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Sites of special interest :
History Matters - Many documents and website links relating to labor. Site is keyword-searchable. Links to other labor history websites and on-line exhibitions. Links to syllabi, lesson plans and information on teaching. Links to discussion groups for subjects that include labor and social history
Women and Social Movements, 1820-1940 - A fabulous teaching resource, with some of it geared toward labor history--though most of it is now subscription-based only. Example: primary documents and lesson plans on women and labor, including the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist strike, Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike of 1912, the 1938 Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio, and much much more;
American Labor
Studies Center " mission is to collect, analyze, evaluate, create
and disseminate labor history and labor studies curriculum and related
materials to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers nationwide."
Curriculum
plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society curriculum --most of
these are usable beyond Wisconsin
Zinn
Education Project is regularly updated with teaching plans and specific
curricula ideas that emphasize the role of workers and class issues, including
Civil
War and Class Conflict I have organized those lesson plans chronologically,
but search their site for themes and topics as well
The
Power In Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in
the United States-originally published in 1988, this curriculum has
been integrated into the Zinn education project. The book is well-worth
the $18.00 price for the innovative teacher interested in integrating
labor history into the curriculum
Curriculum
guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these
are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have rough ideas for
approaching the topic
Labor in the Schools Committee of the California Teachers Federation --- multiple ideas and lesson plans, See also their resource list
Picturing
U.S. History by Josh Freeman "digital project based on the belief
that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. This
website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web
resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers
incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms." Great for labor
history at all levels
Teacher
Lesson Plan: Using Oral History: This lesson presents social history
content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on
primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories,
1936-1940.
Resources
For Teachers: Oral History Overview using Southern
Oral History interviews But the guide is useful for any teacher
Tenement
Museum Lesson Plans including "teaching with objects" "doing
oral history" "primary source activities" for all levels,
from from elementary level to high school
Teaching
the Local These sample teaching projects represent the work done by
Mahoning Valley teachers in Center for Working Class Studies Summer Institute.
Teaching Students to Become Producers of
New Historical Knowledge on the Web by Kathryn Kish Sklar
S.U.N.Y. Binghamton
Special
Issue on Labor History (OAH Magazine of History) includes articles
such as "Why Teach Labor History?" "Using Songs to Teach
Labor History (pdf) "It's About People": Social and Labor History
in the Classroom Bret Eynon and William Friedheim
American Social
History Project dedicating to revitalizing the study of history by
challenging the ways that people learn about the past
Steeltown USA: A Digital Library of Poetry, Images, and Documents
Another site "provides a variety of resources for secondary
and college teachers who want to include attention to work and working-class
studies in their courses."
See my booklist and/or filmlist
for specific subjects for classroom use
Glossary of Labor Terms from the American Labor Studies Center
College and Labor Education Syllabi
Call for Syllabi - We need your syllabi and Lesson plan ideas!!!LAWCHA
has issued a call for historians to share their lesson plans and syllabi
so that we can continue to build a community of scholars who learn from
each other. The materials below are a start. Please send them to me in word
or pdf, or send a link of your on-line syllabus to me (Rosemary Feurer)
at the following e-mail address: motherjones1930@hotmail.com
If you are not yet a member of LAWCHA, please consider joining: www.lawcha.org
Workers
and Work in America, 1600 to the Present: A Multimedia Course Professor
Zahavi has posted his course on-line, with links to sources. This might
be a good starting point
Center
for Working Class studies syllabus library- mostly not history, but
great ideas here
Teaching
About Class includes
Readings about Class
Class Theory Table and ideas developed by participants in the 2006
"Class in the Classroom" Summer Institute
Bill Barry's
Labor Education courses History, Labor Law, Oral history projects.Also
posting posting streaming audio of radio shows and streaming video of
guest speakers
Andy Arnold's syllabus Working
for a Living in America Spring 2010 Kutztown University
Jennifer Brook's The
South since 1877 syllabus
Michelle Haberland's The
Global South syllabus
Greta deJong's The
African American Freedom Struggle since Reconstruction syllabus
Greta deJong's Social
Movements in the United States course
Cindy Hahamovitch's Women
and Work Syllabus
Cindy Hahamovitch's Workers
in American Life Syllabus
Robert Korstad's Insurgent
South syllabus
Max Krochmal's Behind
the Veil African American Oral History & the Jim Crow South Syllabus
Jana Lipman's US
Migration and Labor syllabus
O'Donovan's HISTORY
OF AFRICAN AMERICANS FROM THE SLAVE TRADE TO 1900 syllabus
Steven Reich's American
Workers in the Industrial Age intensive seminar syllabus
Pamela Voekel's Race,
Gender, and Revolution in the Americas syllabus
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Broad chronological or topical
lesson frames
Labor Matters
Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary
benefits such as the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, and workplace
safety regulations.
Studs Terkel’s
“Working”: A Teaching Guide An invaluable educational
resource for introducing Studs Terkel’s classic 1974
work of oral history to today’s students.
Curriculum
plans from the Wisconsin Labor History Society --most of these are
usable beyond Wisconsin --including "What
are unions?", "why did they develop", lessons on the
Jungle, women's labor, WWII and labor --all are connected to Wisconsin
standards, but many of these standards are transferable to other state
standards
Curriculum
guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society some of these
are very well developed, with handouts, etc; some have vague ideas for
approaching the topic
Servitude
to Service: African-American Women as Wage Earners Rita G. Koman
Creating
a Right to Childhood: Child Labor and Social Reform -timelines,
background, primary
sources, photos, teaching ideas, classroom assignments
Giving
Voice to Child Laborers Through Monologues language arts/performance
from Read/Write/Think
Documents
from the Fulton Cotton Bag mill on child labor
Exploring
child labor with young students - Rethinking Schools article see also
confronting
child labor
Child
Labor in the Cotton Mills Univ. of North Carolina
AFT
curriculum unit on child farmworkers
Child
Labor, safety and health, and other "performance task" Lesson
plans f rom Wisconsin Labor History Society
Child
labor website page for students
Your
Rights on the Job "information assembled is designed to help
young workers understnad their rights in the workplace as protected in
federal law"
U.S.
Steel Gary Works – Lesson plans on the steel industry and the
workers
Harry
Bridges Project High School Lesson Plans including surveillance, cold
war, unions
The
Pursuit of Happiness: Labor History in Chicago Strikes
in US and Texas history compare famous strikes in U.S. and Texas history.
Seattle
Civil Rights and Labor History Project some materials offer
starting points for thinking about engaged learning strategies
Teaching plans for specific chronological time frames, arranged
according to chronology
- Website on the Diary
of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons,
lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18th century Maine
- Lesson
Plan for K-12 on Jobs in Jamestown, Virgini from Virtual Jamestown
there are also other lesson plans on same site Lesson
Plan for K-12 on Language and Runaway Slaves
- Comparing
Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary
documents, showing comparison between northern “free labor”
textile mills and slave labor plantations
- Servitude
and Rebellion Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 3 of Voices
of a People’s History of the United States on the role and
dissent of indentured servants in American colonial history.
- Slave
Resistance Lesson plan for high school, using slave narratives and
other primary documents
- Slavery
in the United States, 1790-1865 This lesson introduces students
to primary sources -- what they are, their great variety, and how they
can be analyzed.
- White
into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America
from Picturing History website
- Talk
Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836 lesson plan
for High school, with links to primary documents
- Pretend
to be a Lowell Mill Girl
- Liberty
Rhetoric and the Lowell Mill Girls -"a website for student
discovery": documents with questions for discussion/reflection
- New
Hampshire Mill Girls struggle for 10 hour day
- Hunger
on Trial: An Activity on the Irish Potato Famine and Its Meaning for
Today
- Civil
War and Class Conflict from Rethinking schools
- "After
Slavery" site multiple classroom units, all with a labor component,
generated by the "gathering consensus among historians that this
period can best be understood as an important chapter in American
labor history" each unit has primary source documents and
teaching suggestions; limited to the Carolinas
1. Emancipation:
Giving Meaning to Freedom
2. Freed
Slaves Mobilize
3. Land
and Labor 4. Freedom,
Black Soldiers & the Union Military 5.
Conservatives
Respond to Emancipation 6. Pursuing
Citizenship: Justice and Equality 7. Gender
and the Politics of Freedom 8. Planters,
Poor Whites and White Supremacy 9. Coercion,
Paramilitary Terror & Freedpeople's Resistance10.Freedpeople
and the Republican Party
- Materials
on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents
(newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and
lesson plans
- The Corporation
film website has teaching curriculum ideas, including about corporate
personhood and its meaning for labor issues
- Teaching
With Documents: Affidavit and Flyers from the Chinese Boycott Case
from National Archives "coolie" labor boycotts
- Teaching Forum:
Chinese Exclusion resource on how to pose the fundamental question:
Is the U.S. a nation of immigrants or a gatekeeper?
- Curriculum
on Labor day origins
- John
Peter Altgeld and the Haymarket Riot
- The
Miners of the Prairie --essay and lesson plan on mining in Illinois
in the 19th century
- Strikers
and Populists from Zinn Education Project
- When
Worlds Collide: The 1894 Pullman Strike in Decatur, Illinois essay
and lesson plan
- The
Pullman Strike of 1894 Jonathan Bassett
- Strikers
and Populists in the Golden Age Questions and teaching ideas for
Chapter 11 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States
on the Gilded Age.
- Study
Guide to Out of this Furnace (steel mills Pittsburgh, 1890s-1930s)
- Back
Stairs at Brucemore: Life as Servants in early 20th-Century America
(Iowa) National Park Service curriculum on site
- Hull-House
(Chicago working class ) Neighborhood 1889-1963 teachers page
- Florence
Kelley and the Illinois Sweatshop Law 1890-1920
- Teachers
page from the Samuel Gompers papers offers some basic guidelines
on how to use the materials at the site, which include timelines, primary
sources and other materials
- Exploring
Women’s Rights: The 1908 Textile Strike in a 1st-grade Class
- Teaching
With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine from National Archives
- Using Lewis
Hine's Child Labor Photographs an open forum on how to interpret
Hine's photographs of child laborers taken between 1908 and 1912 for
the National Child Labor Committee. A great teaching resource/ background
- Using Lewis Hine
Child Labor Photographs, Part Two: Miners uses the newly available
Library of Congress originals to interrogate Hine's intentions. Great
resource for exploring the deeper meaning of iconic photography in Progressive
era.
- Meatpacking
in Illinois History essay and lesson plan
- The
Triangle Factory Fire Tragedy: An Inquiry Unit Key question: What
were the caused the Triangle fire of 1911?
- Worker
Safety: The Triangle Fire Legacy
- Upton
Sinclair's The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry
- Socialists
and Wobblies Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 13 of Voices
of a People’s History of the United States on the labor movement
at the turn of the century.
- 1912
Lawrence Textile Strike Lesson plan
- Lawrence
1912: the Singing Strike
- The
Singing Strike and the Rebel Students: Learning from the Industrial
Workers of the World
- Paterson,
New Jersey Silk Strike Lesson Plan
- Colorado Coal
Field War Project, with Photos, bibliography, links, teachers’
lesson plans corner, archaeology
- Mother
Jones website (video and curriculum)
- Bisbee
Deportation of labor activists 1917 (grades 6-12, Arizona, civil
rights and labor)
- THE
LIFE AND TIMES OF EMMA GOLDMAN A Curriculum for Middle and High
School Students (free speech fights)
- Teaching
plan on Schneiderman by Jewish Women's archive site
- Female
Office Workers in Chicago
- Boston
Police Strike of 1919 (pdf) A unit that allows you to teach public
worker unionism or WWI issues
- Like
a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World Follow the links
to teaching ideas
- 38
documents and a lesson plan on the Chicago Race Riot (this site
has middle school and high school lesson plans for a number of other
historical issues as well)
- From
the Jazz Age to the Uprisings of the 1930s Questions and teaching
ideas for Chapter 15 of Voices of a People’s History of the United
States on the economic and social realities of the 1920s and 1930s,
as well as the corresponding rise of unions and the Communist Party.
- 40
Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March of veterans to Washington
in 1932, a pivotal point in the Great Depression
- Hard
Times in Illinois 1930-1940
- Southern
Tenant Farmers’ Union: Black and White Unite? This teaching
activity examines efforts by black and white workers to overcome deep
divisions and suspicions of racial antagonism.
- How
Did Women Needleworkers Influence New Deal Labor Policies in Puerto
Rico?
- lesson plan with 16 documents and images
- 1938
San Antonio Pecan Shellers strike; Mexican American activists and
civil rights issues in the 1930s
- Walter
Reuther No Greater Calling; lesson plans on the UAW leader (1930s-1970s)
and his times
- the
Great Depression and the 1990s
- Teaching
Tools on Eleanor Roosevelt, Human Rights and Workers Rights
- Salt
of the Earth-grounds students in hope uses the classic blacklisted
labor film Salt
of the Earth (1951) about a miners strike, and how the workers won
through solidarity and women's prefigurative feminist activism
- Memphis Sanitation
Workers 1968 strike lesson plan for a different view on Dr. King's
involvement and the history of public workers
- California
Department of Education lessons on Cesar Chavez and farm labor
- The
Hard Hat Riots - 1970 When Construction workers fought war
protestors at Wall Street, the media built a perception that working
class people were pro-war. Beneath the surface were bitter feelings
of working class people against college-educated draft-dodgers, as well
as assertions of manliness in a society in which gender norms were being
challenged by the women’s movement. This site has historians accounts
of the events and lesson plans for teachers
- Lessons
in Solidarity: Grady Hospital Workers United Looks at civil rights
movement from a labor perspective
- The
Human Lives Behind the Labels The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the race
to the bottom from Rethinking Schools
- Teaching
about the WTO from Rethinking schools
- Teaching
Economics As If People Mattered: A Curriculum Guide to Today’s
Economy (2007) Economics curriculum for high school with lessons
on the human implications of economic policies.
- Chicago
Political Economy Group activities and lesson plans on the recent
economic crisis, global banking meltdown. Developed by Bill Barclay,
they are designed to convey to high school and adults how the crisis
resulted from human actors. These are very excellent tested demonstrations.
Highly recommended
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