Katie M. Ryan, Social Studies teacher, Northwest School of the Arts
(Unit PDF)
Abstract
History has the most potential to illustrate how an activist can alter the course of an event and how the complacent allows events to be shaped for them. Within this unit, students will be able to make the distinction between complacent figures, perpetrators and heroes within various historical conflicts and then become heroes themselves.
The structure of the unit requires students to create an archetype of a hero, study conflict in various historical contexts, conduct independent research to find a hero that emerged from each conflict by applying their archetype and finally, become a hero by being an activist in a contemporary conflict. Case Studies of Children and War: Defining, Discovering and Developing Heroes is a unit is designed for a secondary, history classroom and includes a series of lessons that can be taught as a cohesive, thematic unit or interspersed throughout a course taught chronologically. The lessons are a series of case studies that address the foundations of conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries and then focus on the roles adolescents played within these conflicts. The unit is created to be used with a diverse range of high school students and ultimately encourage activism through historical awareness.
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