Down with the Sickness
For many people, diseases and history are not two topics that go together; diseases are a scientific topic while history is, you know, the study of dead people. But if you examine the human experience throughout the centuries, you see that diseases have affected societies in a variety of ways. Since many of these historical diseases have been eradicated or cured with vaccines, the social effects of have been forgotten. But now we are seeing a reemergence of these diseases for a variety of reasons. Because of this connection, my sophomore students investigated disees and their effects as part of their project based learning of the Industrial Revolution. Unlike prior projects, this knowledge was not kept within the confines of the classroom; the final projects were donated to Valley Children’s Hospital in hopes of spreading awareness about historical diseases. The project was launched in November with a PearDeck where students viewed of several news reports of recent outbreaks: