Jace Flores Student Teacher Blog

As the capstone for the Reconstruction unit, I crafted a simple activity where the kids were sort of simulating being in 1870s America. The premise was they had to imagine it was 1872 and they were running for governor in an unnamed Southern state, with their victory guaranteed thanks to expected black votes. What they had to do was create a platform to address the issues of Reconstruction, keeping in mind that they had to balance the practical with the ambition. So no promising everyone a million bucks but more then simply promising to give voters hugs.

The assignment was interesting because the students had free reign to approach the assignment as they saw fit. Obviously if they had questions or wanted to run ideas by me or Brian they could. But otherwise it was up to them and what they learned about Reconstruction to devise solutions for the issues of Reconstruction with no real right or wrong answers.

This made it quite interesting because the students had the same information, but applied it in different ways. Some were rather draconian and advocated for high punishments and executions of white supremacists. Others emphasized economic equality with land ownership and education opportunities. Most stayed in the time period (as told in the instructions), but 1-2 groups dabbled in modern issues, which was an interesting look at the political issues they had heard of. This assignment took two days to do with presentations being done on the second day, and it was really interesting hearing the students having different answers to the same issues. As the assignment intended, but frankly the diversity of thought was more then I expected.

The assignment overall did a great job in teasing out how the thought processes of these kids are very different even when given the same information and instructions. This assignment allowed them to flex their diversity of thought, and hopefully will be something that can be exercised in the weeks left in the program.