Modern World History is a required course in New Haven Public Schools, designated for ninth graders. The second unit after introducing learners to historical thinking skills is revolutions. The required revolutions that teachers must include in their lesson plans are the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. Teachers have the freedom to teach any other revolution, such as the Haitian, Russian, and various Latin American Revolutions. Given the particularly diverse nature of New Haven classrooms, it is essential to include revolutions led by people of color, often the most oppressed in their societies. Designing a unit based on this principle will ensure that the content is diverse, and that students are able to learn about strong, inspiring examples of people of color in the past.
In addition to striving for diversity in the content material, teachers should also design lessons that engage all types of learners: auditory, tactile or hands-on, verbal, visual, etc. The traditional type of history lesson is a teacher-centered lecture with passive students who write notes from the board and memorize dates, key events, and leaders. Although understanding the key information of a time period or event is important, this type of activity is not engaging or accessible to many of our learners. For that reason, this unit will incorporate the study of objects in history, in order to learn the impacts of historical creations on our world today. The study of historical artifacts may engage more “hands-on” learners, and even move our historical focus past the powerful male, and often white, leaders. Students will first be trained on the methods of studying artifacts according to art historian Jules Prown during the first lessons of the curriculum, and demonstrate their understanding of the significance of the objects of revolutions in their final project.1 This curriculum unit seeks to provide guidance for Modern World History teachers who wish to have their students practice the study of historical artifacts for the second unit of the NHPS curriculum.
