MIDDLE SCHOOL - GRADE 8

How individuals and societies choose to behave in times of challenge.

CONNECTIONS TO MANDATE/MISSION:

Students understand how the history of Florida reflects a historically rich diversity of people.

CORE CONCEPTS:

• Change: how the lives of people can be changed by immigration.
• Conflict: how differences among groups are resolved.
• Culture: recognize how beliefs, values and traditions of people from diverse groups, their resistance to, and lack of, exchange of cultural ideas and values affect human behavior.
• Interdependence: how location, place, environment, movement, and region influence people.
• Perspective: how people accept and reject stereotyping of others.
• Responsibility: the role of the individual in showing tolerance and the appreciation of diversity.
• Scarcity: how limited resources created systems of living and working.

During this unit, lesson, or activity, students, individually or in groups:

• Read and write poetry about life as a new immigrant.
• Use maps, globes charts, graphs, and other tools of geography to gather and interpret data and draw conclusions about human patterns of immigration or emigration.
• Use population density maps from several years, showing trends of immigration to the U.S., and infer reasons for settlement in Florida and other parts of the country.
• Use primary and secondary source documents to research the Journey of the St. Louis and the plight of the passengers.
• Summarize reasons for world and United States reactions to the St. Louis.
• Conduct oral history interviews with people who lived in Florida or the U.S. during the Holocaust; with survivors or relatives of a survivor; with a liberator or a soldier who served in Europe.
• Research information about individuals or groups that have immigrated to Florida in recent years.  Trace their countries of origin and their motivations for coming to Florida.
• Share research in a creative presentation (hyper-studio, slide presentation, art project)
• Compare the contributions and influences of political leaders in given historical periods.
• Analyze how one can make a difference through individual choice and actions.
• Demonstrate empathy with people who have experienced hardships and have diverse viewpoints.

• Yad Vashem
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Ghetto Fighters House
• St. Petersburg Times
• New York Times
• Time Magazine

As a visitor enters the class, they see students engaged in finishing A Time For Justice, a learning kit provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center (available through Teaching Tolerance magazine).  They are reading aloud from the book Tunes For the Bears to Dance By, by Robert Cormier.  This work relates a story about making moral and ethical decisions.  After reading this work the students form discussion groups and answer provocative questions related to the text.  Students will read on their own, excerpts from Sky by Hanneke Ippisch and Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved the Jews in the Holocaust, by Meltzer.  These selections tell the students about the resistance of Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust and how individuals choose to behave in this time of challenge.  After these selections have been completed, the students begin problem-solving group work.  In these heterogeneous groups, the students will work on preparing a dramatization of the voyage of the St. Louis in 1939.  Each student will fill a defined role, such as graphic designer, stage manager, director or scriptwriter.  In this dramatization, students will explore the way countries responded to the plight of the people on this ship and create their own endings to the story of the quest of the St. Louis to find a friendly harbor.  Another group of students are working on reading The New Colossus, the poem found at the base of the Statue of Liberty.  They are discussing their feelings to the poem as it applied to the St. Louis and how it applies today.  They will actively debate their opinions for, and against, open immigration.

LEARNING ASSESSMENTS:

At the conclusion of units, lessons, or activities students might

• create a first person narrative of a passenger on the St. Louis.
• develop a guide of community historical buildings and sites that existed prior to World War II and their importance.
• describe how political situations, social events, and economics affected decisions to emigrate.
• debate the decision of the United States to deny entry for the passengers of the St. Louis.