Objectives
Understandings
Through the use of this unit, I want students to develop the historical thinking skills which will prepare them for their future classes in high school as well as in college. Additionally, I want students to get past the idea of only needing to memorize facts and dates in a history course. I want them to learn how to examine a part of history and analyze its impact as well as the role it has in the present.
Because students live in the city they have always heard its association with steel. However, the concept of how important steel was to Pittsburgh and its major role in the steel industry is not always known. By examining the role Pittsburgh played in this industry, students will be able to study the effect Pittsburgh had throughout not only the nation, but the world.
In studying the steel mills, I want students to realize the vital part the steelworkers played in this history. Not only should the students study and understand how and why Pittsburgh became the “steel capital,” but they need to understand all aspects of the industry such as the experiences of the workers in the mills. I want students to be able to articulate the success of the industry in Pittsburgh in addition to why it declined and the impact it had on the steelworkers and the city at large. Through the use of public history tools, students will be able to study these aspects through a variety of ways such as walking tours and oral histories.
U.S. History Content Objectives/Assessment
Objectives
Since this is for a U.S. History course, there are content objectives that I will expect to achieve. I will need to create the foundation for the skills students will need to develop throughout the course through the use of this unit since it is the first unit of the semester. From their previous courses in high school, students have a general idea of industrialization and its role in Great Britain, but they have not studied industrialization in the U.S. and the steel industry in the Pittsburgh area.
The unit will not only focus on industrialization but will study the impact of deindustrialization through the use of public history projects and public history tools. Students will begin by examining the start of the steel industry in Pittsburgh and the two periods of expansion of mills throughout the region. Specifically, students will analyze, through the use of primary sources, the make-up of the workforce and identify the role steelworkers played in the mills during its height in the early twentieth century. They will then explain, using evidence, the presence of unions in the mills and the effect of the Homestead Works Strike of 1892. Lastly, students will analyze the decline of the steel mills and the impact deindustrialization had not only on the city’s economy, but on the lives of the area’s steelworkers as well.
Assessment
Warm-Ups, exit tickets, and writing prompts will account for the majority of the formative assessments. The final piece of assessment will be the public history project the students create which will serve as a summative assessment. By creating this project, students will use the historical thinking skills, which include: crafting historical arguments from historical evidence, chronological reasoning, comparison and contextualization, and historical interpretation and synthesis.
Essential Questions
Students will examine the beginning of the steel industry and its expansion in Pittsburgh, 1875-1890, as well as the Homestead Works Strike of 1892, the second expansion of the industry, 1900-1903, and deindustrialization, 1970s-1980s. These events mark the beginning of Pittsburgh’s economy being based on the steel industry, a major event in labor history, and end of the steel industry which drastically impacted Pittsburgh’s economy. In examining the industrialization and deindustrialization of Pittsburgh, I want students to not only examine the specific events and time periods, but I want them to understand how the past impacts the present. Through the unit, students will begin with the start of the steel industry in Pittsburgh and study its role, the workers, and unions until the time of deindustrialization. By the end, students will also consider why Pittsburgh still holds on to its steel past. The first question students will consider is, “How did the steel industry impact the Pittsburgh region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?” The second question, “Who were the people that made up the workforce and what does it suggest?” will require students to analyze the population of the workforce and nationalities, as well as who occupied which positions (skilled, semi-skilled, un-skilled). Moving on to discuss the labor movement, students will answer “What was the purpose of unions and were they successful?” Lastly, students will answer the following questions “How did deindustrialization impact the steelworkers?” and “Why does Pittsburgh continue to commemorate its steel past?”
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