2019 is here! What does that mean? Another year another winter exhibition. This years exhibition was pretty eventful and full of emotional roller coasters. All in all, I am immensely proud of not only my class but of myself as well. During this project I stepped out of my comfort zone (something I rarely do) and nothing but good things and learning opportunities came my way. Anyways, enough blabbering. Lets get to the project!

So we began this unit in the 1950s. We watched a video documentary called “life in the 1950s” were we took a huge page of notes about the events, people and key terms of the ‘50s. This way we could get a well rounded idea of what we were about to get ourselves into. We then started reading the Crucible, a play about the salem witch trials. It was written in the 1950s by Arthur Miller. Throughout the book we identified different themes and delved deeper into how they intertwined with the 1950s.

During the reading of the play were were assigned something called “creative creations”. These were essentially mini posts based on driving questions/prompts. With the prompts we can use our hobbies and passions to create something. For my first post, I used the prompt “How to spot a…” which i turned into “How to spot a Kook”, here it is. For my second post I used the driving question “think of an image from the play, use that image to create a spatial poem, photo essays etc…”, you can read all about that here. Finally I did my last post on “when the power or control of someone else effected me”. Honestly, I really enjoyed all three of these mini assignment. I think this was because we were able to have more control over what we were writing about!

After finishing the crucible we watched the movie, which I must admit was kinda good. It starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. During the movie we completed a chart about the different themes that were represented in the movie. We didn’t know it at the time, but the chart would help us a lot in the future!

So after wrapping up the whole crucible fiasco we started focusing on the events of the 1950s. During this we were finally introduced our project!

The project would take place in our school gym, it would essentially be an interactive play. The content of this play would follow a “three prong approach”, the Crucible, the 1950s and today. The play would need to include at least 5 sections and a theme. I know this may be hard to imagine so here’s a sketch of our final gym floor plan:

Let’s back it up to day one though. This was our brainstorm day where we would try to come up with a theme and each sections plot diagram. The teachers weren’t there that day, so it came to a surprise when our class was really productive. We ended up finishing the theme, and all seven plot diagrams on day one and two! I was actually very proud of everybody because we had worked nonstop, we collaborated well, everybody was inclusive and the whiteboard was covered in great ideas! We had extra time to kill so we ended up divvying up roles for the project since there was a lot of us.

Once the teachers got back, they helped us synthesize our ideas and decide on two DRI’s. Since the project was so big the DRIs would be responsible for making sure everything goes smoothly, whether that be time management or making some hard decisions. I decided I wanted to challenge myself this project and step outside of my comfort zone, so I volunteered to be one of the two DRIs!

Lets get into the facts now… what was the 1950s in America really about?

Timeline

McCarthyism & The House of Un-American Activities

Now comes a huge part of the ‘50s, Senator McCarthy. He was the one who created the ideology of McCarthyism and sent America into a whirlwind of accusations. He started accusing people left and right of communism. A... Read More

Eisenhower Speech

Well the ideology of the ‘50s would start with the Eisenhower inauguration speech. His speech included the phrase “Make America Great”, one i’m sure we are all very familiar with. This was a perfect moment for our three prong... Read More

G.I. Bill & Consumerism

The 1950s were then led into the returning of Vets. This brought along something called the GI bill which would help sustain vets and there families. It gave them the capability to have jobs and start a ‘Nuclear... Read More

Korean Proxy War

Next we have the Korean War. This is were we start hearing more and more about communism, something America was strongly against. If communism grew, Americas neighbours would no longer trade products which would immensely decrease the American... Read More

This is were the Crucible comes into play. What was really interesting about the play was that it wasn’t actually about the witch trials, it was written about the McCarthy Trials. Arthur Miller wrote this in an outrage for the unjust ways the government was treating people.

All the information you read was stuffed into our 20/30ish minute interactive play. We also added a few connections to today, like the phrase “witch hunt”. This phrase has a very powerful connection to today, the 1950s, and the crucible. It was famously used in the McCarthyism trials, the salem witch trails and Mueller investigations. Finally one of our classmates created a video for the end of the exhibition. The video was filled with clips of trump saying “witch hunt”. This allowed the audience to draw to today, and was the cherry on top of the play.

During this whole process the class was working together to create fantastic props, and an even better script. We worked almost everyday, and hand built everything! I must say it was stressful, hard work but TOTALLY worth it in the end.

The day of the exhibition we had a few malfunctions like walls not working, and losing gavels (don’t ask). But guess what… it all worked out in the end! Everybody worked hard at memorizing lines and embracing there character to make the best possible experience for the audience. Your probably tired of reading this and I’m guessing you want to see this magnificent project… so here it is:

The 1950s were such a big part of America and what you just read/saw was really the tip of the iceberg. I know i’ve said this so much, but I can’t express how happy I am with the outcome of everything. I am also so proud of what my class was able to create once we put our heads together. Overall I learned so much about the 1950s, how to collaborate on large scales and I improved my leadership skills!