Additional Teaching Resources
“They’re missing out on these stories. These resources are exactly what I need!”
5 Minute Reads for Teachers:
West Virginia
Humanities Council:
Seven lesson plans related to the Mine Wars, curated by the West Virginia Humanities Council. These lessons discuss labor management strategies, natural resources, the economic and industrial growth during World War I, and more.
Zinn Education Project:
The Battle of Blair Mountain, with links to labor songs, teaching activities, teaching guides, books, and films.
The Homestead Strike, a 10-page teaching activity, which explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.
The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States, a teaching guide with role plays and writing activities project high school students into real-life situations to explore the history and contemporary reality of employment (and unemployment) in the U.S.
Coal, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Mountaintop Removal: Using chocolate chip cookie “mining,” this lively activity takes a critical look at how the coal industry teaches the impact of coal mining.
Scholastic Inc — Pushing Coal: A critique of a fourth grade curriculum and the partnership between Scholastic and the American Coal Foundation.
Mountaintop:
Coal Mine Wars in West Virginia. Keeping Mine Wars history alive with a free and fun educational multimedia experience for all ages, at West Virginia University Libraries.
Monument Lab:
Field Trip: Museums is Monument Lab’s downloadable set of self-guided activities designed to help you investigate museums and explore the histories and stories that they reveal (and hide), encouraging you to reflect on questions of learning, labor, and access in arts, culture, history, and science institutions, and to propose your own ideas for making museums more accessible and less exclusive spaces.
TeachRock:
Mining & Union Songs in the Early 20th Century: How do Nimrod Workman’s songs and stories about his life as a coal miner illustrate the struggles of working class people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era?
a chronology of coal miners’ headgear (L to R): canvas caps were the norm for decades, the Flexo Band Cool Cap was the first hard-top helmet (patented in 1933), and an MSA Comfo-Cap “high vein” style helmet from the late 1970s.
collections of Wilma Steele and Fred Barkey/West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
set of 12 full-color trading cards
These unique trading cards, produced by the Mountaintop project at West Virginia University, feature paintings by Chris DeMaria from his exhibit I Come Creeping at the museum’s Solidarity Gallery!
We’ll ship these to teachers free, in increments of 10 packs: we just ask that you cover the shipping cost!