Alexandria Nutaitis

Unit Plan Critique

12/11/15
The unit plan that I am critiquing in this assignment is from my U.S.
History class and is based primarily on the Roaring Twenties. We dove into
the 1920s after learning about WWI to show the transition towards post-war
life in America. WWI was a very difficult time for many American families. But
entertainment, fashion, sports, cars, and other ideas became widely popular
as soldiers returned home. Mass consumption and the access to credit
systems made the 1920s appear to be a time when the standard of living
was considered to be attainable by a wide range of Americans even with the
sheer inequality that exists still today. Immigration also became an issue in
the 1920s especially for those of Asian descent as America took a turn
towards isolationism. African-Americans fled to the North in search for better
opportunities and jobs, in turn leading to the Harlem Renaissance. Leading
into the Great Depression, the 1920s was a time to celebrate the access to
new wealth and enjoy life for many Americans. This was
Using relevancy in my lesson plans made my lesson on the Red Scare
very popular and was engaging for my students. I wanted to help students
understand the illegitimate ways that the Red Scare labelled and affected
law-abiding American citizens by giving them a similar example today. I
chose to include an NPR audio clip on Tennessee Republicans push to prevent
Muslim Americans from obtaining a government position based on their
choice of religion. The clip further covers the proposal to remove Islam from
1

the teaching standards in Tennessee so that it would no longer be considered

in teaching about World Religions. In a strongly conservative area that has a
strong Chaldean population I knew that this would relate to students as their
own religious beliefs are quite visible to me and dominate the schools. I
asked students if they thought that learning about Islam in middle school
severely affected their beliefs towards their own religion and how they might
perceive different world events without that knowledge. My students hands
kept going up into the air as we continued our discussion on why having a
Muslim in a political office would be such a problem in a nation that should
be focused on its people as individuals and not on its people of certain
groups (unless we are in support of fascism of course). Our discussion even
began engaging students prior knowledge on Americas historical
immigration and how America came to be in the first place.
The number of students participating in this discussion and my
students ability to relate this issue back to the Red Scare was one of the
best feelings I had during this lesson. I could tell that my students were
engaged in the content and not just trying to memorize facts but really
understand how something like the Red Scare can lead to criticism on what
being American really means to us and how we shape that identity.
Furthermore, at the end of the lesson my students even openly explained to
me that this was the type of class that they really enjoyed. One in which they
can share their opinions and discuss them openly in the class. I was
surprised with their response but knew that they were genuine because I had
2

witnessed the extent to which they were engaging with the material from the
time the discussion started until the end of class where they were still talking
about it while headed to their next class.
Another part of my unit that went particularly well was my lesson
teaching the presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. I decided to
scrap my initial hook for the lesson where tobacco companies walked around
on the floor of Congress offering Senate members bribes to sway their vote.
Instead I read to the students excerpts from the book, Secret Lives of the
U.S. Presidents. This history book covers all of the questions that I think
students really enjoy hearing about, such as UFOs, secret tunnels, and which
presidents had an affair with whom? This worked as a great opener to my
lesson as students were listening anxiously to the stories and asking if we
could read more.
I think that my students were more motivated to learn about the
policies and ideologies of the president after connecting with the lesson in
this way. By reading them the scandalous excerpts on the Republican
presidents of the 1920s, they were able to better connect with the
presidents themselves. I had brought the presidents down to a personal
level that they now felt they could interact with as if they knew the president
personally. In a sense I was showing the presidents in a humanizing light
where they seemed like everyday people with the average problems and
drama at hand. Some students made reference to the Netflix series, House
of Cards, noting that the characters and the presidents both took part in
3

scandalous affairs relationship wise and in politics. This helped them connect
Hardings acts of adultery to his Ohio Gangs, Teapot Dome Scandal which
was conducted by the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall. One student
yelled out, shocker, when we were discovering the faults of Hardings
presidency as he really did not want to be president stating he did not know
what to do.
One way that I could have made the National Origins Act lesson
more interesting and relevant would be to look at our immigration issues in
America today. When I was teaching this lesson I remember the Republican
presidential debate was a hot topic, especially with Donald Trumps solution
to build a wall at the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out. I think it
would have also been beneficial to have students look into the current
immigration trends where we would find that the Mexican population was
actually migrated back to Mexico at a much larger numbers than we have
ever seen. I would still have left my hook and discussion on the Syrian
Refugee crisis as this has been another hot issue that students in all classes
are talking about. My students were coming to class everyday with the latest
news on the crisis and how politicians were using them as a way to express
their own views on immigration. As an extension I think that we could even
look into the Puerto Ricans migrating to Florida and how their vote is crucial
for a candidate to win over their state. Students might look at how this may
affect both Liberal and Conservatives outreach to these groups in order to
secure numbers at the ballot.
4

Something I would change would be the order of my lessons on

Prohibition, Suffrage, and womens role in America. In my unit plan I had
placed Womens Suffrage before the lesson on how womens lives were
changing in the 1920s. I realized that it may have been helpful for students
to understand that women were not returning to the home when American
men returned home from WWI. They were determined to find work outside of
the home and create new industries. Although there were women who did
not think that any woman had a role outside of the home, and this parallels
to the women who did not agree that they had a place in politics as well. I
think learning about how womens lives were changing on an individual level
before analyzing their path towards participation in the political process or
issues such as Prohibition.
During my lesson on Womens Suffrage I ran into a major issue when
my students were researching events and people of the movement. I wanted
my students to use the online resource Popplet, to display their research.
Popplet allowed students to connect their research topic and supporting
ideas to another students research. For example, one student researched
the NWA and another Alice Paul and using Popplet they could show that their
separate research was actually connected through collaboration. The
connections were endless and my students were really engaged in their
research and their production of their Popplets. However, this is also the day
that I learned that the bandwidth at my school was not what it may have
been cut out to be. There is all this push to use technology in the classroom
5

without the capable technology for withstanding the number of students on

the server throughout the entire school. Students were eager to use Popplet
but became frustrated with the internet connection as did I. Issues with the
connection varied from students not being able to create an account, unable
to join our Popplet group, students information being erased, and the server
timing out altogether. And then to complete our tech issues we had an
almost complete Popplet when the students information began scrambling
all over the page and was too difficult to try and rearrange.
Worst of all I did not come prepared with a backup plan, but had to
create one on the spot. I decided to have all the students submit their
research information in a written or typed hardcopy format; which defeated
my purpose of using Popplet itself to connect all of our information to better
understand how certain people and groups played a part in the passing of
acts, amendments, and suffrage as a whole. Looking back I now know that it
really is important to have a well-functioning back-up plan in the case that
technology fails in a future lesson. One idea that I had after I had already
completed the lesson was that I could and should have had the students
create a real life Popplet in the classroom. They could either use the board or
tape their individual webs to a large strip of construction or craft paper and
make the connections as a class just as the website would have allowed, but
without the flexibility and ease of Popplet.
During my lessons on the Harlem Renaissance I ran into a rather
embarrassing mistake during my lead teach. I wanted to show a video or
6

audio clip for each of the African-Americans that we were learning about
during the Harlem Renaissance to help aid those visual learners. I believed
that students would have a better understanding and learn the role each
person if they could see and hear examples of their distinguished work. I was
also quite excited to teach the class about Josephine Baker, one of the first
iconic African-American superstars. She was particularly famous for her
comical dancing and singing. She was also known to perform nude or in
scandalous clothing which pushed her to head to France. Here, Bakers near
nude performances would be appreciated rather than incurring scrutiny in
America and possibly the loss of her supporters, career, or worse. I had found
an excellent video clip from the 1920s that depicted Josephines comical
dancing techniques. What was so interesting about this clip was that three of
her dance moves could be directly connected to three popular dances that
my students know of today. After chaperoning the Homecoming dance at my
school, I knew that many of my students had a particular interest in the hiphop dance scene. The clip that I had of Josephine Baker included the Stanky
Leg, the Hot Boy dance, and walking it out, all of which are common
dance moves in the hip-hop world today except this was the 1920s!
The students were very interested in learning about how Josephine
Baker influenced new dance moves along with others of the time in creating
dances such as the Charleston or the turkey trot. There was only one issue
that I had not noticed at all myself the first three times that I watched the
clip at home before showing to my class. Josephine Baker was actually
7

topless in the clip that I had chosen to show. Luckily enough, I encouraged
the students to watch the foot and leg work just as I myself had examined
the clip. For the most part my students were oblivious to the fact that
Josephine did not have a top on. I actually still did not realize what I was
showing the class until one student straight up asked me if she was wearing
a top at all in the clip. My heart immediately sank into my stomach as I
understood the possibility that Josephine may have indeed been topless
during the clip. The rest of the class looked around puzzled and I explained to
them that I was under the impression she was wearing a nude leotard and
the video clip itself appeared to have a sepia filter on making it difficult to
determine the skin tones necessary to prevent my mistake. I was just glad
that I was not the only one who so easily missed that important detail of the
clip. The next hour I chose to not show the clip although my students reacted
very mature to the discrepancy. Instead I explained what the clip displayed
and showed them the dance moves myself, that Josephine was attempting at
the time. I then had to inform my teacher and the assistant principle of what
I had shown the students in case they received any angry phone calls from
parents. It was a very embarrassing experience but I learned that I might
want a second pair of eyes to review what video clips I have planned to
prevent this issue in the future.
It also somewhat bothered me in a way that it could be so controversial
to show a clip like this in the classroom when this was the reality of history
itself. Josephines dancing would have never skyrocketed in popularity here in
8

America because the naked body is seen as vulgar and inappropriate where
it might be appreciated and quite a normal sight in France or Britain, as
these two nations still hold these notions of nudity today. Many European
television shows are full of nudity on regular programming as it is not such a
sensitive issue there as it is in America today. I searched that night for a
similar clip of Josephine Bakers dance moves that I wanted to reference and
was unsuccessful at finding any replication or censored version of her moves
in this particular video.
I learned to maintain flexibility while teaching this unit on the 1920s. I
often made changes to my lessons such as the order of activities or the
instructional strategy based on my students engagement and feedback from
class to class. Sometimes I would ask students to write on the back of their
exit tickets any suggestions or helpful advice on how I could better teach the
material. This gives students a chance to have a say in the class and express
their disinterest in a particular activity or inform me on what they still dont
really understand completely. After we take tests in my class, I always review
the answers and allow students to make up some of the credit by writing
extensively on the correct answer of the questions they missed points on. I
also ask them questions about why they thought that particular answers
were difficult so I can see where information may need to be reiterated in a
similar manner in future units as well. For example, my students did much
better with the people in this time period that we studied than the unit
before so I asked them why they though they did better. Their response was
9

that they thought seeing pictures of the people and video clips while learning
about them helped them to better identify the individuals. I bring visuals to
the classroom whenever possible to teach my lessons because I think that
students connect well with the content when they either see it or create a
visual in their own mind.
The school in which my internship takes place uses a common district
final exam that is used in evaluating a teachers performance in teaching the
subject. This can be a major constraint on certain teaching styles or unit plan
formats and I happen to be highly interested in teaching my classroom
thematically. With a common midterm and final exam, it can be difficult to
make units that stretch across time periods. Having this district requirement
also puts strain on me as a teacher because I want my students to be as best
prepared to do well on the exams but also want my students to be
intrinsically interested and motivated to learn in my classroom as well. I
myself do not have access to this district exam to have the ability to teach to
the test while at the same time engaging students with thematic lessons that
may give them a better understanding of historys importance in our
everyday lives today. State and district standards have affected the ability of
teachers to focus on how to best help students understand a particular idea
or theme. Instead teachers are encouraged to focus on a more chronological
approach to learning about the people, ideas, and events that took place, as
if the learning process is standard itself and can be applied to all students.
Although I may have felt pressure from the district and my mentor teacher to
10

follow this chronological approach in my unit plans, I did my best to help

cross-reference more recent history and even current events to help my
students engage and reach understand through relevancy.

11