Modern America, Day 1 - Class Recap

The outside of the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. I mean, I'm a history teacher - I couldn't resist going to look at the building myself when I first visited the city in 2010!

Dear class,

Second to last weekend of the year! Today was another one day deep dive into a topic in the last century of American history - Watergate! What a super interesting piece of our history, at least to me! Here's the class recap:

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Waterfalls" by TLC. Selected because today we learned all about the Watergate scandal in class. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 5/30/14:
News Brief
Watergate PowerPoint
The Final Report
Fall of the Wall

Homework: All late/make up/missing work (aside from Cold War newspaper) due by 11:59 PM tonight (Friday, May 30). My email is luke_fritz@beaverton.k12.or.us if you need it. Have a wonderful weekend! Read the blog! Next news brief: Miles.

News Brief: The news today consisted of the 20 minutes or so of Westview student elections campaign advertisements after Wildcat News. I passed out ballots for everyone to vote - I'm glad we get to participate in democracy!

Watergate PowerPoint: To start talking about Watergate, I asked the class about what a "scandal" was and gave some examples of scandals. Many scandals have names that end in -gate, due to this scandal! After the video (we switched up the order, due to the long campaign ads), I went through a PowerPoint. I tried to go fast on this, because there are a bunch of slides and I really just want students to get the main points of what happened for the upcoming multiple choice final. Here is the presentation again if you missed class or wanted to read through it at your own pace:

Google Drive - The Watergate Scandal PowerPoint

Some of the main points not covered by the documentary we watched were about President Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigning due to unrelated corruption charges. This also went more into depth about how President Gerald Ford got to be President without ever being elected to the Executive Branch, and the pardon he gave President Nixon.

The Final Report: Before the PowerPoint, I showed a National Geographic documentary on what happening in the Watergate scandal. These were the questions to answer in class:

Google Drive - Watergate: The Final Report Video Questions

Here is the video we watched in class:

Again, I find the entire story so interesting! This was a President of the United States, who had to resign, because he was connected to all of these crimes! I hope everyone understood the importance of this, especially in connection to what we were learning about the Cold War and the Vietnam War as a part of it. The result was really deep dissatisfaction and distrust about the U.S. government.

Fall of the Wall: We did not get to this in class. Next time! Quite a lot to pack in: I want to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall, along with our modern "War on Terror," too. Looking forward to these last few days of teaching you! Have a great weekend and come back ready for one last full week of the school year!