Monthly Highlights – December 2023
This month, we are highlighting teaching resources, recent scholarship, and children’s books that center the history of our home state, California. Although California history is explicitly taught in fourth grade, there are many opportunities to implement it in history-social science learning throughout K-12 education. Exploring the history of their state, cities, and communities can be both engaging and informative to students of all backgrounds and grade levels. Check out some of our selections below, and for more resources, be sure to visit teachingcalifornia.org as well as California Revealed!
Recent Scholarship:
John Mack Faragher, California: An American History (September 2023)
From Yale University Press:
“California is the most multicultural state in America. As John Mack Faragher explains in this new history, California’s natural variety has always supported such diversity, including Native peoples speaking dozens of distinct languages, Spanish and Mexican colonists, gold seekers from all corners of the globe, and successive migrant waves from the eastern United States and from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.”
Jonathan Foster, Stigma Cities: The Reputation and History of Birmingham, San Francisco, and Las Vegas (February 2024)
From OU Press:
“Stigma Cites shows how cultural and political trends influenced perceptions of disrepute in these cities, and how, in turn, their status as sites of vice and violence influenced development decisions, from Birmingham’s efforts to shed its reputation as racist, to San Francisco’s transformation of its stigma into a point of pride, to Las Vegas’s use of gambling to promote tourism and economic growth”
Jason A. Heppler, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism (April 2024)
From OU Press:
“Between 1950 and 1990, business and community leaders pursued a new vision of the landscape stretching from Palo Alto to San Jose—a vision that melded the bucolic naturalism of orchards, pleasant weather, and green spaces with the metropolitan promise of modern industry, government-funded research, and technology. Heppler describes the success of a new, clean, future-facing economy, coupled with a pleasant, green environment, in drawing people to Silicon Valley. And in this overwhelming success, he also locates the rapidly emerging faults created by competing ideas about forming these idyllic communities—specifically, widespread environmental degradation and increasing social stratification.”
Raphael Hopstone, “Bloody Island Investigation: Reframing California’s Early History in the Secondary Classroom,” in California History (2023) 100 (4): 100–112.
From the abstract from California History:
“This article explores an educational unit, developed for the secondary classroom, that critically examines state-led military campaigns against California Indians. The unit, titled “Bloody Island Investigation,” scrutinizes the May 1850 massacre of Pomo Indians by U.S. Army soldiers at Clear Lake, California. Today known as the Bloody Island Massacre, this event exemplifies a pattern of indiscriminate civilian- and military-led violence against Indigenous peoples in the American conquest of California. Although this history is well known among scholars, the scholarship is absent from the California Department of Education’s content standards. The Bloody Island Investigation unit provides educators with models for including this history in middle- and high-school classrooms.”
Jean Pfaelzer, California, a Slave State (June 2023)
From Yale University Press:
“By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer upends our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and reveals how the enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage. In unyielding research and vivid interviews, Pfaelzer exposes how California gorged on slavery, an appetite that persists today in a global trade in human beings lured by promises of jobs but who instead are imprisoned in sweatshops and remote marijuana grows, or sold as nannies and sex workers.”
Anne Marie Todd, Valley of the Heart’s Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (October 2022)
From UC Press:
“This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits—such as apricots and prunes—to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveal how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley. “
Featured Teaching Resources:
There are many parts of a student’s community and neighborhood that a student can learn to recognize, point out, and relate to when looking at past Californian communities. In this first-grade inquiry set, students analyze and address how and why communities change over time and what commonalities their own communities share with previous towns and cities. Students compare and contrast how factors such as new technology, architecture, and the migration and blending of different cultures can shape communities and their neighborhoods.
How Did the Discovery of Gold Change California?
The goal of this fourth-grade inquiry set is to give students a comprehensive understanding of the lasting impact that the California Gold Rush had on the people living in California, as well as the demographic, economic, and environmental changes that occurred between 1848 and the 1870s.
Missions and the Environment and Economy
This fourth-grade lesson introduces students to some of the lifeways of Native California communities before the arrival of newcomers (Europeans and Americans). It addresses the ways that foreign contact changed Native people’s lives during the Spanish mission period, including changes to their cultures and the impacts of disease and European plants and animals on Native populations. It also examines shifts in the California economy in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and it introduces students to the life experiences of all people in California during the colonial period (1770s to 1830s).
There is also a version of this lesson with sources/descriptions in Spanish!
California’s Natural Environment
This fourth-grade inquiry set can be used to explore the ways in which new settlers to California extracted natural resources from California’s vast diversity of animal and plant species. The set’s investigative question —How does climate, natural resources, and landforms affect how plants, animals, and people live?— can be used to guide students through the photographs to understand the effects of human interactions with the natural environment.
Native People and Colonization
In this tenth-grade inquiry set, students are taken through a case study of the colonial enterprises of Spain and the United States in California. The focus is on the continued resistance of the California Indians to colonization over centuries, leading to the present day.
Democracy by Participation: A Life in California Politics
This twelfth-grade inquiry set explores the branches of California state government, using the life and career of Cruz Reynoso as a window into the structures and process of state government. Learning about Reynoso’s career path provides students with insight into how individuals become political and government leaders. More specifically, students will learn how Reynoso ran for the state legislature, thereby raising his personal and professional profile for future opportunities. In this inquiry set, students will follow Reynoso from his California State Assembly campaign, to the executive branch as a secretary to the governor, to the state judiciary, and, finally, to a state commission.
This twelfth-grade inquiry set from the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project examines the ways in which the majority of people in a society can present a danger for those who occupy the minority. The focus of this analysis is on the controversy surrounding California’s 1964 vote on Proposition #14 and its impact on fair housing for communities of people facing discrimination.
Current Context: Fire in California
Current Context is a series of instructional materials designed to help high-school students understand current events in a historical context. This set of instructional materials is meant to provide students with further context on the history and ecological impact of fire and wildfires in California.
Current Context: Water in California
Current Context is a series of instructional materials designed to help high-school students understand current events in a historical context. This set of materials centers on the Oroville Dam and California’s challenges with water supply. “Water in California” introduces students to vocabulary crucial to environmental research and illustrates how the history of water management in the state led to the development of the Oroville Dam.
Picture Books (#KatesBookClub)
The Gardener of Alcatraz: A True Story by Emma Bland Smith. When Elliott Michener was locked away in Alcatraz for counterfeiting, he was determined to defy the odds and bust out. But when he got a job tending the prison garden, a funny thing happened. He found new interests and skills--and a sense of dignity and fulfillment. Elliott transformed Alcatraz Island, and the island transformed him. Absolutely fabulous story to share with students of all ages. Don’t miss the back story filled with primary sources from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area Archives.
The Two Bear Cubs: A Miwok Legend from California’s Yosemite Valley retold by Robert D. San Souci. This beautifully illustrated book Retells the Miwok Indian legend in which a little measuring worm saves two bear cubs stranded at the top of the rock known as El Capitan. Don’t miss the subtle illustrations of Mother Grizzly Bear.
Todos Iguales/All Equal: Un Corrido de Lemon Grove/A Ballad of Lemon Grove by Christy Hale. The empowering true story of the 1931 Lemon Grove Incident, in which Mexican families in southern California won the first Mexican-American school desegregation case in US history. The Lemon Grove Incident stands as a major victory in the battle against school segregation and a testament to the tenacity of an immigrant community and its fight for educational equality. Pair with Separate is Never Equal highlighting the Mendez v. Westminster case. Entire book is written in Spanish and English text, including the background notes. Don’t miss the directions for writing a “corrido,” a Spanish poem. Great ELA connection. California author and illustrator.
Going Home by Eve Bunting. Carlos and his family finally arrive by car in time to celebrate Christmas in La Perla, Mexico. Even though there is no work for Mama and Papa in their home village, La Perla is still home for them. Warm welcomes and celebrations of Christmas await the family in La Perla, along with expressions of pride in the English language Carlos and his sisters acquired since their last visit. During this visit, Carlos begins to understand about the "opportunities" his parents and grandparents hold in such high regard. This rich story for all seasons has multi-dimensional characters and a plot that does not minimize hard labor at the expense of hope. Simply beautiful. Eve Bunting, who recently passed away is remembered in this New York Times obituary.
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena. A young boy rides the bus across San Francisco with his grandmother and learns to appreciate the beauty in everyday things. One of my all-time favorites with many teachable moments, including "They sat right up front." Great place to tie in the bus protests and segregation in the South during the Civil Rights movement. California author and artist. Winner of both the Caldecott and Newbery Medals in 2016.