Money, Materialism, Monopolies and Millionaires

April has been a busy month, bringing our two part workshop series on economics and industrialization. Seventy teachers joined us in Urbana Middle School on April 17th and 24th for an in-depth look at how economics could be brought into the classroom. We opened the series with a keynote from Dr. Mark Leff, who used charts and graphs to root his discussion of finance between the Gilded Ages in concrete examples.


After small group discussions with Dr. Leff, time in the computer lab and boxed lunches from Za's, everyone reconvened to discuss how they could use the fabulous books, magazines, videos and website lists that they had been given that morning.


Next Project Director Kathy Barbour and Program Coordinator Alexis Jones led us in some great economics lessons. In Kathy's room, teachers studied how the Constitution has shaped the economic system of the United States.
Everyone was working hard...even Activity Coordinator Jen Bredemeier and AHTC Bookkeeper Ambar Rizwan joined in the historical fun!

Meanwhile, Alexis used the children's book Saturday Sancocho to teach us all about bartering. We all had a wonderful time trying to gather chickens, carrots and cumin to make our own sancocho.


After a fun day of economics activities, everyone returned home, where I'm sure they were anxiously awaiting next Saturday, April 24th.

We kicked off our second day with a keynote by Lead Historian Dr. Jim Barrett. Dr. Barrett discussed the way industrialization transformed both the people who experienced it and the way we think about and perform work. As part of his keynote, Dr. Barrett led us in a document analysis exercise using An Exposition of the System of Moral and Mental Labor, established at the Glass Factory of Dyottville in the County of Philadelphia by T.W Dyott (1833) and The Factory Bell from The Factory Girls' Garland (1844).


Next, Urbana High School teacher Matt Buckles led the group in a lesson on the uses of space and land throughout the pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial periods. Everyone enjoyed the map analysis and playing with the magnifying glasses!



In the computer lab, Alexis led the group through some of the best websites on the economy and the census that we had found in our preparation for these days. As always, website lists can be found on our website under Web resources. One of the favorites was a video from 1904 of women punching in at a Westinghouse company.

To round out our day, William Maury, the Lead Historian of the U.S. Census Bureau came to discuss with us how the census became what it is today.


Thank you all for giving up two spring Saturdays to join us for these workshops, and thanks to all of our presenters for making both days so interesting and informative!

A Great Resource To Explore!

The National History Education Clearinghouse website is an amazing website to pour through if you haven't already. With lesson plan reviews, teaching guides, and examples of best practices, it is full of great ideas and resources. Make sure to check out the history in multimedia exhibit, as well as the interviews with historians and master teachers. Easily searchable by elementary, middle or high school levels, this site is worth spending some time on. Make sure, in your exploration, that you check out the page featuring AHTC teacher Christine Adrian's Lincoln lesson plan Chic, Virginia, and Mr. Lincoln: Understanding Historical Perspective.

Common Core State Standards Initiative

I'm sure all of you have heard of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (if you haven't, please read the great article here and peruse the website here.) These college-and career-readiness standards were first released for public comment in September of 2009, and a draft of the K-12 standards were released for comment in March of 2010. The newest version of these standards, including those in Social Studies, have just been released. You can find the PDF of the new Social Studies standards here. [Edit: While we are excited about this newest draft, we did not intend to imply that the work on these standards is finished. So far, these Social Studies standards deal only with literacy. Someday we hope that Social Studies specific standards will be developed, but in the meantime, please do read about these literacy standards. Thank you to our commenter for pointing out that we were not clear on this point.]
The CCSSI has the greatest general support of education reforms currently being developed, and offers one of the most promising opportunities to improve education through better standards and assessments. Ending the differing expectations between the states can only improve the quality of education throughout the nation. These Social Studies standards have been developed through cooperation by organizations in civics, economics, geography and history (You can find a list of participating organizations at the end of the first linked article.) This single set of standards will drive assessment systems, as well as curriculum and instructional practices. We have been following this initiative with interest, and we encourage you to check out the new standards.