Follow the Yellow Brick Road

In U.S. history classes we are examining the late 19th century and looking at what happened to farming and what life in the cities was like. In an effort to understand the rise of the Populist movement, we looked at Henry Littlefield's theory that the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was meant to be a parable of the Populist movement. Since most students know the film The Wizard of Oz, this makes for a fun way to learn about the movement. Littlefield believed that Baum wrote his book as a subliminal message to America that the reforms the Farmers were seeking were right! Students are asked to create a presentation based on one of the nine Multiple Intelligences developed by Howard Gardner to show their understanding of how The Wizard of Oz portrays the Populist Movement. One of the keys to this is that Dorothy's slippers were silver in the book (not ruby red), and the Farmers supported the Silver Standard.The Parable theory is quite popular, and the students get a kick out of it!

As Farms failed and many moved to cities to live and work, some became concerned with what the quality of life was like in the cities. These so called "Muckrakers" wrote about the problems in society in the hopes they could be fixed. One of these Muckrakers was a man named Upton Sinclair. He wrote the book The Jungle which had a major impact on the whole country. He meant the book as a call to help immigrants. Instead, people focused on the fact that the canned meat they were eaten was probably contaminated with all sorts of nastiness from disease to human body parts. The popularity of the book led to the passage of the Pure food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. As well as paving the way for the rise of the Progressive Movement. In class, we read a 4 page excerpted version of the book with the best parts! Students are usually quite grossed out by the description of the working conditions, lost body parts, pungent odors, and permanent deformities suffered by people working in the Stockyards in Chicago in the late 1890's. We also examine some of the photos taken by Jacob Riis depicting life in the slums for many people living in cities during this time period.

(One of Riis' photos of life in a slum)

In Ethics class we continued our work learning some of the basic philosophical arguments and classic  dilemmas in Ethics. To help us with this we view some of the online lecture series called "Justice" by Michael Sandel. Sandel is a professor at Harvard University. He has written many books about Ethics and has put his entire course on line. I use parts of his course to hare in class and then we discuss the same issues he is raising with his students. I like that its Harvard and helps to demystify Harvard a bit for my students. I have to thank my good friend and mentor Gib Brown for introducing this to me a few years ago! The students seem to enjoy Sandel's style and I think they even feel a bit empowered watching a lecture at Harvard.

In Psychology we have started by looking at the basic work of a Psychologist and some of the research associated with the Brain. To help with this I have started showing students a series of videos from TED talks. There is a playlist on the TED website called "How Does My Brain Work?"We started watching the videos in this playlist as a way to understand some things about the Brain. We also practiced looking at data and talked about experimentation.

Our Model United Nations club is up and running! We have begun our work preparing for the annual conference at Northeastern University in Boston, MA in May. We currently have 20 students participating. We had a parent meeting this week where we collected money and put out basic information. In March we will find out what countries we will represent and which topics will be debated. Its always a lot of fun and I'm sure this year will be no different.


Next week we will be dealing with the Spanish American War and starting the Teddy Roosevelt Murder Mystery Simulation!!