By James Parks

As kids go through school, they rarely learn about unions and the role unions play in workers’ lives and in shaping American history. “When I was growing up, we saw pictures of the violence at Haymarket,” says Dan Golodner, an archivist with the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, referring to the day in 1886 when police killed more than 50 peaceful labor protestors in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. But, he says, “That was it.”

Union activists and educators are developing strategies to ensure children learn more about union and social justice movements. The key, says Golodner, is making the lessons entertaining. “There has been a groundswell of books being pushed to the forefront on labor issues, many of them dealing with issues in a way that can be used to teach children about unions and social justice,” he says. Golodner organized a series of workshops highlighting unique methods to spread the union movement’s message for a July American Labor Studies 2003 Conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the American Labor Studies Center. The labor studies website offers a free guide to teaching labor history and issues for grades K–12.

Educators also are using books—two good new ones are ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! and Rosa Parks: From the Back of the Bus to the Front of a Movement—as effective tools to help children understand the importance of America’s movements for social justice.

In ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! author Diana Cohn honors the 8,000 mostly immigrant Los Angeles janitors, who in April 2000 went on strike for better wages and health insurance. Cohn tells the story of Carlitos, whose mother cleans offices. His mamá explains that she can’t support him and his abuelita (little grandmother) unless she can earn more money. She and the other janitors have decided to go on strike. To support his mamá and the other striking workers, Carlitos and his classmates make posters. Carlitos joins the marchers with a sign that reads “I love my mamá. She is a janitor.” While the book ends with Carlitos joining his mother on the picket line, in real life the janitors won a three-year contract that raised wages $1.90 an hour.

The book also includes a poster for classroom use that answers questions about labor unions, strikes, the history of unions in the United States and the concept of solidarity.

In March, all the classes at Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, D.C., studied ¡Sí, Se Puede! as part of the celebration of Women’s History Month, highlighting Carlitos’ mother as a model of a strong and courageous woman, says school librarian Laura Kleinmann.

In the fifth-and sixth-grade classes, one of the school custodians, Darryl Jackson, read the book and discussed with the students what his job is like. He also told the students how important his union was to him. Having Jackson talk about the book really brought the message home to the students, Kleinmann says. “He cleans up after them, and he shared how they can help him and respect him,” she says.

Marcy Fink Campos, director of training and professional development for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, suggests math exercises drawn from the book involving questions such as, “If you work an eight-hour day, how much would you earn in one day at $7 an hour? Can people live on that amount? How might you find out?”

Another book that tells an important story in a way that engages children is Rosa Parks: From the Back of the Bus to the Front of a Movement, a book for children ages 8–12. Most adults remember Rosa Parks as a 42-year-old woman whose sensible hairstyle frames a determined yet peaceful expression. She refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, a move that provided the catalyst for the civil rights movement. But author Camilla Wilson demonstrates the fortitude, determination and character Parks developed as a little girl.

Living in the segregated South of the 1920s, Parks wanted to be treated like any other little girl. But that was not the way things were done in the small rural town of Pine Level, Ala., where black children and white children lived in different neighborhoods, attended different schools and were treated differently. Young Parks even worried that the Ku Klux Klan would burn down her school.

When she grew up and moved to Montgomery, Parks learned African Americans still were treated differently—forced to drink from separate water fountains and sit on the back of the bus even though they paid the same fare as white riders. The day she refused to move from her seat made history.

	Children Dream Big
	Helping children understand the importance of workers standing in solidarity with each other can have powerful effects. As part of an assignment on Black History Month and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mark Mercer, a fourth-grade student at Columbia Academy in Columbia, Md., wrote an essay about his dream for a better world. His mother, Kim Mercer, is a member of the Office and Professional Employees Local 2 and works at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

“In the book, I emphasized Rosa Parks’s early life to show that she followed her instincts and that her perseverance as a child led to the events that helped her become famous,” says Wilson, who is assistant professor of mass communications at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

“I hope schools use the book as a tool to illustrate qualities that are beneficial to children such as having a strong sense of self and standing up for yourself,” Wilson adds.

To bring the Parks story to life, educators could assign children to write short essays on how they would have reacted if they had been on the bus the day Rosa Parks refused to move and have them re-enact the event, says Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy State University Montgomery. To dramatize the impact of racism, Norman says she often asks children if someone has done something bad to them because they have a certain color hair or looked different in any way and what they would do if they noticed someone being treated badly because of the way they look.

“It’s important that children understand what happened to Mrs. Parks is not something that just happened in the past, but that it could happen today and they have the ability to change things,” Norman says.

For a free copy of a ¡Sí, Se Puede! lesson plan, visit www.teachingforchange.org and click on “Catalog.”