Political Cartoons (1) (2)
Political Cartoons have long been a way for artists to place a satyrical twist on current events. During this 2-day lesson, students look at how immigration affected Urbanization during the Industrial Revolution. This lesson culminates with the students creating Political Cartoons explaining how they believe people currently view Immigration.
I attended a symposium led by Linda Christensen, Director of the Oregon Writing Project at the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College. She was speaking on why kids skip school often and the overarching idea was it’s due to a lack of engaging curriculum. |
She asked the room, “how do you engage students from historically marginalized groups to see themselves as activists? You have to bring classes to life by having real curriculum that matters to them.” (Linda Christensen, personal communication)
My IB American History class is primarily made up of first or second generation Immigrants. Before teaching a lesson on "Immigration during the Industrial Revolution" I told the class that all I know about immigration comes from books. They as the students know more about it than I do since they are living the life. Adam Fletcher writes “Meaningful student involvement engages students as teachers as a way to strengthen learning and teachers efficacy.” (Fletcher) That statement is exactly what happened; in this lesson, the students were the teachers. Because of this role change, students were much more active during class discussion and their body language, as evident by sitting up, eye contact and alertness to name a few, was much more positive.
The lesson concluded by looking at political cartoons from the late 1800's reflecting wealthy American's views on Immigration. After interpreting them I had the class work in pairs create a political cartoon expressing how they feel people look at immigration today. The results were incredible. I am completely convinced the entire class was engaged in the activity because it was so personal for them. As Linda Christensen expressed during her symposium, students who believe a lesson has personal significance to their own lives are much more engaged. The evidence of engagement I witnessed during this class was unmistakable. Every student was not only on task but working furiously. Students asked questions like “does the fact that I can’t draw matter here?” This is evidence that they were willing to do something they believe they are not naturally good at just because they liked the activity. |
Other evidences include:
1. body language, students were actively participating with each other
2. Staying after class to continue working even though the following period was their free period
3. Seeking assistance from others in the class and sharing/comparing ideas
4. Wanting more time to finish because they kept thinking of ideas to add/make their work better
5. Physical evidence such as, eyes wider in anticipation of better work, excited voices, looking information up in books and other classroom resources.
1. body language, students were actively participating with each other
2. Staying after class to continue working even though the following period was their free period
3. Seeking assistance from others in the class and sharing/comparing ideas
4. Wanting more time to finish because they kept thinking of ideas to add/make their work better
5. Physical evidence such as, eyes wider in anticipation of better work, excited voices, looking information up in books and other classroom resources.
This lesson hit home for the students, the activity even more so because the students got to share their own experiences. For example, in the artifact labeled “Cartoon 1” you can see the representation of Uncle Sam is welcoming people from all over the world but in the bottom corner a character in a Phillies shirt is whispering into Uncle Sam’s ear “no”. Philadelphia immigration was nothing we discussed in class so this reflects that the student, who is Russian, does not feel welcome in Philadelphia. She is depicting the idea that as a nation we love the idea of being a melting pot society but it doesn’t look the same when brought down to the local level. In the artifact labeled “Cartoon 2”, you see two people labeled “immigrant hopefuls” wanting to walk through the US border legally but being stopped by “Congress indifference”. The student who drew this is in the process of gaining his citizenship. He told me that there are so many hoops to jump through that he wonders at times if it’s worth it. His drawing portrays this idea. He’s doing all that is asked of him and still there are walls up restricting his access.
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These students, as evident by their work, took this activity personally. They could have just done cartoons that reflected information we discussed in class but instead they used personal elements to really make these cartoons come alive. The personal element engaged these students as evident by their high quality of work even when they might not have been “good artists”. Validating what Linda Christensen talked about during her symposium, giving students the opportunity to relate to the material personally often times results in genuine student engagement. I witnessed this first hand during IB American History. The evidence to prove it was overwhelming.