My unit will be taught in “Modern World History” at Wilbur Cross High School. It is a history elective for tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students who have a desire to go beyond the minimal history requirements for the school. The students in this class tend to be curious, motivated, and eager to explore the modern world. The class covers the “Short Twentieth Century” 1914-1991, but begins with a look at the four ideas that shaped our modern world: The Enlightenment, Industrialization, Nationalism, and Imperialism. This unit can be used first in the period of Nationalism or Empire.
The nature of our “Representations of American Culture through Art and Literature” seminar fit the needs of a block-scheduled teacher. The seminar has improved my teaching by increasing my knowledge of the use of art as a learning tool. Also, and most importantly, it will empower my students with the skill of being able to analyze art from the point of view of history and geography.
The format of this unit can really be used in any social studies class at any grade level. I will use it in my Early World History class also, for example. Although the course “Early World History” is taught as a thematic survey of the past three thousand years, I often try to teach the material through a geographic perspective. The artwork of past eras is often all we have for a visual representation of the landscape. The skills taught in this unit could easily be applied to studying regional geography and history. The analysis of a specific time and place on earth or the human condition, using riveting pieces of art as a prompt, could produce great writing from students in an English or creative writing class. This is another example of where this unit could be used.
The unit is designed to match our current class schedule. Classes run forty-five minutes on Monday, Thursday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Wednesday we teach a block period of ninety minutes. The course is designed for students who are advanced or on-level readers and on their way to college. The class does not rely heavily on a textbook, but focuses more on primary and secondary sources. This unit will utilize the arts to teach the human experience, specifically art, literature, and some film. An entrancing painting, the powerful language of an author, or a masterful scene from a film can stick with a student for a lifetime, unlike anything in a textbook. Multiple sources and diversification help the teacher in a block schedule maintain effectiveness. As a school that uses block scheduling, Cross encourages its teachers to diversify their approaches.
As more and more special education and learning-disabled students become mainstreamed into our classrooms, New Haven teachers are having to modify their lessons to the new range of skills in their classrooms. One modification I suggest when viewing a work of art is to try to segregate the content you want the student to focus on. Sometimes a painting can be very busy and full of detail. This can be distracting for some students. Folding the painting in half or isolating portions on the overhead are two good ways to help students focus.
Some students cannot read as well as others, and some are visual learners. This modified approach allows all students in the class to appreciate the material. A diversified approach also provides the on-level reader or non-disabled student a new, different, and enriched perspective on the subject. Images can be, and often are, more powerful than the pen.
This unit meets many of the standards established by the New Haven Public School System. Common Performance Standards such as gathering historical data from secondary sources, identifying the main idea in a source of historical information, and writing short statements presenting historical ideas are met. The unit also meets content standards in the high school subjects of history, geography, and diversity. Further below is a specific and detailed list of those standards.