Ryan Davis

This activity is something that I did last year in my US History II class, which has mostly 11th graders. The 3-day lesson fit well into the end of our unit on the 1920’s and the Stock Market Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. It is designed to provoke student control of the classroom, and includes critical-reading of present day issues, a Socratic Seminar/Fishbowl, and an essay response. I have had trouble teaching about Hoover in the past, and in an effort to make the topic mo

This activity is something that I do in our Imperialism Unit, after the students understand the reasons and motivations for the Spanish-American War. This is for my US History II class, which consists of mostly 11th graders. It is designed to have the students investigate the Spanish-American War and work on several skills simultaneously, including group work skills and primary source analysis. The lesson centers around three primary sources: A speech by Senator Redfield in the US Senate, Ma

This activity is something that I do with all of my classes regardless of whether its US History I, US History II, Economics, or Sociology. I love this activity and the students do as well, it is a great opportunity for them to sink their teeth into politics a little bit and it oftentimes has the side effect of having my students pay more attention to politics. It is a great lesson to use when you have to do something mandated for Constitution Day, as it covers the political process. This les

This activity is something that I do in our Imperialism Unit, as way for my students to understand the cultural and social mindset of the Western Europeans and the United States during this time period. Over the past couple of years I was finding it very challenging to communicate the racism, cultural superiority, and bigotry that helped drive and justify imperialism, and this lesson accomplishes just that. I did it for the first time this school year, 2015, and my students were appalled and i

Anthropologist Horace Miner published an article he called the Nacirema, which satirizes the culture of the United States. The way that Miller writes makes it appear as if he is describing some sort of foreign and “backwards” culture, making it an excellent teaching tool. I have used the story of the Nacirema (American backwards) in both my US History II and Sociology classes. It is an excellent way to have students examine perspective, the concepts of culture and modernity, as well as look a

This activity is something that I do right after we have our World War II assessment in my US History II class, which has mostly 11th graders. It is designed to offer a counter balance to the overwhelmingly positive feelings in the United States after the war, trying to show that although we did great things in defeating the Nazis and the Japanese, we were not progressing on the home front. The experiment itself, for those of you not familiar, was government backed and went on for 40 years stre