As President Biden makes his first Supreme Court nomination, he is hoping for bipartisan support for nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Recent history of Supreme Court nominations have yielded bitter battles and guarded answers from nominees on their views of important legal issues.
Andrew McGill
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Supreme Court Nominations an Confirmations
Students will examine the nomination and confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices and learn why the judges often reveal so little.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Refugees and the Power of Words – Using Their Stories to Create Found Poems
This video asks what obligation countries have to refugees. It’s a question as important today as it was in 1975, when the United States evacuated 130,000 South Vietnamese allies during the fall of Saigon and brought them to this country to start new lives. But some Vietnamese refugees, like Carolee Tran, faced significant hardship and racism, despite the fact that then-President Ford said the U.S. had a “profound moral obligation” to families like hers. Today, as Afghan and Ukrainian migrants settle in the United States, this video asks whether refugee resettlement is better now than it was for the Vietnamese 50 years ago. As Kenneth Quinn, a former ambassador and foreign service officer told us, “All societies are determined by answering that question: To whom do I have an obligation?”
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: How the U.S. Has Treated Wartime Refugees
Students will examine the question of what obligation countries have to refugees. As Afghan and Ukrainian migrants settle in the U.S., this video asks whether refugee resettlement is better now than it was for the Vietnamese 50 years ago.
Posted inLesson Plan
Lesson Plan: Lateral Reading
Students will learn how to fact-check a sensational story using a technique called lateral reading.
Posted inLesson Plan
Lesson Plan: Holocaust Survivors Fleeing Ukraine Find a New Home in Germany
Students will examine the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine, and compare and contrast the current crisis in Ukraine.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Examining Housing Policy
Students will examine the concept of federalism and evaluate current models to address housing instability by considering social, economic and political implications.
Posted inU.S. History
Lesson Plan: The Geography of Racism
Students will explore how segregationist laws and policies manifest and have affected the development of urban areas by comparing the United States and South Africa.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Japanese Americans Incarcerated
In the months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, rounded up and imprisoned in internment camps. In 10 camps across the American West, Japanese Americans persevered for four years. Even after they were removed from their homes and places of business, these people created new communities within the camps.
Posted inCivics and Government
Lesson Plan: Legacy of the Korematsu Decision
Students will learn how the U.S. government imprisoned 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, during World War II and the lasting impact of a related Supreme Court ruling.
