he compares the content of history to forests, trees and twigs. He points out the danger of students not being able to see the forest through the trees, i.e. the big ideas of history vs facts. It is a thoughtfully written chapter which I have used when teaching the methods class for student teachers (and I have mentioned in one of my earliest posts).

But the one thing I can't figure out about it is how he could support eliminating the Progressive Era altogether. If you read my previous post on Progressivism, you will understand why I think that it is a big mistake.

But I do agree with Loewen's premise: that you certainly cannot cover every little thing that is in the textbook.

So how to solve this problem for Progressivism?

If you define Progressivism broadly and simply, as seen below, you can carefully pick 1 or 2 "case studies" for each of the three points.

Progressivism is the attempt to make government more responsive to the public by

1. making government more democratic (examples: expanding the suffrage, cleaning up corruption)

2. government regulation of the economy (e.g. trustbusting)

3. government action to solve social problems (e.g. settlement houses, prohibition, food safety)

One other thing I like to do in the Progressive Unit is to "continue the story" of blacks and women. Because I don't have separate units on these groups, I teach lessons throughout the year where it makes the most chronological sense. And because Progressivism is about (3) solving social problems and because women were involved in organizing solutions to those problems, it makes sense to include them here. Plus, the fight for women's suffrage reaches its climax at this point in history. For African Americans, I focus on social activists Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. (I will do a separate post on this).

So here is an example of how an approximately two-week unit on Progressivism might look:

Day 1 - Introduction to Progressivism
Day 2 - The Urban Environment: American Cities, the Settlement Houses & Political Machines
Day 3 - continued
Day 4 - Theodore Roosevelt takes on Big Business
Day 5 - Roosevelt and Progressive Reforms
Day 6 - The Battle of Hetch Hetchy: Progressives and Environmental Reform
Day 7 - continued
Day 8 - Women during the Progressive Era
Day 9 - Racial Segregation and Black Leadership during the Progressive Era
Day 10 - The Election of 1912
Day 11 - Roosevelt v. Wilson: Comparing and Evaluating Progressivism


This Election of 1912 group activity is one way I have approached the politics of the Progressive Era. It involves dividing your class into 5 groups, one for each of the major candidates of this election and one to be reporters. You could eliminate the reporter group, but I include it because (1) otherwise the groups are too big, and (2) it is a good place to put kids who really prefer to work alone.

In the interest of making shorter posts and getting them "out there" more quickly, I will conclude here for now.

But one last thought....

 I have been wrestling with what happened in Paris last week and how one should handle it in the classroom. Though this blog is designed for U.S. history teachers, I think it is our duty as "social studies" teachers to probably say or do SOMETHING when a news story like this happens. Students don't care that you haven't gotten to your unit on the Middle East yet. And if yours is the only social studies class they are in at the moment, where else would they discuss it? So I would urge you to--at a minimum--provide a forum to allow students to discuss or ask questions about what happened and why this is such a big news story.

So here are a few ideas/questions to raise in a discussion (depending, of course, on the ages and maturity of your students):

• Most of the victims of Islamic fundamentalism over the last 10 years have been Muslim, not white Western Europeans or Americans.  See this editorial from Vox and this article, about the eulogy given by the brother of Ahmed Merabet, the French police officer of Algerian descent and a Muslim, who was murdered by one of the Kouachi brothers as they fled the office of Charlie Hebdo after their attack there. Both pieces raise some interesting questions about whether or not Muslims around the world, and particularly in France, have a responsibility to condemn the attacks of Islamic fundamentalists. This concern has been raised in other contexts--the extent to which an individual of a minority group represents the larger group. And what happens when a society blames the entire group for the evils of a few individuals or off-shoot of the group? See this map which shows attacks on French Muslims since the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
• Freedom of Speech. One of our most sacred rights in the U.S., and in France, came under attack last week. This provocative op-ed piece by David Brooks in the New York Times raises some interesting questions about the connection to speech codes and censorship in the U.S. I would not recommend using this piece with students (for starters, the vocabulary is likely to be beyond most high school students, and for sure, middle schoolers). But it is worth reading for you, and you can address some of those questions. Clarence Page, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote a piece with a similar theme, which you can read here. It raises some tough questions about the appropriateness of racist cartoons.
• When I read the paper on Saturday, there was a front page story, just under the article about France, about the rampage of Boko Haram in Nigeria (Read more here). I was struck by the fact that I hadn't heard much about the 2000 dead in Nigeria and--even as I read the article about it--I was still much more emotionally involved with the events in Paris. Proof of my own ethnocentrisms, I suppose, and this disturbs me. Have your students heard about Boko Haram? About the recent events in Nigeria? Is it "natural" for us, as Westerners, to be more concerned and pay more attention to events in Paris? Does this make us racist or ethnocentric? 
• What connections can we make to the events in Ferguson and the shooting of the two NY police officers in Brooklyn in December?
• This is a broader question/topic, but what connections can we make about the place of Muslims in French society to the place of the "new" immigrants in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century? Following the Progressive Era, we will see a rise in prejudice, nativism, anti-Catholic feeling and anti-Semitism, culminating in the 1924 Immigration Act that will severely limit immigration into the U.S. from areas other than Western Europe. France, and other Western European nations have only recently been dealing with questions about assimilation that the U.S. has been grappling with for over a century. The attacks in Paris bring this issue once again to a head. What lessons could the French draw from the United States? And, given problems we still have in the U.S. regarding racism and prejudice against minorities, including our own rising Muslim population, what lessons do we still have to learn?

Progressivism: Big Ideas for Beginning Your Unit

Brrrr...crazy cold here in Chicago! And schools have been closed, which throws off my schedule. I'm going to try to work on making some shorter posts with the hope of getting more posts out there more quickly. We'll see how that New Year's resolution goes!

How to begin a unit on the Progressive Era?

Described by some as "a mood" rather than an organized movement, the Progressive Era can be rather slippery. There is no specific start or end date. There are many kinds of people from many different groups who are involved, many of whom would vehemently disagree with each issue. Some progressives were concerned with just one area, some with many: prohibition, women's suffrage, business regulation, the environment, immigration, rights of blacks, labor and others. And, as I pointed out in my last post, there is a whole slew of legislation that could make your unit drier than the banana bread I made this morning.

But one thing about the Progressive Era is clear. There was a fundamental shift in the way we perceive the role of government. And a reorganization of how we define liberalism in the United States. What was considered "liberal" in the 19th century will become what is considered "conservative" in the twentieth. See the diagram below which illustrates this:

18th and 19th century Liberalism	20th century Liberalism
• protect natural rights (i.e. life, liberty and property) • laissez-faire • representative government • limited government	• it is the duty of government to intervene and regulate society • use government power to solve social problems in order to insure the average citizen a decent political and economic life (thus govt becomes “bigger”)

The “Left” Liberal

The “right” Conservative

So one thing I like to do near the beginning of the Progressive Unit is to help students see where they fall on the political spectrum. It is challenging to help students understand that "liberal" and "conservative" do not equal "Democrat" and "Republican." If I had any good ideas on how to help you do that, I would. It is tricky business.

I think introducing the unit this way can help set up students' understanding of the differences between liberals and conservatives for the entire 20th century and through today. And in the shorter term, it helps them understand the fundamental change in the role of government beginning in the early 20th century.

I have used this questionnaire in class with students to get them to think about their political views. Looking at it now, I see that is poorly designed (most people, whether liberal or conservative, would be likely to agree with almost everything) so it probably should be reworked. But it could be useful to point out that all of these ideas were solidified during the Progressive Era.

And now, I have found some even better quizzes that you can use online with students to help them understand their political leanings. Check out this one from the Pew Research Center. If you don't have access to computers in class, you could ask students to do it at home and print out their result. But if you do have access, here is a link to the group version which you can use to create one for your entire class or all of your classes. Students will then be able to see how they compare to each other and to the nation as a whole. And in the interest of giving parents and kids something to talk about at the dinner table, how cool would it be to ask students to administer the quiz to their parents, too? Click here for explanation of the poll and analysis of the political typology.

Here are links to a few others you could use or adapt to create your own:

• blogthings
• isidewith.com
• selectsmart.com
• and, just for fun, a silly one from buzzfeed (not for classroom use)

A few other useful ways to conceptualize the Progressive Era and/or interesting tidbits:

1. I usually draw something like this up on the board, to illustrate the flow of the 20th century. I do not usually add the little part at the end with Carter through Obama. I might talk about it, but I think this drawing makes it slightly misleading. The big curves represent 3 eras of reform and increased government programs and legislation (and of course, spending).  The arrows below refer to 3 periods characterized by either little reform or regulation, and also the wars that put an end to the reform eras. Once you get past Vietnam, things change. It's not that Carter, Clinton and Obama are reformers, while Reagan and Bush aren't. It's that those periods (in blue) are characterized by a rise in liberalism or conservativism. I fear that it may mislead students a bit, though. Plus it may suggest that Carter, Clinton and Obama are "high points" or successful, while Reagan and Bush are not. So use it with caution or as a starting point for a more refined version.

2. I came across this point in my notes that I thought was useful: that the Progressive Era transformed the legislature from the dominant branch of government to an enlarged executive branch. And it created, in a sense, a "fourth" branch of government: administrative boards and agencies.

3. About corruption: we now (sort of) seem to take for granted that corruption is entrenched in politics. And corruption in politics was not, before the Progressive Era, particularly new. But, according to my notes on an article by Richard L. McCormick ("The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism," in American Historical Review, (April 1981), corruption was no longer something that could be dismissed as simply actions of bad men in a particular time and place, but as a process that was at work everywhere. Therefore, regulation and increased administration becomes necessary to control this. You could have an interesting discussion about that--e.g. the nature of politics, the corrupting influence of power, etc.

4. And lastly, to further develop point #3, a word from my favorite Progressive, Theodore Roosevelt. Here is a great quotation to start off your unit/first day/brief discussion or at the beginning of your syllabus:

"A simple and poor society can exist as a democracy on the basis of sheer individualism. But a rich and complex society cannot so exist."

First explain--or have your students explain--what Roosevelt means. Then ask if they agree. Why? Why not? Does it depend? If so, on what? And how interesting is this in light of the person who said it. After all, Theodore Roosevelt was born to incredible wealth and privilege, but also suffered enormously from asthma and was considered a rather sickly little boy who would not likely live long. But through tremendous will and encouragement from his beloved father, he "remade" himself into one of the most powerful Presidents in American history.

Really, what Roosevelt is addressing is the one of THE big questions of life: the extent to which individuals have free will and the power to be whatever they can be. Can we, despite whatever bad hands we are dealt, rise about our circumstances, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be successful? Or are we limited or constricted by larger social, political and economic forces?

Now that's what I call an "essential question" you can really chew on.