This year’s theme focuses on issues surrounding “Justice and Dissent.” Some of our guiding questions are:

• How does a society create rules / laws to protect the majority while also ensuring individual rights?
• What is justice?
• When there is injustice, how have people fought for change and how can we act now to promote “justice for all”?

In order to tackle these questions, we will examine many case studies in order for students to begin answering the above questions. These include:

• Making our own rules: How do we create our own Unit guidelines? The Constitution Convention: How did our founding fathers decide how to design the US government? This will begin with a mock Constitutional Convention, but in addition to re-enacting the founding fathers, students will also portray those who were not included at Constitution Hall, including women, Native Americans, African Americans, indentured servants, landless workers, and more. Students will read sections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional Amendments. The finale will be a visit to the State House on Beacon Hill.
• The Holocaust: Facing History and Ourselves. Students will learn how WWI and WWII began, examine the atrocities the Nazis carried out, will discover the courage of those who resisted and fought back, and finally will be challenged to find ways to not be bystanders in their everyday lives.
• The Civil Rights Movement: Closer to home, students will examine the racism of the US and see how African Americans fought for their civil rights. Students will learn about peaceful dissent and how civil disobedience led to the social changes of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. This will include examining modern day racism and exploring how we can all continue to strive for a more just society.

Reading
Students will be expected to read daily, both in and out of class. In addition to books assigned by the teachers, students are expected to read a minimum of one free-reading book per month. These will be tracked in a reading log in their classroom portfolios. Students will regularly share with one another about their books and give each other recommendations.

September – October – Introduction – Society, Government, and Governance

• “Harrison Bergeron,” a short story by Kurt Vonnegut about a futuristic and “equal” society.
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell. A novel about how animals revolt and take over their farm. This is a parody of the Russian Revolution, but even without explaining anything about Stalin, the students learn how rulers can become corrupt and that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
• Newspaper articles and television ads/debates about election issues.
• The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Amendments.
• Variety of textbook and primary source readings.

November – March – Facing History and Ourselves

• “The Boy of Old Prague” is a short story that introduces the concept of discrimination, prejudice, and the history of European antisemitism.
• Friedrich, by Hans Richter. This novel is about two boys growing up in Germany in the late 1920’s through the end of WWII. It is not a complicated novel, but does a good job of showing Hitler’s rise to power, the economic difficulties the Germans faced following WWI, and the human side of the war.
• A choice between Night, by Elie Wiesel or The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen.
• Selected readings from the Facing History and Ourselves textbook and other textbooks; primary source materials; biographies of resisters and rescuers; and newspaper articles.

March – May – Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement

• Warriors Don’t Cry, by Melba Patillo Beals, a moving autobiography one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School in 1957.
• Primary source documents about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, letters from Jackie Robinson, and more.
• Newspaper articles that relate modern events to the civil rights curriculum.

Writing
Writing assignments vary in order to give students a chance to practice many styles, voices, and techniques, and include the following:

• Response Journal Responses (RJ’s). The response journal, or RJ for short, is a journal in which the students write reflections about what they are reading and studying in class. There is usually a minimum of two assignments for the RJ notebook each week. These are responses to the class reading as well as responses to field trips, movies, and class activities. The RJ is a place where the students express their opinions about what they are learning. The goal is to get the words out and to demonstrate critical thinking and analysis.
  At the beginning of the year, students are given assignments in which they are asked questions that they should answer in their responses. As the year goes on, the students are asked to begin to develop their own questions as a way to develop active reading skills.
• Research reports. We will conduct research projects during the Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO) and the Civil Rights units. The culmination of the year will be when students turn one of their research projects into a monologue that will be presented to the community at an evening event.
• Media Watch! This is an ongoing assignment in which the students must find newspaper and magazine articles, write responses to them, and then present their findings to the class. The first round of articles will be about election issues. During Facing History and Ourselves we will examine the media for propaganda. During the Civil Rights unit we will use Media Watch! as a way to see how civil rights struggles continue in the world today. The structure is in four parts:

1. Identify the article, where did it come from and date.
2. Succinct summary.
3. Connection to our curriculum and our lives in general.
4. Opinion – what does the student think about the article?

Other sample writing assignments:

• Read the letter that Abigail Adams wrote to her husband. Now pretend that you are the wife of one of the delegates who is participating in the Constitution Convention. Write your husband a letter explaining what you think he should include in the Constitution from a woman’s point of view. Try to be as historically accurate as possible.
• Examine the art created by survivors or children of survivors of the Holocaust. Make a list of emotions the art brings to mind. Turn the list of words into a poem.
• Research a Holocaust resister or rescuer. Write a monologue as if you were that person. You can choose any time in that person’s life or even write posthumously. You will then memorize and act out the monologue for the class using props.
• It is 1954. The Supreme Court has just handed down the verdict in the Brown v. Board of Education case. The Browns have won. You are a white reporter who works for a southern newspaper. You personally are against desegregation. You must write an article that will appear in tomorrow’s paper.
• In addition to historic writing, there will be numerous in-class free-writes and creative writing and storytelling assignments.

Speech, Drama, and Art
In addition to reading and writing, the students will use speech and drama exercises to learn to communicate orally, to gain self-confidence in front of their peers, and to help teach one another. A few examples of how this will fit into the curriculum include:

• Freeze Frames. Small groups of students are given or select a scene from a novel, story, or piece of history that we are studying. They then must turn themselves into a frozen scene that depicts the action of the moment they are describing. It is acting without movement. The goal is to create a living museum piece. The Freeze Frames help students conceptualize pivotal scenes and the emotional aspects of history. It also helps students understand that each one visualizes the material we are learning in their own manner.
• Drawing. Students will create posters, book covers, icons to illustrate time lines, etc. Students will discover the power of propaganda, learn illustration techniques, and learn to think about the subject matter artistically as well as academically.
• Monologues. Described in the Writing section, research projects on resisters or rescuers will be acted out by each student for the class.
• Monuments. As a final product of the Facing History unit, students will create a monument out of clay or mixed media. This helps students think abstractly and to find ways of expressing something as emotionally charged as the Holocaust.

Field Trips
We will take a variety of field trips this year for Humanities. Our goal is to help students learn how to engage and appreciate museums and history trails, but also to learn from visiting working institutions. In addition to academics, field trips help the students learn appropriate behavior in the world beyond school. On the spring trip in particular, they are challenged by being away from home, spending days and nights with teachers and peers, and learn to be more independent.

• Project Adventure is an all-day course at an outdoor school in Western Massachusetts. The first full week of school students and teachers face cooperative and physical challenges designed to take people beyond their comfort zones and learn to work together to solve problems. (http://pa.org/)
• State House to see the Congress and meet with a State Representative
• City Hall to meet with a councilman and see how Cambridge is run
• Suffolk County Jail
• Black History Trail
• New York City and Philadelphia to visit the Jewish Heritage Museum (http://www.mjnyc.org), the UN (http://www.un.org/tours/pages/atg.htm), Constitution Hall and the National Constitution Center (http://www.constitutioncenter.org/), National Liberty Museum (http://www.libertymuseum.org/introduction/index.html), see a show on Broadway, play in Central Park, and more.

Potential Movie List
We have acquired a considerable film library over the years. While we watch segments of movies and some movies in their entirety, we also encourage students to check out films to watch at home, often with their parents, in order to get more depth on a topic or to explore topics not covered in class. Following is a sample of movies we own. In addition to this list, there is a variety of documentaries. Note that films such as Schindler’s List are only checked out to students with parental permission.

• Harrison Bergeron, 1995 film based loosely on Kurt Vonnegut’s story of the same name.
• Philadelphia. Tom Hanks’ Oscar-winning performance of an aids-stricken lawyer who fights against discrimination.
• The Longest Hatred. A documentary about the history of antisemitism.
• The Eye of the Storm. A documentary about the effects of discrimination on young children.
• The Wave. A story about a high school teacher’s plan to show students how being a bystander can lead to the rise of fascism.
• Schindler’s List. Steven Spielberg’s classic film about Oskar Schindler and his efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.
• Swing Kids. A film about German youth during the rise of the Nazi Party and the realization that complicity can lead to disaster.
• Devil’s Arithmetic. The movie based on Jane Yolen’s novel.
• The Long Walk Home. Woopie Goldberg and Sissy Spacek in this Civil Rights drama.
• Glory. Denzel Washington in a film about the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, an all-African American unit during the Civil War.
• Freedom Song. Danny Glover stars in this amazing story about how students stood up and marched and fought for African Americans’ freedom during the Civil Rights movement.
• Remember the Titans. Another Denzel Washington film depicting the desegregation of football in the South.
• Ghosts of Mississippi or Four Little Black Girls. Films that show or ask for justice for crimes committed against African Americans during the Civil Rights era.
• Eyes on the Prize. A series of documentaries that include primary source footage of the struggle for Civil Rights.
• Ghandi. Ben Kingsley’s Oscar-winning performance as the Indian leader who used non-violent protest to win Indian independence from England.
• Freedom Writers. A film about how teaching students to believe in themselves has made a difference to many Los Angeles high school students. It also examines themes of inequalities of the American society, racism, and gangs.