United We Stand

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Objectives:

• Students will read a short biography of César Chávez and use a graphic organizer to aid reading comprehension.
• Students will understand how Chávez worked with others to struggle for the common good.
• Through Chávez's story, students will be introduced to labor unions and explore how it can be powerful to speak out as a group, and not just as individuals.

Framework:
In our schools and in our culture more broadly, we often teach young people how important it is to stand up for ourselves. Too often, however, we focus such lessons on the power of an individual's voice — even an individual child standing alone who somehow finds a way to stand up to the big, scary bully. We often forget to communicate to children how powerful it can be to stand up with others and speak out against unfairness or injustice.

In this lesson, students will learn about César Chávez, one of our nation's greatest labor leaders, but they also will examine how the successes attributed to Chavez were actually the result of efforts from thousands of other people, too.

Materials:

• Paper and pens/pencils
• Copies of an excerpt of the California Department of Education's Biographical Sketch of César E. Chávez, which is leveled for grade 4. For the purposes of this activity, the sketch should be excerpted to include the "Introduction" and the sections from "A New Life of Service" through "Four More Years of Striking."
• Copies of Scholastic's Problem and Solution Diagram (PDF)

Procedures:
Open the lesson by asking students to think of a time when they encountered a problem or challenge. Would it have been helpful to have other kids (or adults) speak out with them to help solve the problem? Ask students to do a quick free-write about their experience.

Allow students time, as homework or in class, individually or in small groups, to read an excerpt of the Biographical Sketch of César E. Chávez. Provide students or groups with copies of Scholastic's Problem and Solution Diagram (PDF) to support reading comprehension: What was the problem Chávez was trying to solve? How did he — and others — try to address that problem? How did things turn out?

As a class, discuss:

• Who are the farmworkers?
• What was happening to the farmworkers that was unfair or unkind? Why was it unfair or unkind?
• What changes did César Chávez and the farmworkers seek?
• How did forming a union help them speak out?
• What actions did Chávez and the farmworkers take to help make change possible?
• Who supported Chávez and the farmworkers? Why was their support important?
• Would Chávez have been successful without the farmworkers' support? Without other people's support? Why?
• What changes occurred as a result of their collective efforts?

Ask students to pull out their free-writes from the opening of the activity. Prompt student volunteers to share entries that relate to issues or problems that happened in your school. As a class, talk about how you can work with each other, join together as a group like the farmworkers and their allies, and make change happen in your school. Take action on those ideas.

Standards

This lesson meets standards in K-4 historical understanding and language arts.