Students match their personality with former presidents

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We started our second week of class by discussing some of the current events issues that dominated the news last week with the Supreme Court decisions and the issue concerning the Confederate flag in South Carolina. Students then read several articles over the role of the first ladies and the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in the 2016 election. We also discussed the advice that they would give to each candidate if they were advisors to either the Republican or Democrat candidate during the upcoming election. Students also examined several political cartoons pertaining to the election and analyzed the latest polls concerning all the presidential candidates.

After the morning break, students were shown a presidential card trick in which the secrets to the trick were revealed. Students went to the library and took a survey to find out which former president their personality matched up with. They researched articles over who won the Cold War and the positive vs. negative consequences of Reaganomics. Students researched political cartoons over the Reagan presidency and wrote down their three favorite cartoons.

When students came back from lunch, we watched a short clip over President Reagan and analyzed how historians view ten different categories over Reagan’s presidency. Students then were divided into two different campaign teams in which they designed posters for the 1984 debate that was role-played by Baxter and Hayden. They debated the topics that were the focus of the debate between Walter Mondale and President Ronald Reagan.

During the last portion of class, students read about Jackson’s decision regarding the National Bank and the consequences of his decision. We then watched and contrasted different campaign commercials of Reagan and Mondale during the 1984 election. Students watched some of the key moments of the actual debate between the presidential candidates in 1984. We watched how Saturday Night Live portrayed two important events of the Reagan presidency. Students watched a short clip over Reagan’s second term and the legacy of his presidency. We read a current events article over the tension between the Americans and the Russians over Ukraine and the Baltic region. Students ended class by getting into two groups in which they created a list over which American women they thought deserved to be put on a $10 or $20 bill.

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