Student Activity Samples
1) Opening Activity – Majority/Minority Factions
Objective
Students can describe the challenges involved in trying to secure rights for one group without negatively affecting other groups.
Materials
List of groups that are fighting for rights
Index cards or card stock labels
Poster voting sheets and colored dots (only one color needed)
Overview and Procedure
This activity should be used at the start of the unit and could easily follow a discussion or lessons about the Federalist Papers and Monroe’s warnings about the tyranny of the majority. In this activity students will get a sense of how different groups/movements can sometimes compete for attention and resources.
Step One – on their own, to try and allow them to generate their own opinions, give students a list of groups/movements that want or struggle for expanded rights. Some examples would be immigrants, asylum seekers, minority groups, farmers, factory workers, farm workers, women, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, Transgender, etc. Ask students to rank them 1 – x, from those most deserving to those least deserving. Ask for feedback to share and discuss as a group.
Step Two – ask students to think about what happens when different groups compete for the same or limited resources. If one group get s bigger piece of the pie what happens to another group? Divide students into groups and assign each group one of the names/labels from above. These groups can be random and do not have to be all the same size. Let each group know that whether their rights get expanded will be up to the majority of the class, but groups will be competing with each other. Give three dots to each student and have them use the posters to vote for who gets expanded rights. Each poster asks them to choose one group over the other.
Step Three – have students get up and move about the room, examining the posters and voting with their dots. Ask for a volunteer(s) to tabulate the winners and announce which groups get expanded rights and which do not. Point out that the decision was made by voters and a majority (tie back to American democracy) and yet will leave a large number of students disappointed/angry/unhappy. This is the challenge of democracy and majority rule.
Step Four – this would be the appropriate time for the divide-a-dollar game or the extra points game as described in the unit above which will drive home the difficulties of making decisions based on majority rule and the need for formation of coalitions.
2) Majority Not Always Necessary – extension activity
Objective
Students can analyze and describe the phenomenon of small groups acting like a majority and securing rights.
Materials
Access to Chrome books and/or other research enabling devices
Overview and Procedure
One of the overall objectives of this unit is to give students an idea about how difficult it is to expand rights in a democratic society. Yet one of the groups studied is people who identify as transgender, which is actually a very small percentage of the population of the United States. According to the Human Rights Campaign, there are only about 700,000 transgender people in the Untied States, which equals roughly .03% of the population (35). In spite of that small number there are now many places in the country were gender neutral bathrooms are becoming the norm. In this extension activity students should examine how a small number of people (as a percentage of overall population) can successfully lobby for an expansion of their rights. Students should be given a number of resources to study and then be directed to find other groups that fall into the same category so they can make comparisons and draw conclusions. There is no “right” answer or conclusion here, the object is to get students to do the research and do the thinking. Students will compare the transgender group to one of the other groups by competing a graphic organizer and then writing a summary paragraph. Suggested resources for information about transgender history and rights include 1) https://transequality.org/, 2) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/15/opinion/editorial-transgender-timeline.html, and 3) https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community. There are likely other web and print resources as well.
Another group/event to compare would be disabled Americans and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Possible websites to examine are 1) https://www.pantsupeasy.com/u-s-wheelchair-user-statistics/, 2) https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/statistics/american-disability.php, and 3) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/27/7-facts-about-americans-with-disabilities/. Again, there are likely other resources that students can find with these examples as a starting point.
Another group that could be researched are the first responders from the 911 tragedies, who have been successful in securing funding for medical expenses related to their job activities during and after the event from 2001. Here students will look at a very small subset of the total number of first responders in the United States that have received additional compensation based on their status in spite of their small number.
No part of this activity should be construed to mean that these groups should not fight for and win rights. It is not about what they deserve but about what might they have in common (either characteristics or strategies) that enables them to successfully expand their rights in a democracy where it is usually a difficult thing to do. This is the question that students should focus on as they compare and contrast these three (and potentially other) minority groups.
3) Wrap Up and Final Project
Objective
Students can apply their knowledge of the elements of coalitions by analyzing and presenting information about a present day reform movement.
Materials
Framework Information sheet
Graphic Organizer for note taking
Student notes and activity sheets saved throughout the unit lessons
Paper or electronic presentation resources
Overview and Procedure
Students will be given a framework information sheet (bullet point descriptions of the Graetz-Shapiro framework to supplement their notes) and a graphic organizer to focus their thinking and collect notes. Using one of the historical movements (Abolition or Women’s Rights) to provide modeling I will assist the whole class in looking for moral narrative, proximate goals, and leadership. Together we will find what worked for this movement and what did not, all in the framework and language of the Graetz-Shapiro elements and will fill in the organizer as a whole class creating a sample/example for students to follow.
After that students will examine the other historical movement (Women’s Rights or Abolition) in collaboration with classmates and produce the same type and amount of notes and analysis. Students will use the example created by the whole class activity and then be expected to work in pairs/small groups to complete the analysis of the other group. At the conclusion of this step we will review portions as a class to both scaffold and check for understanding.
In the third step the students will analyze the Transgender rights movement (or choose another contemporary reform movement) and will be filling out the organizer on their own to create the data points that will become their presentation. During this third step they are working independently to find and analyze the movement’s moral narratives, proximate goals, and examples of the value of leadership.
Once they have the necessary information, students will be instructed to create either a poster presentation or an electronic presentation. My students use Google Slides but alternate formats would work just as well. Students that are competent and confidant could certainly create a video instead. Presentations should include the following as a minimum – name of movement, overview of their history, strategy, goals, etc., list/description of the moral narrative, list/description of proximate goals, discussion of leadership (positive or negative, depending on what research turns up), any work done in partnership (did they form a coalition?), text descriptions and visual representations of all of the foregoing items.
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