Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 11
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 11 pages.
This role play activity on the famous 1892 Homestead Strike, explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 14
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 14 pages.
In this role play activity, students assume the roles of union members and attempt to figure out how to respond to a threatened plant closure.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 3
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 3 pages.
This lesson introduces students to Bertolt Brecht’s poem, A Worker Reads History. Students reflect on the creative role of workers in making history.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 7
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages.
This lesson teaches some of the nuts and bolts of labor unions and then moves beyond to ask students to consider what rights they have at work, and to recognize that “rights” depend in large part on what people have fought for and won.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 3
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 4 pages.
Activity for students to write from the point of view of one of the women featured in the film Union Maids.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 8
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages.
In this lesson, students re-examine and restructure a burger joint so that it is more democratically and imaginatively operated.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 8
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 8 pages.
Lesson engages students in a lively simulation that helps them experience some of the pressures that lead workers to organize.
Resource Types: Teaching Activities (Free)
Page Length: 2
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond.
This lesson uses Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious classic film, Modern Times, to help students think about the impact of “scientific management” on the workplace.
