<p>This collection includes instructions and ideas for a classroom activity designed to get children and their families talking and creating together. It is suitable for K-5 classrooms, as an art, English, or social studies-based activity. Included here are examples of student work (images and video of students reading their books), as well as images from classroom displays.</p> <p><span></span><span></span>In this activity, a 1st grade teacher from a bilingual school in Washington, D.C., used what we called the "Connections" handmade storybook design to have her students share important family lessons. She described how she did the activity: "I loved the book project and found that it was a way to get parents involved in making a book with their child at home. I pre-made the books since I thought the instructions were a little tricky. The instructions were to discuss and write about a Life Lesson that their families taught them. Our students created bilingual Spanish/English books. The format was perfect for this because it could be English on one side and Spanish on the other. Students enjoyed hanging their books up outside of the class for others to read and then sharing them with the class. It really helped them to understand what important life lessons families teach them and it helped to bring students' home knowledge into the classroom. We connected the books to our Life Lessons unit and plan to do the same thing this year."<span></span></p> <p>This project is based on a handmade book design that can be found, along with several others, in another collection: Fun for the Whole Family: Making "Family Memory" Storybooks: <a href="http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d">http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d</a>.</p>

<p>This collection serves as a preview for the fourth of six seminar sessions in the 2021 Smithsonian-Montgomery College Faculty Fellowship Program. This year's theme is “Facing the Complex, Multiple Challenges of the 21st Century."<br></p> <p><br>Three Smithsonian curators, Jim Deutsch and Sojin Kim from the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and Margaret Salazar-Porzio from the National Museum of American History, will discuss ways in which their units seek to address 21st-century challenges, through programming, outreach efforts, and resources. </p> <p>Resources included in this collection have been recommended by the presenters for participants to explore before the seminar itself.</p> <p>#MCteach</p> <p></p>

<p>This teaching collection asks students to consider photographs and documentation about early 20th-century Jewish immigrant activist Clara Lemlich (1886-1982, leader of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and founder of the Progressive Women’s Councils), in the larger context of New York's Garment Industry, the New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909, and the 1911 Triangle Waist Factory fire. By pairing historical documentation with three thinking routines from Harvard's Project Zero Global Thinking and Agency by Design materials - "Step In, Step Out, Step Back," "Think, Feel, Care," and "Circles of Action," - the collection encourages students to explore complexity and perspective, and fosters a disposition to participate. </p> <p>Included here are photographs, documentation, and resources from the Jewish Women's Archive's Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School, the Tenement Museum, and the National Museum of American History. </p> <p>This collection pairs well with chapter 11 <em></em>("Jews are Pushed from Russia") of Ronald Takaki's <em>A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America, </em>and supports Unit 1: Intersectionality of Economics, Politics, and Policy, and Unit 3: Local History and Current Issues, of the Austin ISD Ethnic Studies Part B course. <br /></p> <p>#EthnicStudies<br /></p>