On Blackjack and Don Quixote

On Blackjack and Don Quixote: The Spanish author who conceived of Don Quixote de la Mancha (Miguel de Cervantes) way back in 1605 also wrote a variety of short stories. One such short story (Riconete y Cortadillo) involved a card game called veinteuno (Spanish 21), which is a blackjack variant. Unlike blackjack, however, Spanish 21 is played with a reduced set of cards (all 10s are removed). This variation actually increases the odds of staying below 21, and thus, it also slightly improves your chances of winning. For many poor (landless) Spanish peasants, playing veinteuno became a way of life. And since opportunities for social class mobility were quite limited some 400 years ago, sharpening one's card game skills was something that many young adult (males) did on a frequent basis. So when Don Quixote was not out attacking windmills on horseback, he just may have been sitting around playing veinteuno with a couple of pals.

On Henrietta Lacks and HeLa Cells

On Henrietta Lacks and HeLa Cells: In February of 1951, an African-American woman from rural Virginia (Henrietta Lacks) was dying of cervical cancer. Without her knowledge, doctors (cell biologists) took samples of her tumor cells to see if they would continue to grow or multiply outside of her body. Labeling them "HeLa" cells, these were the first cells used to create an "immortal line." Until the arrival of HeLa cells, doctors (cell biologists) had spent a majority their time trying to keep cells alive. With HeLa cells, however, they no longer had to worry about cellular reproduction, because these cells seemed to multiply indefinitely. What made "immortal" cell lines so valuable was that they could be used to generate an enormous amount of medical research. Unfortunately, the Lacks family was not made aware of of Henrietta's "immortality" until around 1975. And the taking of Henrietta's personal property for research purposes (without her consent) certainly raised a number of patient privacy concerns that still remain issues in healthcare to this day (HIPAA).

On Nellie Bly and Her Mad-House

On Nellie Bly and Her Mad-House: Getting yourself committed to an insane asylum (on purpose) is no easy task. But as an investigative journalist, Nellie Bly had to get the scoop on what was happening at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Roosevelt Island in New York City. The year was 1887, and Bly had recently left her job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch to work for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. And as one of her first assignments, she went undercover to expose the dark underbelly of American lunatic asylums. Bly faked insanity while living at a women's boardinghouse. Having been examined by a psychiatrist, they committed her to the asylum. While there, she experienced the wretched conditions of asylum life firsthand. Many of the patients were actually sane immigrants, but they simply could not speak English. Clean clothes and edible food were hard to find, and torture (sitting on straight-back benches, wearing straight-jackets, etc.) seemed to be the only daily activity. The newspaper got Bly released after ten days, and she later published a book about her findings.

On Abolition and Women's Rights (1840s/50s)

On Abolition and Women's Rights (1840s/50s): In the 1840s, multiple social movements gained momentum in American politics. From abolition (of slavery) to nativism (anti-immigration) to suffrage (women's rights), many Americans in the 1840s (especially those of the emerging middle class) were becoming aware of the changing cultural attitudes in society at large. Undoubtedly, the primary catalyst for these changing attitudes was industrialization, as increasing numbers of people were able to obtain employment in the growing economy. By the late 1840s, two of these movements started to develop concurrently. Abolition and women's rights saw their first major overlap in July 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in Upstate New York. At the Convention, there were three competing visions that needed to be reconciled. One vision was that of Susan B. Anthony, who (representing white women) advocated for voting rights over ending slavery. Another vision included Sojourner Truth, who (representing free black women) pushed for both abolition and suffrage at the same time. The final vision involved the likes of Frederick Douglass, who (representing free black men) encouraged abolition over women's rights.

On Political Cartoons and the Anti-Imperialists

On Political Cartoons and the Anti-Imperialists: The above cartoon appeared in Harper's Weekly in September 1900. It depicts a fiery President McKinley firing a cannon into an effigy mocking him and the pageantry of imperialism. One October night in 1898, McKinley claimed to have been visited by God in a dream, Who told him to start building an American empire. The first step in that empire-building process would be war with Spain, which enabled the U.S. to acquire territories like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. At the same time, however, there was a growing cohort of Americans who viewed these imperial acquisitions with disdain. Led in part by two Massachusetts Senators, George Boutwell and George Hoar, the Anti-Imperialist League actively opposed the McKinley/Roosevelt administrations in their attempts to expand America's power/reach around the world. The primary argument put forth by the anti-imperialists was that the U.S. got its start as a country thanks to anti-imperialism. Why did the country now want to take the same path as Britain or Spain? Imperial empires only seem to end in disaster.

On Instructional Scaffolding

On Instructional Scaffolding: During the learning process, some students need extra support when accessing the curriculum. One of the teacher's primary goals should always be to make the curriculum as accessible as possible. Instructional scaffolding is one such strategy that teachers can employ to achieve this goal. At the start of each class, it behooves the teacher to set the tone for the period (usually by having students complete an opening task). Quick notes (bullet points) or sentence frames are some of the better ways to get students to respond. After a brief discussion of the opener, the teacher can move toward sequencing and/or guiding the lesson. This is generally marked by an activity (group work, pair-share, etc.). After giving instructions for the primary activity, the teacher's role ought to gradually dissipate as the class moves forward. This dissipation allows students to take charge of their learning, which is the main objective behind scaffolding. As the class nears its end, however, the teacher should step back in to synthesize leftover thoughts and reaffirm upcoming tasks.

On Henry Flagler and Florida's Atlantic Coast

On Henry Flagler and Florida's Atlantic Coast: As a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company in Ohio during the 1860s (along with John D. Rockefeller), Flagler later committed his substantial wealth into developing Florida's Atlantic coastline. He first visited the area around St. Augustine in the 1880s to help manage his first wife's illness. While there, Flagler saw Florida's enormous potential for growth given its plethora of natural resources. To facilitate such growth, Flagler started the Florida East Coast Railway, which originally ran from Jacksonville to Miami, but later continued on to Key West. By the time of Flager's death in 1913, his railroad's impact on Florida's Atlantic coastline was unmistakable. Resort towns and manufacturing communities from West Palm Beach to Fort Pierce to Melbourne began to sprout up along the railroad's route. Specific examples of Flagler's legacy on Floridian tourism include the Ponce de Leon Hotel (now Flagler College), the Breakers Hotel (Palm Beach), and the Royal Palm Hotel (Miami).

On Walter Reed and Yellow Fever

On Walter Reed and Yellow Fever: Born in Virginia 1851, Reed earned his first medical degree by age 18. He understood at an early age that treating patients for disease was important, but researching and finding the origins of particular diseases was supreme. After Reed joined the U.S. Army as a medical officer, he was named one of the first professors of bacteriology (which was an emerging clinical field at the time). When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898, many soldiers started dying from yellow fever. There were two prevailing theories in the 1890s about how people became infected with yellow fever. One was that yellow fever transmitted through physical contact while the other was that mosquitoes carried the disease. Reed set up an experiment (in Cuba) to figure out how the disease spread. In two separate tents, Reed placed soldiers under different circumstances. One tent had bed-clothing from troops with yellow fever while the other had mosquitoes in it. Needless to say, the troops in the mosquito-laden tent came down with the disease while the others did not. It was a breakthrough in the field of virology, as blood had now become a primary culprit in the transfer of disease.

On the Mau Mau Uprising

On the Mau Mau Uprising: From 1952 to 1960, groups of Kikuyu people known as the Mau Mau openly rebelled against British authorities in Colonial Kenya. As part of the larger decolonization process in Africa during the mid-twentieth century, the Mau Mau helped incite a significant shift in the power relations between European colonizers and their African subjects. Proximal causes of the Uprising were two-fold. First, the Kikuyu were becoming increasingly marginalized under the British. In an economic sense, this meant the Kikuyu were losing vast swaths of land to British settlers who wished to farm. Second, the British encouraged the Kikuyu to engage in wage labor (either on the farms or for the colonial railroads). And it was this kind of cultural chauvinism which led the Kikuyu peoples (Masai, Nandi, etc.) to start squatting on lands. As an open act of defiance, some of the Kikuyu (Mau Mau) began planning organized attacks against not only British soldiers, but also British settlers. These attacks blossomed into an outright rebellion by 1952, when the Colonial Governor (Evelyn Baring) declared a State of Emergency.

On Quebec's Quiet Revolution

On Quebec's Quiet Revolution: In the 1960s and 1970s, the Province of Quebec underwent a series of trans-formative sociopolitical changes. For one thing, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) gained serious traction in provincial politics, which made the prospects of a sovereign, independent Quebec a distinct possibility.  As part of this sovereignist instinct, political leaders like Jean Lesage and Rene Levesque (pictured above) wanted the Province to have more direct control over industries like education and healthcare. Prior to the 1960s, much of those two industries were heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. Two other major initiatives of the Quiet Revolution involved areas such as civil service and utilities. With civil service, politicians pushed for a provincial-wide pension system for public employees. And as for utilities, politicians sought energy independence with the increased development of Hydro-Quebec, which generates electricity for the entire Province.

On Cell Theory

On Cell Theory: After modern compound microscopes became available in Europe during the 1600s, scientists used them to study everyday objects like shoes, teeth, plants, and wood. One such scientist, Anton van Leeuwenhoek from Holland, started as a lens grinder who was able to invent his own microscope. Another such scientist, Robert Hooke from England, began to document what he observed in a book titled Micrographia (1665), which contained a series of drawings and sketches that popularized the emerging science of microscopy. And even though these early microscopes could only magnify objects up to 300 times, these scientists were fascinated by what they saw. Yet it was not until the 1800s that anything tangible regarding "cell theory" became codified. In fact, it's usually two German scientists (Schwann & Schleiden) who are credited with formulating the basic pillars of cell theory (the idea that cells are the fundamental units of life). However, Hooke named them "cells," because they reminded him of where monks went to pray and sleep.

1970s New York City = Rock Bottom

1970s New York City = Rock Bottom: On the verge of financial collapse, NYC in the 1970s was not a place that you wanted to be. Known for its high crime rates, high suicide rates, widespread rat infestations, graffiti-plagued public transit, and political corruption, NYC had reached a low-point in its urban history. Facing bankruptcy, the city was able to secure a series of federal loans topping $3.5 billion. However, these loans came with strict stipulations such as drastically cutting municipal services, including buses, subways, libraries, and police/fire stations. Even NYC's teachers' union, headed by Albert Shanker, had to fork over as much as $150 million from its pension fund to keep the city afloat. Yet aside from financial problems, NYC had also garnered negative press in the 1970s for a variety of other reasons. Perhaps the most infamous was the police department's corruption scandal, which saw detective Frank Serpico testify about the need for vast reforms within the NYPD. Such reforms involved subjects like officer accountability, internal affairs investigations, and confidential informants.