Through this cross-curricular project, 7th-grade students built skills of empathy and critical thinking by exploring moments of Black History: Benjamin Banneker's letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck's eyewitness account of Ruby Bridges, and Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With. Following this review, students selected a historic letter or speech to evaluate the perspective of the author; elements of Rhetoric (persuasion); as well as historic context. This mini-research project is in collaboration with library literacy skills, language arts, and social studies classes.
See examples in this Building Perspectives Smithsonian learning module.