Source: Power In Our Hands - Lessons Archives

Shutdown!—Confronting Plant Closures

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. In this role play activity, students assume the roles of union members and attempt to figure out how to respond to a threatened plant closure.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Who Makes History?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson introduces students to Bertolt Brecht’s poem, A Worker Reads History. Students reflect on the creative role of workers in making history.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

What Rights Do We Have?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson teaches some of the nuts and bolts of labor unions and then moves beyond to ask students to consider what rights they have at work, and to recognize that “rights” depend in large part on what people have fought for and won.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Union Maids

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Activity for students to write from the point of view of one of the women featured in the film Union Maids.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

“Taylorizing” Burgers: A Fantasy

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages. In this playful activity, students utilize the principles of “scientific management” to restructure a burger joint—one that has been run a good deal more democratically and imaginatively.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Organic Goodie cartoon | Zinn Education Project

Organic Goodie Simulation

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages. Lesson engages students in a lively simulation that helps them experience some of the pressures that lead workers to organize.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Modern Times

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. This lesson uses Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious classic film, Modern Times, to help students think about the impact of “scientific management” on the workplace.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Labor Songs

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages. Students explore the power of songs to build solidarity and increase understanding. This is the final activity from Bigelow and Diamond’s labor history book, The Power in Our Hands, and draws on the other lessons.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

It’s a Mystery—White Workers Against Black Workers

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages. In this “mystery” activity, students receive clues and discuss some of the factors that contributed to the intensification of racism in the 1920s in the United States.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

The Homestead Strike

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 10 pages. This role play activity on the famous 1892 Homestead Strike, explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Factory workers | Zinn Education Project

Free to Think, Talk, Listen, or Sing

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 6 pages Students work with a chapter from Milton Meltzer’s classic book, Bread and Roses, to see the impact of late 19th century factory work on workers’ home lives.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Paper Airplane Simulation

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. In this simulation, students make paper airplanes to learn about the origins and effects of “scientific management”—owners’ attempt to capture workers’ skills and knowledge, and then to exploit that knowledge to reorganize work and cut costs by deskilling workers.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Suffragist and labor leader Agnes Nestor | Zinn Education Project

Birth of a Rank-and-File Organizer

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages. Writing activity for students to complete the narrative of women workers striking at a glove-making factory, exploring possible outcomes.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

The 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Students “become” several of the social groups who participated in the 1934 Longshore Workers Strike—some of whom had to answer the question, “Which side are you on?”

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

Lawrence, 1912: The Singing Strike

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

The Singing Strike and the Rebel Students: Learning from the Industrial Workers of the World

Reading for Teachers. By Bill Bigelow. Author describes how students applied strategies from the Lawrence strike to their own present day activism.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States

Teaching Guide. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. Role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.

Teaching Activity by Norm Diamond

The Power In Our Hands: Introduction

Article. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 1988. Teaching insights and introduction to using The Power In Our Hands curriculum book.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond

April 3, 1934: Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union broke away from a larger organization and became a racially integrated workers union.