In the early 1900s, Mexican Americans, or Chicanos, in California and the Southwest were excluded from "Whites Only" theaters, parks, swimming pools, restaurants, and even schools. Immigrants from Mexico waged many battles against such discriminatory treatment, often risking their jobs in fields and factories and enduring threats of deportation. In 1945, one couple in California won a significant victory in their struggle to secure the best education for thousands of Chicano children.

What are we teaching and learning when we analyze films? Who's missing from the story? This resource is offered for teachers across the humanities who use film and incorporate opportunities for students to develop media analysis skills.

Through close readings of Zora Neale Hurston'sTheir Eyes Were Watching God, students will analyzehow Hurston creates a unique literary voice by combining folklore, folk language, and traditional literary techniques. Students will examine the role that folk groups play in both their own lives and in the novel.

Using archival materials, re-creations, and classroom activities, help your students think about which aspects of everyday life have changed and which have stayed the same.

This activity helps students understand the injustice and dangers of scapegoating an entire group of people during a national crisis.

This lesson plan introduces students to Thomas Edison's life and inventions. It asks students to compare and contrast life around 1900 with their own lives and helps students understand the connections between the technological advancements of the early twentieth century and contemporary society and culture.

In this lesson, students study issues related to independence and notions of manliness in Ernest Hemingway’s “Three Shots” as they conduct in-depth literary character analysis, consider the significance of environment to growing up and investigate Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning, unique prose style. In addition, they will have the opportunity to write and revise a short story based on their own childhood experiences and together create a short story collection.

In this lesson, students will study Morgan’s speech to better understand the civil rights movement and the value of speaking out against injustice.

Students study select court transcripts and other primary source materials from the second Scottsboro Boys Trial of 1933, a continuation of the first trial in which two young white women wrongfully accused nine African American teenagers of rape.

One of the most compelling novels of the twentieth century, Beloved by Toni Morrison has been read in classrooms across the country since its publication in 1987. The novel follows Sethe's escape to freedom, the murder of her child, and her difficult psychological journey as she copes with her past as a slave.  As both an historical account of the experiences of slavery and an insightful novel about a supernatural ghost, this text is ideal for upper level high school students and students in AP programs.

Investigate how torque causes an object to rotate. Discover the relationships between angular acceleration, moment of inertia, angular momentum and torque.

Investigate how torque causes an object to rotate. Discover the relationships between angular acceleration, moment of inertia, angular momentum and torque.

The classic American drama Twelve Angry Men can be used to frame discussion of the constitutional right and civic function of the trial by jury. The lesson explores the specific provisions associated with this right as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

The corrupting influence of slavery on marriage and the family is a predominant theme in Solomon Northup's narrative Twelve Years a Slave. In this lesson, students are asked to identify and analyze narrative passages that provide evidence for how slavery undermined and perverted these social institutions. Northup collaborated with a white ghostwriter, David Wilson. Students will read the preface and identify and analyze statements Wilson makes to prove the narrative is true.

This lesson focuses on the slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black living in the North, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Slave narratives are autobiographies of former slaves that describe their experiences during enslavement, how they became free, and their lives in freedom. Because slave narratives treat the experience of one person, they raise questions about whether that individual's experiences exceptional.

Explore pressure under and above water. See how pressure changes as you change fluids, gravity, container shapes, and volume.

In this lesson, students will learn about other religions as a starting point to promote religious tolerance.

In 1691, a group of girls from Salem, Massachusetts accused an Indian slave named Tituba of witchcraft, igniting a hunt for witches that left 19 men and women hanged, one man pressed to death, and over 150 more people in prison awaiting a trial. In this lesson, students will explore the characteristics of the Puritan community in Salem, learn about the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and try to understand how and why this event occurred.

In this lesson, students will examine the growth of unemployment from 2007 through the second quarter of 2009. Using basic and/or advanced math, students will compare and contrast unemployment rates across different states and across three racial and ethnic groups. An extension activity looks at unemployment among Asian Americans and can be adapted for other populations.