Malcolm X

Greetings!

Please click on this link to see the work for class today.

The March on Washington

Greetings! Happy Tuesday / Wednesday. We hope you all had a good weekend and are doing well. It was wonderful to see so many of you in the zoom discussions last week! We hope you find them not only interesting and engaging for what they are but also helpful in terms of keeping your mind fresh and busy. These continue to be very challenging times for all of us. Please know we are thinking and caring about all of you and are here for you however we can be helpful.

For class, our look at the civil rights movement continues today with a landmark event - the March on Washington. This handout describes the different videos, images, and texts you'll explore today.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Also, based on suggestions from you, we will be changing up the discussion groups for Friday - they will still be at the same times but you will be with a different group on people - that will give you the chance to see more folks from class!

Birmingham

Greetings!
Here are the instructions for Thursday and Friday, April 23 and 24. 
The links to our zoom discussions for Friday are in the document.
See you then!

Protest and Intro to JFK

All of the information you need for your next class period (Period 56=4/21, Period 78=4/22) is in this document:
1960's Day 4-JFK, Sit-ins and SNCC

Education and Housing - Discussion #1

Happy Friday!

All of the information you need for today, including zoom links, is contained in this document:

• 1950s - Housing and Education + Discussion #1

Brown v. Board of Education/Emmett Till

Greetings scholars!
Here are your two tasks for today:

1) First, you'll be reading the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education opinion. Prior to this, Plessy v. Ferguson was the leading case interpreting the 14th Amendment. The questions that you'll answer as you read will allow you to identify the 1954 Court's reasoning and interpretation of that Amendment to the Constitution.
You can find the Brown Opinion on page 124 of your binder. You'll also note that the Court had to issue a second opinion in the case which is found on page 126 of your binder. Please answer the questions in the linked document and then submit your responses to Schoology. There is a link to an electronic version of the Court's opinions in the document if you need it.
Brown Decision Questions-Complete Version
*NOTE-Court opinions are underlined when writing and when referring to the Supreme Court, it is capitalized whether using the full title or just referring to it as the Court.

2) We'll begin to examine the impact of the Brown decision by looking at what happened to Emmett Till soon after the second opinion was issued. Here is the link to the video and corresponding questions that you'll answer:
Emmett Till-Amstuds 56
Emmett Till-Amstuds 78

Post WWII America

Greetings American Studies Scholars,
We hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Here is the plan for today:
1) We will start with a short Zoom meeting to introduce our new unit. Please check your emails for the link. You can find the unit calendar on the class blog and here: Unit 9: Civil Rights and the 1960's

2) Next, in order to provide context for our unit, you'll watch The Century: Best Years: 1946-1952. Please click your linked assignment below. As you watch, there will be questions to answer to check for understanding. Please work to answer them accurately. The video is about 42 minutes long. Including answering questions, this should not take you longer than 52 minutes to complete.

• Period 56 Assignment
• Period 78 Assignment

3) Next, after the broad overview provided in the video assignment above, we will begin to focus in on our major topic for this time period which is a return to the question of Civil Rights and race relations. If you recall, we finished our look at Native Son in the 1930's and 40's as the nation was still struggling with racial violence and segregation. Today, Mr. Kramer will present a lecture that begins to look at the legal fight against the system of segregation. As you watch, you may use this document to take notes either electronically or by hand: NAACP Legal Strategy Notes. You may also take notes in your notebooks if that is easier. If you have questions along the way, please write them down to ask during our next Zoom meeting.  Click the link below to begin the lecture:

• Mr. Kramer Lectures on the NAACP Legal Strategy 
• NOTE-If you want to watch a short depiction of Kenneth Clark's "Dolls Test" that Mr. Kramer described in the lecture, click on this video: Separate But Equal or see below.

Short Talk Project - Day 2

Greetings! It was great to see so many of you in our zoom call this morning!

We hope your look through your short talks has been both interesting and enlightening. We also hope you were able to find a theme linking several of them together.

Your work for today is all described in this handout.

We will be hosting an optional zoom call for the first 15 minutes of class on Thursday (from 10:30-10:45 for 5/6 and from 1:15-1:30 for 7/8). You will receive an email with the invitation. Please join us if you have any questions about the project. Also, if there are parts of the play or any other topics from the unit you want to talk about, we'd be happy to do that too!

Short Talk Project - Day 1

Happy Wednesday!
We'll start today with a short zoom call. On it, we'll discuss the play and spend some time previewing the assignment you'll be working on today and tomorrow.
Be sure to check your email for the link and password!

Your work for today is all contained in this document. Please take the time to read through all of the instructions. You should have plenty of time to complete this portion during today's class time.

Please email us if you have any questions!

All My Sons

Greetings! Happy Monday! We hope you are doing well.
These are not easy times with so many parts of our lives turned upside down.
We hope you were able to do something that brought you happiness this weekend!

For today you will be finishing All My Sons. You can read it, watch the play here (Act II starts at 52:45), or watch the play while following along in the book.

When you are finished, here are some questions to consider in your notes or a journal response:

Consider Chris Keller’s world view versus his father’s: One is guided by a sense of responsibility to the greater community, the other by a sense of responsibility to family. Is one of these moral compasses inherently right or wrong?

1. Is Joe Keller basically a decent member of society? Do you accept Chris’s idea that his father is “no worse than most men”? Or is what Joe did actually evil?
2. What do you think about the revelation of Larry’s suicide at the end of the play? What does it mean to the different characters? How does it impact the overall story?
3. In what ways does the experience of war impact this play? Knowing what you about the war and the homefront, were you expecting Joe to explain his actions in other ways?

Next, you'll write three short talks to wrap up your look at the play. Here are the topics:

1. Keller's moral choices
2. Larry's letter
3. One character's perspective of the whole story: Chris, Annie, or Kate

Lastly, on Wednesday we will start with a short zoom call to talk about the end of the play and the short talks project you'll do that day. Be sure to watch your email on Tuesday for the link and the password (we have to send a password now for zoom calls)

We miss you! Stay safe!

The Atomic Bomb / All My Sons

Greetings! Happy Friday! It was great to see so many of you on the zoom calls yesterday. We for sure need to have either a bake-off or at least an American Studies cookbook! Here is the plan for today - feel free to work with a partner for any of it.

1. Make a copy of this document: Values in a Time of War. It takes you through a series of short writing prompts and videos, leading to some short talks about the dropping of the Atom Bomb. When you are finished, submit your work to Schoology.
2. Review Act I of All My Sons. You can do this in a number of different ways.
1. You can review your work from this study guide we did in class. Some of you turned this in and some of you took it home to complete it. You do not need to submit a completed version of it. However, if you do want to see yours, please email Mr. Rigler and he will send you pictures/scans of it.
2. You can re-read the text itself.
3. You can watch Act I of the play from this video. It is a great production and the play directly follows the book. The one exception is a short opening scene that actually gets referred to in the play but does not appear as its own scene. You may even want to follow along in the book as you watch. Act I takes about 52 minutes to watch. (You will be watching the rest on Monday, so if you just want to watch the whole thing, you certainly can.)
4. There is nothing to turn in from this review work.

That's it for today! 

The weather looks like it will be nice - hopefully, you can get outside for a little bit! 

See you next week!

World War II and Covid-19

Greetings American Studies Scholars!
We'll start today by getting together via Zoom! Please check your email for the link, meeting id and PASSWORD in order to get into the meeting. Period 56 will meet at 10:30. Period 78 will meet at 1:15.
The instructions for the rest of your class period are here:
World War II and Covid-19