Exploring Women’s Rights: The 1908 Textile Strike in a 1st-grade Class
Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. 3 pages.
A teacher’s reflections about a curriculum unit on women’s rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.
Five Years After the Levees Broke: Bearing Witness Through Poetry
Teaching Activity. By Renée Watson. 7 pages.
A teacher’s reflection on the power of poetry to spark critical discussion and reflection on current issues of inequality surrounding disaster response in the United States.
Frederick Douglass Fights for Freedom
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
A lesson to introduce students to the numerous and varied ways African Americans resisted their enslavement, using the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
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.
Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War
Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. 14 pages.
A role play investigating the economic consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Haiku and Hiroshima: Teaching About the Atomic Bomb
Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. 3 pages.
Lesson for high school students on the bombing of Hiroshima using the film Barefoot Gen and haiku.
The History All Around Us: Roosevelt High School and the 1968 Eastside Blowouts
Teaching Activity. By Brian C. Gibbs.
A teacher uses the activist history of Theodore Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles to pose students the question: “What would you be willing to do to create change?”
History Textbooks: “Theirs” and “Ours”: A Rebellion or a War of Independence?
Teaching Activity. By John DeRose. 4 pages.
Analysis of textbook passages from different countries, videos and books are used to explore different perspectives about the same event in history, i.e. “Philippine-American War” vs. “War of Philippine Independence.”
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.
Hunger on Trial: An Activity on the Irish Potato Famine and Its Meaning for Today
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow.
Role play in the form of a trial to determine who was responsible for the death of Irish peasants during the potato famine.
‘If There Is No Struggle…’: Teaching a People’s History of the Abolition Movement
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 16 pages.
In this role play, students become members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, facing many of the real challenges to ending slavery.
Inside the Volcano: A Curriculum on Nicaragua
Teaching Guide. Edited by Bill Bigelow and Jeff Edmundson. 1990. 130 pages.
Fourteen interactive lessons on the history of Nicaragua.
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 many parts of the United States.
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.
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.
Learning About the Unfairgrounds: A 4th-Grade Teacher Introduces Her Students to Executive Order 9066
Teaching Activity. By Katie Baydo-Reed.
Students hold a “tea party” and a mock trial in preparation for reading literature about internment.
A Lesson on the Japanese American Internment
Teaching Activity. By Mark Sweeting.
How one teacher engaged his students in a critical examination of the language used in textbooks to describe the internment.
Lessons in Solidarity: Grady Hospital Workers United
Teaching Activity. By Larry Miller.
Story and discussion questions about a teacher’s own experience of labor solidarity.
Lewis Hine’s Photographs
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. 4 pages.
Using photographs to spark creative writing and critical thinking about child labor issues and social justice.
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.