TITLE: Developing a Monologue or Journal Entry Based on Photographs of the Dust Bowl

ENGLISH: Social Studies

TEKS:

Chapter 110 Grades 9-12 1 A, B, C 2 A,B, C 3 A, B, C 19 A 4H (Grade 12)

OBJECTIVE:

The student will infer the emotions of various individuals portrayed in the photographs and depict these feelings in a monologue or journal entry.

The student will explore the verisimilitude of art to reality, sharing ideas and observations in class discussion.

MATERIALS:

• See images below

DISCUSSION:

1. What details in the photographs place the time period? What photographic techniques have been used or are relevant to the pictures?
2. What do the details in the pictures tell us about the lives of the selected individuals in the photos? Choose one of the photographs. What words might describe how that individual felt? What do the facial expressions suggest?
3. While facts are important, what depth does the photography add to one's understanding of the time and circumstances?
4. If these were artists' drawings rather than photographs, would that have made a difference to the viewer's reaction?
5. The photographs suggest something about the lives these people lived. What conclusions can you draw about the family life and the personal life of any one individual in a photo? What types of experiences do you imagine they have had? Would you say their lives have been happy? carefree? Why?

VOCABULARY TERMS:

persona, realism, Dust Bowl

PROCEDURE:

• Have students examine the pictures and discuss the historical phenomenon of the Dust Bowl. The FSA photographs depict the depth of human suffering and the perseverance of the human spirit that emerged in this time period, most generally associated with the decade of the 30s in the panhandle area and western states. Small farmers and migrant workers, struggling to survive, eked out what they could and searched for a better life in a world turned gray and dismal.
• Students should identify both the human frailty and strength in these pictures. They should be able to focus on the facial expressions and the emotions behind the faces. Ask them to infer what circumstances in life might have resulted in the emotions revealed or the settings and details included. Ask them to try to get "into" the characters and imagine how one of them might have felt. Ask them to describe an event the person might have experienced and their reaction to it.
• Ask them to imagine other family members who might be observing the person at the moment of the snapshot. What might they think and feel?
• Finally, have students adopt the persona of an individual in one of the photographs. They are to write a monologue or soliloquy appropriate to that individual, or create a journal entry the individual might have recorded. An alternate assignment might be for the individual in the picture to write a friendly letter to a relative who lives some distance away. In any of the assignments, the student needs to explain the individual's feelings, then perhaps an event or situation which prompted these feelings.

EVALUATION:

Rubric which addresses the areas of language or detail as well as evidence of appropriate emotion and logical inference based on the picture.

RESOURCES:

Publications:
Curtis, James. Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Steinbeck, John. The Harvest Gypsies. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1936.
Voices from the Dustbowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection. 1940-1941.

Internet Links:
The Dust Bowl, http://www.usd.edu/anth/epa/dust.html