Ryan Fowler
TE-408
Role-Play Lesson Plan
Lesson Objectives:
Students will gain an understanding of the McCarthyism era by acting out certain roles to put them in the time. The idea will be to examine how terrible it is to be persecuted based on completely unsubstantiated evidence. By putting themselves in the roles of people who were blacklisted students will understand the fear and paranoia of communism in America.
Assessment:
The participation of the class during the role-play will serve as the main assessment. If students act out their parts sufficiently I will know that they understand. However, just to be sure the students understood the fear and paranoia during the 50’s I am going to have them right an exit card about their roles. They are going to write a paragraph or two about whether or not they think what happened to them or how they treated other people was fair or not.
Introduction:
The class will start with a simple recall method based on what we learned the previous day. Students will already have an understanding of what the Red Scare was and they are going to get into groups and discuss. As an entire class we will have a short review discussion bringing up the major points of communism, blacklisting, and the House of un-American activity.
Activities:
There is going to a set of characters devised by the teacher. There is going to be a total of four or five groups that represent the characters at different stages in their lives. For example, there is only going to a character named Henry. Henry is an alleged communist. Each group is going to have a Henry, but each group is going to have a different stage of Henry’s life that they need to act out. The groups are going to be as follows:
Group 1: Pre accusation
Scenario: You are going to be having a nice family dinner. Based on the decryptions bellow create a dialogue about communism at the dinner table. The parents should be addressing the children’s understanding of what communism is.
Henry: Your name is Henry. You are a father of two wonderful children. You live in a nice suburban home and work for a successful law firm. You are well liked by your co-workers and have built a respectable name for yourself as a lawyer. You are by no means a communist, but you believe in liberty. You are not wiling to persecute someone for having different beliefs from your own.
Susie: You are the wife of Henry. You two have been happily married for eight years and things are going great.
Jane: You are Henry’s daughter. You are a young girl in fourth grade. You are learning a lot about communism and how to protect yourself from atomic bombs in school.
Billy: You are Henry’s son. You are a sophomore in high school. Like Jane you have also received training in school on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack from communists. Because of your schooling you are deeply scared and paranoid of an attack by the Russians.
Group 2: Emerging problems
Scenario: The law firm that Henry works received a case that requires a defending attorney for a self-proclaimed communist convicted of murder. All of Henry’s co-workers refuse the case instantly. Henry himself is extremely apprehensive in taking the case. However, he feels that maintaining the rule of law and ensuring obeying the Constitution are more important than his own fears about the case. Your goal is going to be to create a dialogue that represents Henry’s reason for taking the case and his co-workers denial of the case.
Henry: You want to ensure a fair trial. You truly believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
Co-workers 1,2, and 3: Come up with reason as to why you do not want to take the case.
Group 3: The trial
Scenario: Henry starts doing research on his client’s case. The more he finds, the more he believes the man is innocent. In fact, his client has an alibi and there is compelling evidence that he did not commit the murder. However, none of this matters. The court cannot see behind the fact that the defendant was a communist. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Henry: Convince the jury that the man is innocent.
Jury members 1,2, and 3: Talk about why you decided to convict the man. Focus on the fact that he was a communist
Group 4: Aftermath
Scenario: A few days go by after the upsetting trial. Henry notices that people in his town are starting to treat him differently. His co-workers refuse to talk with him, and he feels mistrusted by a lot of people. He realizes that after he defended a communist people are starting to think that he is a communist himself. Suspicions and paranoia run so deep that Henry eventually looses his job.
Henry: Your goal is to defend yourself from the accusations being thrown at you. Respond to thing that your peers say to you. Explain to your children and wife what is going on.
Co-workers: Talk about how the firm cannot afford to have a suspected communist working for them.
Children: Ask your father why he lost his job. Try figuring out if he is communist.
Susie: Show your concern for the families stability. Ask Henry how he plans on supporting the family without a job.
Group 5:
Scenario: Henry needs to find a new job. However, he is finding it extremely difficult after he has been blacklisted.
Henry: Look for jobs. You want to become a lawyer again, but you might need to settle for something less.
Children: Tell your father that you ridiculed at school. They have no friends anymore because of him.
Susie: Put pressure on Henry. The family needs to go on living, but she feels so helpless.
Closure: There is going to be a short discussion about how the role-play went down. Henry lost everything. Was that fair at all? The teacher will show some statistics about how many people this sort of thing actually happened to. Hopefully it will be shown that fear and paranoia can be powerful weapons.