I’m an opinionated educator so I beg your pardon for saying this lesson has all the secret sauces of effective history education.
The ingredients include
- Launch – It’s launched with a provocative stimulus that sparks student curiosity all by itself.
- Stories – It’s scripted with three short stories, thematically connected to specific and general historical understandings while compelling enough to drive momentum of student interest.
- Quality Media – A half-dozen short videos including personal reflections of the individuals featured in the stories, primary source video, and a college professor explaining practical implications of complex laws in thoroughly accessible language.
- Valuable Exercises – Threaded through these are questioning, whole-class discussion and primary document analysis. And to top it all off, it ends with an issue directly related to your students, participation in high school and college sports.
This lesson isn’t formatted like C3 Framework or AERO Standards, it’s a homebrewed recipe that just works. Simple, straightforward, and as reliable as your granddad’s tools.
Here’s the summary:
This lesson highlights the actions of three women to show how brave individuals can confront exclusion and injustice in society and make change. The script includes basic information to tell the stories of Kathrine Switzer, Maria Pepe, and Billie Jean King. The presentation includes brief videos of Kathrine and Maria as well as two video clips connected with Billie Jean King’s tennis match against Bobby Riggs in 1974. Each of these stories raise questions for brief whole-class discussions. The 37 words of Title IX are the first considered by students without context so they can see how the law was designed for education first, not sports. This is followed by a four minute explanation of Title IX’s application to sports by a college professor helps students understand how the law ultimately led to roughly equal budgets for men’s and women’s collegiate and high school sports.
Two different options are offered to end the lesson. One of which looks into the current reconsideration of Title IX and its adaptation for transgender athletes, and the other looks into Billie Jean King’s involuntary outing in 1981.
The lesson plan document itself includes scripting and background information, as well as question prompts and sourcing.
It’s be great to hear what other teachers think of this – go ahead, give it a shot.