Curriculum Resources: Presidents Day and Black History Month

Looking for a fun and educational way to celebrate Presidents Day this weekend?  Check out some new interactive educational video games on American history produced by WNET, the public broadcasting channel for New York City, geared specifically for middle school students.

Entitled Mission US, these FREE games allow students to see pivotal periods in American history through the eyes of a young person at the time.   In each chapter, the character has some tasks to perform, which cause him or her to interact with a number of other characters that provide contrasting viewpoints.  However, there are multiple pathways through the game.  What the character will experience will vary from game to game, based on the decisions made by the students directing the action.

The first game is entitled "For Crown or Colony?"  In this game, students play the role of a young printer's apprentice in Boston during the rising conflicts between British authorities and American revolutionaries.  The game provides the perspectives of people both for and against Independence, until the students are required to choose one side or the other.

The second mission is "Flight to Freedom."  This time, students play as Lucy, a 14-year-old slave in Kentucky, as she attempts to escape to Ohio.  Even if she makes it, there are plenty of challenges even in the supposedly "free" colonies.  This game presents the ethical dilemnas and viewpoints from all around (such as, is it OK to steal from struggling farmers as you travel along the Underground Railroad?)


While these two missions are the only ones completed right now, there are two more that will be released in 20123 and 2014.  Mission 3 covers the time of the transcontinental railroad and is entitled "The Race for the Golden Spike, while Mission 4, "The Sidewalks of New York," allows students to become muckraking journalists in early 20th Century New York.

While the first two games don't feature George Washington or Abraham Lincoln per se, they are great vehicles for a more nuanced exploration of their times than many curricular materials.  Mission 2 is also a great tie in with Black History month.  And there are some related games you can play, such as "Think Fast! About the Past," a timed historical knowledge game, and a music game.

Here are trailers for the first two missions:







The bottom line is, if your children enjoyed the "Liberty's Kids" PBS cartoon series on the American Revolution as much as my son did during his elementary school years, then you'll definitely want to check out Mission US.  And if they didn't, maybe this will do the trick of turning them on to US history.

A New Independence Day Tradition?

As I explained in yesterday's post, our 4th of July traditions center around the actual history behind the 4th of July.  However, we're not such history nerds that we don't add in some food and some fireworks.  But yesterday's food contained something new.

A few days ago, my son announced that he had decided that he was no longer allergic to dairy and eggs.  Now, he has been testing allergic to those things, along with many others, since he was a baby.  (It was really bad when he was young;  as I told someone recently, I made the frosting for his first birthday cake out of mashed sweet potato because he was allergic to dairy, corn, and soy--basically all the butter and butter alternatives available at the time.)   And ever since he was really young, he has been very good about not eating the things to which he is allergic, or complaining that he couldn't have ice cream or pizza or other things that his friends could eat.

However, in many cases, allergies change as part of all those physical developments in adolescent.  Sometimes, allergies get better or disappear altogether, although the opposite can also happen; in my case, my allergies got worse when I was about 12....come to think of it, when I was about my son's age.

We had noticed that my son's skin problems, which is where his food allergies seemed to have manifested themselves, had been doing much better recently, and discussed whether maybe he had outgrown his allergies.  But, unknown to me or my husband, my son had been doing some experimentation by eating some of the cheese we had for other family members, and sometime or other, cooking and eating an egg, which we keep for his father to fix omelettes for himself when we aren't around for a meal.  And he seemed to be doing OK after eating those foods.

So as part of our Independence Day celebration, we made something that there is not really a good dairy-free substitute for--a Red, White, and Blue Cheesecake.  We used the ingredients that he had traditionally been allergic to--real cream cheese and eggs, as opposed to soy cream cheese or tofu and Egg Replacer.

However, not throwing caution (or health) to the wind, we made ours with coconut milk and minimal sugar, and decorated the top with red and blue fruit in its natural state:

So we are waiting to see if any health problems occur after eating such formerly forbidden foods.  But I hope not, for my son's sake.  It would be wonderful if we can celebrate this holiday as a day where he declared his freedom from his dietary restrictions.  If so, we may make this dessert a new addition to our Independence Day observances.

Sometimes these physical changes that our middle schoolers are going through can bring about some positive changes.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that will be the case for our son.

Curriculum Resource: Independence Day

Happy Independence Day!

For our family, this holiday is not about picnic or barbecues (although I usually fix a special "Americana" meal) or even fireworks (although we usually shoot some off).  We have two traditions that related to remembering and appreciating the history of this day.

The first is a more recent tradition.  My son and I read from the fabulous book, Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the the Men who Signed the Declaration of Independence by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese.   I think every family with middle schoolers should have a copy of this book, because it tells the story behind each of the 56 men who risked being hung for treason by England for signing the revolutionary document that founded our nation.  We read some of our favorites, plus it has a copy of the Declaration of Independence.  We read that aloud today, as we are working on my son both memorizing, and really understanding the significance of each word in that document.  It is a great 4th of July resource, and I recommend it highly.

Our second tradition is a more long-standing one (the book was only published in 2009).  It reaches back to my own childhood, when my entire family LOVED the musical by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, "1776."  The musical tells the story of the Continental Congress and a version of the historical events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  My family watched it numerous times on stage and screen, played the record until it was almost worn out, and even acted out all the songs using some little animal erasers called "Itty Bitties."

So once I had a family of my own, I incorporated 1776 into our Independence Day celebrations.  As soon as my son was old about--I think when he was six years old--we started watching it each 4th of July.  I don't think he is quite as enamored of it as I am, but I think he looks forward to re-watching it each year as our July 4th tradition.

I love the show, first of all because it shows what a dramatic thing the passage of this life-altering declaration was.  It has a lot of great true historical content, so it is a wonderful way to learn about and remember American history.   And I'm a great fan of musicals in general.

But one of my favorite things about this show is that it demonstrates the different personalities between the famous people who were behind this monumental event (as does the Signing Their Lives Away book).  One of the "meta" lessons I try to teach not only my son, but all the young people I teach, is that a "leader" or a "hero" isn't just one kind of person--the kind of superhero or Hercules, etc. personality style that we most commonly associate with a leader.  As 1776 depicts, the Declaration of Independence would never have been passed if there weren't leaders with very different personalities and skill sets--the bombastic and never-relenting John Adams, the charming and clever diplomatic manipulator Benjamin Franklin, and the quiet, thoughtful, and eloquent wordsmith, Thomas Jefferson (among others).

To my mind, this makes 1776 a wonderful educational resource about our country's past, but also about our students' potential future.

Why Does the US Flag have Stars with Five Points?

Here is a good Independence Day research question to give your middle schooler:  Why does the flag of the United States have five-pointed stars?  If s/he figures it out, please ask her/him to put it into the comments, because I couldn't find a definite answer.

The most prominent idea you will find is that Betsy Ross talked George Washington, who sketched six-pointed stars in his preliminary sketch that has been preserved, into using five-pointed stars because they were easier to cut and sew.  Which is a great story, except that many more respectable sources say that it isn't true--or, at least, we have no physical evidence to suggest that it is true, let alone to prove that it is true.    So, for example, see the interesting article in the Washington Post on "Five Myths About the American Flag," which talks about this matter and other things that people generally believe about the US flag, which turn out, inconveniently, to be false or at least not to be supported by evidence.

However, most sources that I've read seem to agree that it was the six-pointed star that was commonly used at that time.  So at least some suggest that the Americans used a five-pointed star simply to distinguish themselves from the European history of six-point stars for flags and crests and such.  But, again, as far as I can tell, that is merely conjecture that is not based on any evidence.  And according to "Five Myths About the American Flag," the prevailing theory about the fact that our flag is red, white, and blue is that it was based on Continental Army flags, which were based on the English flag--which kind of argues against the "five points to be different"argument.  But maybe they wanted some symbols taken from our history and some marks of differentiation?

Isn't it interesting that we don't really know the derivation of one of the most important symbols of our country?

Next 4th of July, Drink a Toast to Our Friends, the Mosquitoes

I know that I'm a history buff, so what excites me may not excite everyone else.  But I found another article in the Washington Post this week--and not even in the education section--that I just have to recommend to everyone.

As I wrote in one of my "The Social Network" blogs recently, I think US history, particularly about American History, is too focused on the "Great Man and Woman" approach to history.  In this article, Georgetown University History Professor J.R. McNeill suggests that we didn't win our independence at the Battle of Yorktown due to the brilliance of US General George Washington, or even from the failures of British General Charles Cornwallis, but from the assistance of our allies.  Oh, of course, the French troops, you might be thinking....but that is not what McNeill is referring to.  The Spanish? you might ask.  But no.  Our allies, that invincible force that tipped the scales to the side of the US forces for the victory were, in fact.......mosquitoes.

Of course, it was not mosquitoes, per se, that made the difference.  Rather, it was the malaria infection that the mosquitoes transmitted.  Malaria is one of the most deadly diseases in the world, injecting a parasite into the liver and blood cells that can lead to fever, headaches, hallucinations, coma, and death.  Back then, they had no idea that it was transmitted by mosquitoes, and so took no preventative measures against their attackers (other than for comfort reasons).  They also had no treatment for the disease--or, at least, no treatment that wasn't ineffective at best (eating cobwebs or spiders to tearing out one's hair) and counter-productive at worse (such as draining up to 10% of the blood supply or drinking heavy metals such as mercury).

Of course, it was not as though the mosquitoes that thrived in tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas were partial to the US side and attacked only the British.  Actually, they were pretty equinimical in terms of biting both sides.  The thing is, for most of the American troops, they had been bitten before.  Malaria was a terrible force in the American population, having killed many thousands of people, particularly  children.  But those who had been exposed to the disease and survived (usually multiple times) carried a resistance with them for life.  So while malaria took a toll on the American troops, most American soldiers had already developed some natural protection against the disease.

However, the British and German (or Hessian) troops had not been exposed to this infection.  Therefore, it ran rampant through its ranks, particularly because Cornwallis came to Yorktown after over a year in malaria-ridden South Carolina.  Actually, Cornwallis was headed towards higher, less mosquito-ridden ground when he was ordered to return to tidewater Virginia by his superior officer in New York.  By the time of the Yorktown battle, Cornwallis stated that over half of his men were too sick to serve any effective purpose in fighting the US and French troops (who had arrived only about a month earlier--not long enough for the effects of malaria to have such a dramatic effect on their numbers).

And so it was that a force that was considered to be militarily superior had to surrender to the Americans--all due to those pesky little mosquitoes.

I just love this story.  But I think it illustrates a larger issue about teaching history.  Although I didn't learn history with any environmental factors considered, I think it is critical to include environmental education in our instruction for our children.  This is only one example of the fact that we ignore the environment at our own peril.