- Welcome to Benjamin Franklin and the Common Good, the second in our series on Teaching Benjamin Franklin Authentically.

I am Lauren McDowell, the Education Services Manager here at PBS North Carolina, and I have alongside of me tonight Dana Hall, our Program Coordinator.

She will be engaging with you in the chat.

And I will be introducing our fearless leader in just a moment.

Before I pass the mic to her, I just wanted to share a little bit about the individual that's leading us on another enriching journey, Ms. Kimberly Jones.

She is a high school teacher in Chapel Hill.

She is actually the 2023 Chapel Hill-Carrboro Teacher of the Year.

She's also the '23-'24 Sullivan Chair for Excellence in High School English and Social Studies Education.

And last but not least, she is a Co-Regional Director for the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust.

Thank you for leading us tonight, Ms. Jones.

And as we begin, make sure to keep yourself muted.

She's gonna have opportunities for engagement all evening, and she will guide us through that.

I will pass it over to you, Ms. Jones.

- Good evening, everyone.

Thank you so much for being with us again tonight, because one of the things that I love about the curriculum and about the lessons that we're gonna be covering tonight is how adaptable they are to multiple forms of instruction and student learning, both whole group, small group, pair and share, et cetera.

So lots of ways for students to engage, from written reflections to short oral presentations, and again, to these small group discussions.

So as we move forward, there's a couple of things I'd love to share with you to let you know a little bit about myself.

On this slide, I'm just sharing some images from my own classroom of my students doing some of the kinds of work that we're gonna do in our session tonight.

So small group intensive shared analysis of primary documents.

These are images from my Holocaust classroom, and students are engaging with primary source documents from the period, sharing out, each kind of independently doing their own individual analysis, and then creating a collective product.

Moving forward.

The other thing I wanna do, Lauren was very gracious and gave me a beautiful introduction.

I always, always, always want to give credit to our curriculum author.

So everything that you see tonight, all of the lessons, most, with exception, and I'll tell you when we encounter those things, but most of the lesson plans and the graphic organizers that we're gonna be using were created by Dr. Shanedra Nowell, Social Studies Teacher and Teacher and Educator at Oklahoma State University.

Moving forward.

So to give you an idea of what we're gonna cover tonight, if you were in our first session last week and you are back again this week, thank you so much for sharing your time with us and diving into Benjamin Franklin again.

He's a rather complex figure, so complex that we have another week next week, next Tuesday night, and we invite all of you to join us again next Tuesday.

But our goals for today, primarily, we wanna gain ideas for using the Benjamin Franklin documentary, brought to us by PBS, the Ken Burns documentary on Ben Franklin.

And above all, embrace the challenge of teaching a whole history with a complex and varied perspective.

One that invites all learners, no matter their background, their first language, their personal identities into the subject matter.

The other thing we're gonna do is read, analyze, and respond to primary sources.

In this case, we're gonna be looking at everything from images to speeches to excerpts from the documentary itself.

In addition, we're gonna examine the idea of the common good.

What did it mean in Ben Franklin's time, and what does it mean for us today?

Most importantly, what does the common good mean for our students, both in our practice, and in the world that they are inheriting and will very soon shape as its thought leaders, as its political leaders, as its social leaders.

What is the common good?

How do we introduce our students to this topic?

And how do we empower them to determine what the 21st century common goods will be?

We're also gonna learn strategies for teaching complex history.

As I mentioned in that first goal, how do we facilitate classrooms that bring all students safely in and safely out of a topic?

How do we present topics in that history that on its surface might seem rather limited or exclusionary?

How do we find the perspectives that were always there, but maybe underrepresented in history as it's presented?

And lastly, and I'm very excited, because tonight's curriculum is chock full of incredible resources available on the PBS website.

Lots of them I'm going to reference, I'm gonna pull questions from them, but when you get the PDF of this presentation, all of those resources are gonna be there for you to use in your classroom.

So in addition to what we experience as a group tonight, you're gonna have access to very detailed lessons from the PBS website that support these same goals.

Moving forward.

So to that end, we established a wonderful set of norms in our first session, and I'll give you just about 15 seconds to look through those.

And as you do, I'll just hit high points.

Number one, I hope, as your presenter, as your facilitator, the way we have arranged tonight's session is gonna be a mix of conversation in whole group and in small group.

And so I ask that you actively participate, and that you actively listen to the input of your peers.

One of the things that I love about such sessions is the opportunity for educators from across the state to collaborate, to commiserate, and ultimately to create.

In working with each other, I hope that you leave with things that, say, Melissa is doing in her classroom, and you go, "I can do this tomorrow."

Or Lee, who has decades of experience, says, "Here's something that always worked with my kids."

Ryan or Althea may go, "You know, with my ELL learners or with my EC learners, here's a way that this could be modified."

My goal is, as your facilitator, that I give you rough blueprints, and you all leave with modified, personalized lessons that you can apply to this subject and other similar subjects.

Of course, we're gonna assume positive intent.

And I invite all of you to both step forward and share your ideas and opinions, but also step back and make room in the conversation for all voices.

Going forward.

We have three main pedagogical frameworks that have driven all of the curriculum so far.

They're at the core of this idea of teaching authentically.

And they are anti-biased, anti-racist education.

Culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy.

That's where some of our alterations, our modifications to these lessons, based on the unique learners in your classroom are gonna come into play.

Having a responsive classroom could be that, yes, I know this hits these standards of anti-racist, anti-biased education.

I know this lesson hits these standards in terms of an equitable classroom.

How does it meet the unique needs of the children in my room?

How can I shape these lessons?

How can I modify them to be responsive to the unique needs of my learners?

And lastly, media literacy education.

At the core of the piece is the Ken Burns documentary, and we're gonna be talking about multiple ways that we can bring this outstanding documentary into our classroom.

We know that time is limited and history is huge.

So how can we be judicious and thoughtful in the clips that we're bringing into our classroom to get the biggest bang for our buck, and still give our kids dynamic primary source information?

Going forward.

So we're gonna start in a whole group with a primary source analysis.

On that scratch sheet of paper that you have, I would love for you to examine this illustration.

As you are looking at the image, I would love for you to note who or what do you believe is depicted in this image?

What might the different people shown in the image be thinking or feeling?

What assumptions or predictions can we make about the person who created this image?

Dana is going to drop in the chat a link to a larger version of this picture that gives a little bit of contextual information.

There's a hyperlink.

When you all get the pdf, you'll see it says share thoughts or reactions to the image, that's a hyperlink.

Dana's gonna drop that link in the chat so that you can see the broader version.

Lauren's gonna leave the link up because even on the screen right now, we get a little more context that's gonna be important.

So as you're looking at the image, remember, here are our guiding questions.

What background or prior knowledge do we have about this image?

What appears to be happening here?

What might the different people be thinking or feeling?

What assumptions or predictions can we make about the artist?

So let's take about two minutes and respond to these three opening questions.

[upbeat banjo music] Of course, in our classrooms, we would give our students more time to process through these questions, to work through these questions together.

However, I wanna share with you a tool to help direct our thinking just a bit more.

It's one of the first kind of tools that I think is gonna be applicable not only to our study of Benjamin Franklin, but I think it's an incredible tool that teachers in all levels of classrooms can use to help their students particularly analyze photographs.

So let me introduce you, or refresh some of you, on an amazing tool called OPTIC.

Moving Forward.

So OPTIC is a visual analysis strategy.

OPTIC stands for an acronym that will then be turned into five areas of analysis that students will practice.

Again, this may be a tool that is very familiar in history classrooms, where you're constantly looking at sort of primary illustrations, photographs from various historical events.

But as an English teacher, it was new to me, and it gave me a great tool to go beyond sort of what do my eyes see?

A lot of times when I give my students images in the classroom, they proceed to summarize the picture in words.

They will say things like, "I see a man."

"I see a boy."

"The boy looks sad."

"It's in black and white."

And that's about it.

And I have to go, "Great.

Good job telling me the things that we see.

Let's look again."

But the thing is, when we ask kids to revisit a text, we remember being students, unless that analysis is directed with specific guidelines, with specific lenses, we're still kind of going through the summary step and the recall step.

This is what I see.

And we're not necessarily moving sort of beyond even what's in the foreground of an image to look at it in a full context.

OPTIC gives us the tools to help students do that.

So the first step that students will do when using the OPTIC analysis strategy is they'll give the image an overview.

They'll ask, "What is this image about?"

And they'll make their predictions, they'll make their analysis.

They then move into analyzing each part of an image.

I've seen teachers take an image and just draw, using a ruler and a marker, a simple grid pattern, and turning it into this is box A1, this is box A2, this is box A3.

You can even take this and magnify the image, break it into parts, and only give students a specific part to analyze.

Next, text and titles.

Look for any titles or text within the image.

It literally may be what the artist calls it, how the picture is noted, if it's from a photo album.

It could be words on buildings within the pictures.

Consider both literal meanings and metaphoric meanings.

I will say one of the most common forms of illustration I use in my classroom are political cartoons.

And the title of those pieces set so much about the tone with which students can receive the image if they go to use those contextual clues.

I, interrelationships.

How are the parts of the image related?

How do they come together to create a mood, or, as I say in sort of English terms, a tone for the piece?

And lastly, what conclusions can we draw based on this piece?

Again, when you all get the pdf, you're gonna notice there's a hyperlink to an OPTIC worksheet.

I was looking for various ones.

Sometimes I think graphic organizers can be kind of highly convoluted, even if they're meant to be simple.

In my classroom, I need to reiterate instructions at each step.

And the thing I loved about this graphic organizer is it did just that.

So the kids see what each of the five steps look like, and at the top of each box, the question, their lens is reiterated for them.

So I'm gonna give y'all an additional two minutes, and I would love for you to complete just a bare-bones OPTIC on the illustration we just looked at.

So, Lauren, if you could go back one slide.

I'm gonna see what's the best way for you all to be able to do the OPTIC and see the image.

So, Lauren, if you could go forward for just a second.

Sorry to be confusing.

And if you all, on your sheets, will go ahead and just write down these five headers.

As teachers, I think you can kind of put together what each step is without seeing the driving question.

So if you'll just go down the side of your page and go O-P-T-I-C, overview, parts, titles and text, interrelationships, conclusion.

In person, this is much, much simplified, if I can just hand you the handout, but we're making it work in our virtual space.

So just down the side of the page, write OPTIC, overview, parts, text and titles, interrelationship, conclusion.

And now I'm gonna have Lauren go back to our image.

We're gonna take two minutes and complete a bare-bones OPTIC on this particular image.

[upbeat banjo music] Let's come back together.

And before I send you off to talk to each other, I don't always get a chance to hear from learners, from teachers in our big group.

But I wanna start with these initial questions.

We're gonna have some deeper kind of unpacking questions in just a moment, but I do invite you to respond, either in chat or by raising your hand and responding out loud to some of these opening questions.

We'll unpack the OPTIC and some other questions in our small group.

But I do wanna start with who or what is depicted in this image?

And let's start there.

So who or what is being depicted in this image?

Feel free to raise your hand, using the little hand raise emoji.

It's at the bottom under reactions.

If you click on reactions, it'll give you the option to raise your hand, or you can drop it in the chat.

What's being depicted in this image?

All right, I see Ms. Clark's hand.

- [Ms. Clark] Hi.

Well, I see the colonists, and I see the loyalists or the British, and there's a conflict going on.

And you can see that the British are really organized and well structured and prepared, and the colonists seem to be mowed down and surprised.

It seems to be an ordinary day.

There's a dog, there are animals there.

So it wasn't as if they came prepared for war or to fight, you know, this is just something that was aggressive, an aggressive move made by the British.

- Thank you so much, Ms. Clark.

Great points.

And someone in the chat pointed out, "Why is there always a dog?"

I agree.

And I think that's something we can kind of unpack.

I have my own ideas.

Unfortunately, I don't have Paul Revere here to tell me why there's a dog there.

But I think one... And I say this, again, as an English teacher, I think there's a universal appeal to a canine.

There is a humanity that's kind of established when we include animals in our pictures.

There is this humanity that's infused into the colonists.

In the chat, I just saw a great comment, "Dogs symbolize faith and loyalty.

Probably why Revere put the dog with the patriots."

Absolutely.

You feel more sympathetic.

These are people who had pets.

Yes, I was out walking my dog.

It absolutely looks unfair.

I was minding my own business, you know, me and my dog walking down the street, and here comes this redcoat with a gun.

Brianna, Ms. Wyatt, why don't you take that second question for me?

What might the different people shown in the images be thinking or feeling?

Thanks for raising your hand, Ms. Wyatt.

- [Ms. Wyatt] Oh, well the colonizers, they're depicted as being kind of shocked.

Like they didn't see this coming.

In fact, if you look closely to the back, it looks like there's women and children in there.

So that makes the loyalists look like monsters, like murderers that are just firing on an innocent crowd.

And there's one soldier, it's almost like...

I'm trying to find him.

He almost looks excited, in the back, way in the back, to be firing on the crowd.

So looks like, just as the person before said, you have the aggressors, you know, firing on innocent victims that are just shocked and appalled.

- Absolutely.

And Georgia just pointed out the colonists are also unarmed, and visibly so.

There's literally nothing in the image that might intimate that they have even the ability to defend themselves.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Brianna.

Thank you so much, Ms. Clark, for coming on and sharing.

Lee, I see your hand up.

- It's just always struck me within the patriots, you don't see a person of color.

And we all talk about Crispus Attucks, and he's not there.

Unless I'm just not seeing it.

- I promise you are not.

- [Lee] I wonder what was going through Revere's mind.

- Lee is not a plant.

I swear he's not.

But he set me up for what we're gonna talk about in our small groups.

Lee is a colleague of mine in Holocaust work here in North Carolina.

No, it was the perfect, perfect setup.

Like, it's a softball that even I could hit.

Thank you so much, Lee.

But what does it mean for this image to be without Crispus Attucks, who we all historically know is the first American to die in the revolution?

What does it mean when we look at images that are representative of an epic period in history, and certain faces, that we know historically were there, are not present?

How do we equip our kids to look at images, look at texts, be them visual or prose, and not only read and analyze the perspective that's presented, but also consider the missing perspectives, which brings us to your first breakout.

Moving forward for me please, Lauren?

And moving forward one more time.

So we are gonna break into small groups.

Lauren is gonna send you off.

And in those small groups, you're gonna receive a message in the chat.

There are a number of questions that I would love for you all to discuss in your small group.

And here they are.

First of all, what background or prior knowledge do we have about the history tied to this image?

Of course, as educators across the board, be it in English or in history, just as grown educators, we are gonna have a greater contextual knowledge than our students might, but I think it's gonna enrich our conversation tonight.

What messages or conclusions does this image hold for us in the present day?

Again, that significance is gonna be very different depending on who we are coming into this work.

And we'll talk about that in just a moment.

Consider what perspectives or opinions different stakeholders of this period might have had to this image.

And in your groups, you guys can talk about not only stakeholders present in this illustration, but also other historical stakeholders that we know were present.

Make some predictions, share some opinions based on our contextual knowledge.

How might those various groups have interpreted this image?

And also, if you were in the first session, and even if you were not, I think it's really important for us to always be honest as educators and as learners, and consider what we are bringing to the work.

What identities, what lived experience, what academic knowledge are we bringing in, and how does that shape the lens with which we are interpreting a piece?

And also giving that same agency to our students.

Even though we may have our pre-established goals, these are the learning outcomes, students will be able to, at the end of the lesson, understanding who our students are coming into the lesson should have an impact on the methods through which they might reach that outcome.

Of course, all students can reach learning goals, but we have to be thoughtful in what methodologies we use to get them there.

And lastly, what identities are reflected, or to Lee's point, not reflected in this image, or in our shared history around this event?

Welcome back.

I hope everyone had a really fruitful conversation.

Normally, of course, if we're doing this lesson in class, when our students come back from these small groups, we have them share out one interesting thing that they heard, one interesting thing that they learned.

One of the things I try to do in those small group breakouts, this is just to make public speaking more accessible, one of the tools I often use is we all have those kids who are always ready to step up.

"Me, me, me, Ms. Jones, I got you, I got you, I got you.

I can talk all day about everything.

Things I know about, things I don't know about."

We have those students.

They're great, they're thoughtful, but at times they can be oversharers.

And then we have students who have thoughtful things to say, but are more reluctant in sharing those ideas publicly.

And so one of the things I love to do is when I'm thinking about grouping, and not sort of the classic, I wanna put my strongest students with my weakest students so they can model.

I think that becomes, at times, a burden to all parties within that, to students feeling like I can never be a leader, I can never be a thought leader, I always have to be taught.

And students who are in that teaching role, feeling like there's really nothing they need to learn because their only duty is to teach their peers.

So one of the things I like to do is, in addition to mixed ability groups, I often like to do sort of similar ability groups.

If I've got a group of ELL learners, allowing them the opportunity to work together, perhaps in their native language, if they all share in common language.

Allowing them to share ideas in the ways most comfortable for them in order to increase their contribution to class discussion.

But when I do have these mixed level groups, or introverts mixed with extroverts, one of the things I love to do is I will call on a student that I know is more introverted, and I will say, "Hey, Lauren, why don't you tell me something interesting you heard from a group mate?"

That way that student has the opportunity to speak, but they're not limited by the strength of what they think of their own argument.

They get to say, "Oh, I heard Ryan say this really cool thing in my group, and this is what Ryan said."

And the only thing I allow Ryan to say is, "Yes, I agree," or, "Here's one clarification."

You get to agree with the summary of your argument, or you get to make one clarification.

This still gives the student the opportunity to make edits if someone is misrepresenting their thoughts, but it does give an opportunity for more voices to be heard.

I often ask follow up questions like, "Okay, Lauren, that's something Ryan said that you thought was really cool.

Do you have anything to add?

Did it make you think anything?"

So they still get the chance to share an authentic contribution to the class.

Just a a small little tip from my English classroom that I've found works across ability levels, across grade levels to follow that norm of stepping up and stepping back.

How do we make room in a conversation for multiple perspectives, which is what you all were talking about in your small group.

But in the sake of time, and in getting to sharing some of these awesome clips from the Ben Franklin documentary, I want us to move forward in thinking about the common good.

There are two thought leaders that drive this American concept of the common good, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Russo.

In an advanced level class, I might have my students do a quick mini bio on these people.

What do we know about John Locke?

What can we find out?

Let's take 25 minutes.

This half of the room is gonna get John Locke.

This half of the room is gonna get Russo.

What are four or five big takeaways?

I might give them big sticky sheets of paper to go illustrate that, give me an image.

We were just talking about analyzing illustration.

Turn your thinking into a picture.

Use that picture to share out.

And we would leave that up in the classroom as we're going through the rest of the lesson to remember the foundations.

Moving forward.

Another great way that I love to provide for students to give feedback and to share, a great way to include and incorporate technology is through the use of a jam board.

Going forward.

Now, if we were in person, or I had you for more time, this could take tons of iterations.

I could literally go big sticky boards.

I love the giant memo pad sticky notes that you can put up on the wall.

I would put four in four corners of the room.

One would be be social, one would be technological, one would be political, one would be economic.

At the very beginning of the year, y'all, I ask my parents for Post-it notes.

The cheapest ones, the most expensive ones, it doesn't matter.

And I throw a pack of Post-it notes on every kid's desk.

And you will be shocked what shrinking the size of paper does to a kid's ability to believe they can fill it up with thoughts.

The smaller the paper, the more the kid is gonna feel really accomplished when they fill up that 2x2 sticky note.

So we would start off by going, "Okay, y'all, we're gonna jam board this.

We're gonna parking lot this.

Give me every example you can think of, based on that opening definition of the common good being something that benefits the interests of all.

What are examples of the common good in our lives today?"

And you would send your kids out.

You could even give them four different color sticky notes, one for each one of these big posters, and have them share out ideas.

In a virtual setting, that could look like a jam board.

I give you a link to a practice one, it's really easy to set up.

You could use things like Poll Everywhere, if you're in a virtual setting, for your students to give their poll responses.

But it's a great way to get them thinking about the concept.

Going forward.

I love jam boards.

I love these kind of sticky note share outs for all sorts of big ideas.

It's a great entrance activity.

In our first session, I talked about creating lessons that have low floors and high ceilings, meaning we want the accessibility point coming into the lesson to not create obstacles for any of our students.

And as I said, starting off small and simple with here's a 2x2 Post-it note, gives students an automatic win on the first stage of a lesson.

It lets them know, "I can do this.

I already understand this.

And Ms. Jones, Ms. York, Ms. Carol is just gonna expand my knowledge today.

And at the end of class, if she gives me another Post-it note, I'm gonna fill that one too with new stuff."

We want our students to come in prepared to learn because they're empowered to learn based on the pedagogies that we choose.

Which brings me to the graphic organizer we're gonna be using throughout tonight.

We're gonna be looking at Ben Franklin and the common good, looking at three areas of Franklin's life: his life as a printer and a philanthropist, his life as a civil servant, and lastly, his life as a scientist and inventor.

And depending on what your core subject area is, the applications of this lesson are countless.

I love when we study figures where there are natural cross-curricular connections.

This is a lesson that if you're on a grade level PLC, if you're on a grade level planning team, you can conquer and divide this.

The English teacher may take Ben Franklin, printer and philanthropist, and that's the only part of the lesson they do in their class.

Your social studies team member might take Ben Franklin as a civil servant.

Your science or mathematics teacher might take Ben Franklin as scientist and inventor.

I love lessons that lend themselves to collaboration, because as your small group conversations probably already showed you, we learn when we get to talk to each other.

We always take away something fruitful when we get to work with other educators.

So Dana's gonna click on this link for you to take a look at the common good graphic organizer.

I thought it would open.

Let's see.

If you go.

Wonderful.

Awesome.

On your sheet of paper, if you will, we're gonna be using this graphic organizer.

Like I said, we're gonna be doing a bare-bones version because I'm not gonna have you flipping between tabs, just kinda navigating across things when you're in a Zoom can be difficult.

So I am a little old school, and I'm like paper and pencil gets the job done.

So for each one of these areas, our first box is gonna be, what is Ben Franklin's role?

Is he a politician?

Is he a printer?

Is he a scientist?

So we start with what his role is.

The second thing we're gonna analyze is what are the key accomplishments that they note from this phase or area of his life?

What are the key accomplishments that get outlined in the clip or in the primary source that we're looking at?

How are these accomplishments connected to our idea of the common good?

How do these concepts, accomplishments, ideas, benefit all, or at least appear to benefit all?

Because the last thing we're gonna look at in terms of what we were doing in our small groups, that idea about what perspectives are here and what perspectives are missing, we're gonna look to who benefits from this, and who's left out?

So as we watch each clip, you'll go Ben Franklin, printer.

You're gonna note a couple of accomplishments that come up in this section of the text.

You're gonna briefly note how do these things, how could they, how were they, either by what we're told explicitly, or inferences that we can make, or even benefits that we live with currently, how are they connected to the common good?

And finally, who benefits from this, and who appears to be left out?

All right, going forward.

I told you that there are some incredible lessons on the PBS website, and Benjamin Franklin and the Power of Words, Benjamin Franklin, Mastery of the Media is a lesson that I'm gonna be using with my own students later this year when we begin to learn about rhetoric, when I'm teaching my kids about audience, you know, those sort of baseline, Aristotelian appeals of low dose ethos pathos.

I'm gonna use this lesson because Ben Franklin understands audience, and he is a master of forming an argument for a particular audience.

Now granted, we're gonna talk about what voices, what perspectives are not part of his audience, and what are the limitations and the critiques of that.

But as a study of writing, his writing and his works are great for students, and despite their age, are incredibly relevant to a lot of the questions and concerns that our students have in their critique of our current society.

So in this particular lesson, there are a couple of great questions to guide students' viewing, including what types of writing is Benjamin Franklin including in his paintings?

How was the Pennsylvania Gazette different from other newspapers at the time?

And lastly, how did he leverage the power of the press to influence his readers?

Something that, again, as I said, making those cross-generational connections is something that our students see every day.

So as we move into our first clip, remember, we're looking for what is his role at this point?

What accomplishments does he achieve?

How are those accomplishments linked to the common good?

Who's left in, and who's left out?

So let's take a look at our first clip.

I'm gonna come back to IMPACT.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Franklin's print shop was thriving.

Pennsylvania's colonial legislature awarded him the contract to print its paper currency.

When he learned that South Carolina was looking for a printer, he dispatched one of his employees to open a shop in Charleston.

And on October 2nd, 1729, he began publishing his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette.

He filled its pages with reports from other newspapers in America and England, along with crime stories, notices of fires and deaths, a moral advice column, funny tales he concocted, that flirted with sexual innuendo, and letters from readers, including some he wrote himself under tongue-in-cheek pseudonyms like Anthony Afterwit, and Alice Addertongue.

"If you would make your paper a vehicle of scandal," Addertongue advised in one letter, "you would double the number of your subscribers."

The Gazette caught on.

- Ben Franklin understood the power of the printing press.

He understood that those who controlled words, those who were able to disseminate information, had a certain amount of power.

He could be the arbiter of what was seen as important.

- [Philip] The idea first was to engage people, to entertain people.

Franklin understood that if you could get people to laugh with you, you're halfway to getting them to agree with you.

- [Narrator] He also welcomed essays, espousing opinions of all kinds.

- [Franklin] If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

- He said, "In the end, you have to bear some responsibility for the type of ideas that you put forward."

And if they're really odious, if they're really harmful, you have to curate them out.

- If you made a mistake, you could, as they always did in those days, add an errata page, and you could fix anything with that errata page.

- [Narrator] Local merchants advertise their goods in the Gazette.

Tradesmen advertised their services.

Franklin also published notices offering rewards for runaway indentured servants, like he had once been, and slaves for sale.

- [Speaker] To be sold in lots or singly, a choice parcel of Negros, lately imported, consisting chiefly of young men and girls bred to plantation business.

Also Jamaica rum, sugar of sundry sorts, molasses, cotton, and pimento.

Run away from the subscriber, a negro lad called Ned.

About 18 years of age, five feet, seven inches high.

Speaks pretty good English, but thick.

Has very thick lips, and is much pitted with the smallpox.

To be sold, a likely young, breeding Negro woman.

Speaks good English, understands her needle and any sort of household work, and has had the smallpox.

Inquire of the printer.

- One of the things I mentioned a little bit earlier is our being aware of the identities that we bring to the text, but also considering the ideas, both visible and invisible, in our classroom.

And even considering, you know, as I sat and I've watched the documentary many times, of course, in preparation for our work together.

Even tonight, as I sat here and re-watched this clip, I have to acknowledge the impact of hearing about Ben Franklin and all of the things that he's selling and printing, and the excerpt that lists human beings, possibly some of my own ancestors, not only for sale, but in lists with household items.

There are two women, a child, a man, rum, cotton, cloth, that even in the sheer grammar of a sentence, what sentiments does the use of grammar and punctuation play in reflecting the mindset of the period?

Exactly.

A parcel, Ms. Clark.

A parcel of Negroes, a package of people.

And even though that's not the focus of our analysis in the clip, we have to make room for the acknowledgement of that, and the impact that it might have on various students in our classroom.

Or even acknowledging the reality of how that was stated, and the viewpoints that it represents.

Now, in the same vein of looking at Ben Franklin as a printer and a public leader, I want us to actually go straight into our next clip, looking at Ben Franklin organizing the Leather Apron Club.

So again, as we look at this clip, we're gonna look for what is Ben Franklin's role?

What are the accomplishments?

How do those accomplishments add to our understanding of the common good?

And who benefits, and who's left out?

After this clip, we're gonna have a chance to break out into our small groups, share out and talk.

I'm gonna share another tool with you for analysis on a broad level.

Now, let's take a look, and add to our graphic organizers.

- [Narrator] With 11 other up and coming tradesmen, Franklin formed a club that met each Friday evening to socialize and forge business connections.

But they also discussed current events, and politely debated a variety of topics.

What is wisdom?

What defines good writing?

Did importing indentured and enslaved servants help or hurt the colonial economy?

The official name of the group was the Leather Apron Club.

Informally, they called themselves The Junto, from the Latin for joined together.

At 21, Franklin was its youngest member, but unquestionably, it's driving force.

- [Walter] Franklin believed that the virtues and values of a working middle class were gonna be the backbone of American society.

The artisans, the shopkeepers, the people who put on leather aprons early in the morning to help serve the public.

- [Narrator] The Junto moved its meeting place from a local tavern to a rented house.

And at Franklin's suggestion, each member brought some books that the other members could read.

Eventually, they broadened the idea into the Library Company of Philadelphia, America's first subscription library open to the public, who paid small dues for the chance to borrow books imported from Europe.

- And every year, more and more books would be collected and extend knowledge.

What was so important about the Library Company was that it wasn't just for wealthy, elite men.

- [Franklin] This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repaired, in some degree, the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me.

- He always looked around wherever he was and said, "What needs to be done?

What's missing?

What are the things that a community ought to have?"

He had read enough to know that there was more elsewhere, and he wanted to make those good things happen to the community of Philadelphia.

- Self-reliance, which Franklin loved, and community engagement may seem like they oppose each other, but as Franklin repeatedly said, "The good that we can do together surpasses the good we can do alone."

- [Narrator] Over the coming years, Franklin and his Junto would turn to other civic projects to improve life in Philadelphia.

Under their guidance, the city formed volunteer fire companies.

They advocated for a police force, paid by a property tax.

And at one Junto meeting, Franklin raised the idea of starting a college.

When the Public Academy of Philadelphia finally opened in 1751, Franklin would be elected president of the board.

It was the first non-sectarian college in America, and would later become the University of Pennsylvania.

Expanding on the Junto model, he proposed and organized the American Philosophical Society, whose members would be scientists and intellectuals from throughout the colonies, who could share ideas and scholarly papers by mail, if they could not come to meetings in person.

It would become the colonies' first learned society.

And to build a new hospital, he devised a plan that matched private donations with public funds, giving people, he said, "an additional motive to give, since every man's donation would be doubled."

- He always believed that if you just get a few good and interested men, always men, on any civic problem, you can solve it.

- Ben Franklin is, I think, emblematic of what America wanted to be, should be, could be.

The things that he spoke of, the things that he wrote about, often missing are other people.

Women, people of color in particular, enslaved men and women, never had the opportunities that a Ben Franklin had.

- We are gonna move into our small group breakout rooms.

And in those groups, we've looked at two different clips.

We've talked about Ben Franklin, the printer, and one focused on Ben Franklin, the kind of civic leader and philanthropist.

You can choose, as an individual, whichever role you want to talk about under this opening umbrella of Ben Franklin, sort of private citizen.

But let's take about four minutes in our small group, and I would love for you to share out what you tracked in terms of his role, the accomplishments, their connection to the common good, and that last question, who's benefiting, and who's being left out?

Let's break into our groups.

Again, we're gonna take about four minutes, so if we're in a group of four, roughly a minute per person, and then we're gonna come back together and move into the next two areas.

Welcome back, welcome back.

We are gonna move into our next area of Ben Franklin's sort of public life.

That's his life as a civil servant.

In deference to our time together, and my wanting to respect the time commitment that we've made, I wanna talk about some portions of the lesson that are gonna be included in the slide deck but that I'm not gonna dive into because the clips are a little longer, and there's some I definitely want us to have a chance to kind of process together.

The first clip that we use when we're talking about Benjamin Franklin as a civil servant is sort of his first civil servant job.

His work as a printer and the owner of the Gazette led to his appointment as Postmaster of Pennsylvania in 1737.

Just over a decade later, about 15 years later, he's appointed as Deputy Postmaster for the British, and in 1775, he becomes Postmaster General for the Continental Congress.

Ben Franklin's improvement to the postal system.

In the clip, which you will have time to go back and watch, there are historians who talk about the significance of his work as Postmaster General in creating the unity that it becomes the foundation for the United States as we know it.

Prior to Ben Franklin's streamlining, and the changes that he makes to the postal system, literally a letter could go from South Carolina to New York to get to Virginia.

Ben Franklin comes in and radically changes the postal system in the US, making inter-colonial communication much easier, a lot faster, and as a result, many of the exchanges of ideas that lead to the birth of our nation are able to be exchanged.

Moving forward.

So the next clip that we would've watched focuses on Benjamin Franklin as the civil servant.

There's a great lesson on the PBS website evaluating his impact as a sort of civic leader.

In it, kids look closely at what did he accomplish as Postmaster Co-Deputy?

How did his work as Co-Deputy Postmaster impact colonial residents, indigenous people, enslaved people differently, and what are some of the long-term implications for each?

So the same way that we look at how did this common good that we're able to identify, leave certain people out and benefit others, this lesson looks specifically at his work in sort of establishing our national communication chain, and what voices, what people, what perspectives benefited and were left out.

Moving forward.

I wanna give us time to unpack this next area of Ben Franklin's accomplishment because it's one that I think students may believe they're a bit more familiar with, but they're gonna be presented in different context.

And I love how this documentary presents them in their original context.

So as part of his work in the Albany Congress in the early days of the French and Indian Seven Years War, Ben Franklin creates the Join or Die image.

Before we would show this clip in class, we would definitely wanna talk about some of the very outdated, oppressive ideas and racist views that were held about indigenous people at this time.

And we might also lead into a broader conversation about the cultural sensitivities that affected people during the French and Indian War and in the upcoming American Revolution that's, at this point, on the horizon.

So let's take a look at this clip on the Albany Plan.

And again, you're gonna note what is his role at this point?

He's a civil servant.

What are the accomplishments of the Albany Plan?

How does it speak to the common good?

Who's benefiting, who's being left out?

Let's take a watch.

- [Narrator] In 1754, increased white settlement in the Ohio River Valley ignited another struggle with France for control of native lands, what would come to be called the French and Indian War.

Franklin was chosen as one of four Pennsylvania delegates to meet with representatives from six other colonies in Albany, New York to negotiate with Native Americans they hoped would side with England in the conflict.

He was familiar with the way the Iroquois Nations had formed a confederation, the Haudenosaunee, more than a century earlier, that promoted unity through consensus on matters that affected them all.

It gave him an idea.

- [Franklin] It would be a very strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted for ages, and appears indissoluble.

And yet that a like union should be impracticable for 10 or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous.

- [Narrator] Franklin urged his fellow delegates to consider creating their own charter to encourage the colonies to work together.

He and Thomas Hutchinson, an ally from Massachusetts, spearheaded a committee that drew up what was called the Albany Plan of Union.

It proposed a grand council for the colonies, empowered to make treaties with Indians, regulate trade, oversee land sales on the frontier, build forts and raise troops for common defense, and enact whatever taxes and duties were needed for it all.

Individual colonies would keep their own authority over everything else under their own constitutions.

In an article in the Gazette, he attached a drawing showing a dismembered snake representing the colonies.

At the bottom was a dire warning.

- It says, "Join or die."

And it's his way of saying that we have to come together to have one national sensibility.

So he's the great visionary that sees that we have to knit the colonies together rather than have each of the colonies think of themselves as sort of a separate entity reporting back to London.

- [Narrator] On both sides of the Atlantic, the Albany Plan was considered too radical.

- [Franklin] It's fate was singular.

The assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it.

And in England, it was judged to have too much of the democratic.

- Despite all the failure, and it was a total failure, it did possibly plant some kind of seed for future organization among the colonies.

- I wanna point out something really quickly, a great resource Lee linked in the chat to Gilder Lehrman.

Tons of free resources.

Lee tells us if we sign up as an affiliate school, it's also free.

It comes with monthly gifts of books, posters, et cetera.

And one of the early links that I shared with you of the Paul Revere image of the bloody massacre was from Gilder Lehrman.

So thank you, Lee, for dropping that in the chat for us.

I also wanna point out, particularly around the Albany Plan lesson, there is a wonderful lesson on the PBS website about how Franklin's image, his Join or Die image, has been reused, remixed, and reappropriated across time.

I think it's an excellent lesson.

If I'm teaching younger grades, there are portions I would modify and simplify, but in my advanced classes and my high school classes, if I'm teaching an AP class, I would use it as is.

I would also bring in the primary source document of the Iroquois Treaty.

I wanna keep us all together just to talk a little bit about this particular clip.

Some of the accomplishments, who is included in this idea of unification.

We literally have this emerging idea of us not being separate colonies, but a united entity with shared interests.

So using that hand raise emoji, what did we note in terms of the accomplishments based on the Albany Plan?

What does it give us?

How does it impact the common good?

What did you all note in your graphic organizer or in your graphic notes?

Also, who benefits, and who's left out?

Let's share as a whole group this time.

You can use that hand raise emoji or you can drop it in the chat, but I would love to hear from you.

Ms. Clark.

- [Ms. Clark] Yeah, I don't know why I get distracted when I see certain things.

So Benjamin Franklin sees how the Iroquois and the indigenous people came together and formed this confederacy, and he decides, let's model this because it'll be a great way for us to communicate to London.

But then he calls them ignorant and savages.

And I'm thinking, where did this concept of the other being less than come from?

He sees something of value, but he doesn't place value on the people that produced it.

I don't know why that just really...

It bothers me and it distracts me from all the good stuff that came out of that because I get stuck there.

- Absolutely.

And I think it's something that our students will immediately note.

I think I talked a little bit in the first session about one of the reasons that I think students are so prepared to be thoughtful critics and thoughtful analyzers of history and literature is they're very shallow meter for BS.

They are looking to critique the world, and call out hypocrisy when they see it.

There is nobody better equipped to tell you when something is not fair than a student.

If you give one person a sticker...

I mean, it doesn't matter how young a student is, the concept of fairness is something they immediately jump on.

And if we present them with primary texts, if we present them with founding documents where they see these inequities, when they see these hypocrisies, they're going to call it out.

And we wanna equip them with the tools to do so with a way that is thoughtful, that leads to new thinking, that leads to new applications.

Okay, so where do we see this in our world, and what could have been done?

What would it have looked like had Benjamin Franklin venerated the people that he got this idea from instead of calling them ignorant savages?

What would've looked like if the Iroquois were mentors to our nation?

What would it have looked like if their voice had been present?

Would our founding documents look the way they do had he made that choice?

Other thoughts about who's included, who's benefiting, or even how we can see the Albany Plan contributing to our overall understanding of the common good?

Thoughts or inputs?

Melissa, it looked like you were gonna share.

Did I see you unmute?

Okay, no worries.

Absolutely.

Elizabeth, I see your comment in the chat.

Looking at the Articles of Confederation, very, very different than the unity of the Constitution or the Albany Plan.

Absolutely.

All right.

We're gonna move forward because I do wanna make sure that I hit at least one of the videos in Benjamin Franklin's sort of final area of public life, and that's Benjamin Franklin, the scientist and inventor.

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin and his son, William, conduct the famous key and kite experiment with electricity.

After publishing his findings, he becomes the most famous American scientist of all time.

And I would say literally the most famous American of the period, and historians in the documentary at least would agree.

Benjamin Franklin is like the Beyonce of his time.

He can travel around the globe, and people know Mr. Franklin.

They don't know political leaders, they don't necessarily know thought leaders, but they know Mr. Electricity.

So as we are moving into this phase of Benjamin Franklin's public life, remember what we're tracking, for those four things.

And I'm reiterating not because you all need me to reiterate, but I'm modeling the way this works in my classroom.

And no matter how many times I have given kids directions, we could be doing the same thing every time, if we step away from the task, before we renter it, I wanna reiterate what I want them tracking.

So we're tracking what is his role here?

We know he's a scientist and inventor.

What are his accomplishments under this realm of his life?

How do they contribute to the common good?

And lastly, who's benefiting, who's being left out?

Moving forward.

Let's take a watch.

- He kept saying, "We have to find useful things to do with this electricity."

He said one of the only useful things in his first year of experiments was that he would get shocked and knock him down, and he said electricity was useful for making a vain person humble.

- [Narrator] As his studies turned more serious, and he began documenting his observations, he came up with new terms to describe electricity's mysterious properties.

"It had two charges," he wrote, "positive and negative."

And it could travel by what he called a conductor.

He grouped a collection of glass containers together, each possessing an electrical charge, and named it a battery, using the military term for an array of cannons.

- Benjamin Franklin comes up with the most important theory of the era, which is the single fluid theory of electricity, which is that it's not some substance, but it's a positive and a negative, and it flows from positive to negative.

- [Narrator] But pure science had less appeal to Franklin than putting it to practical use.

- Lightning's seen as being divine retribution.

Of course, the irony was that most of the buildings that were destroyed by lightning were churches, 'cause in a lot of communities in the 18th century, they were the highest structure.

- Franklin is convinced that lightning bears a similarity to an electrical spark.

He's looking at electric sparks, he's looking at lightning, and he puts in his notebook all the similarities.

And at the end of the page he says, "Let the experiment be made."

- [Narrator] Franklin detailed his theory that lightning was electricity, and that metal objects could draw off a charge.

He proposed an experiment that involved placing a person in what he called a sentry box on high tower or hilltop, and raising a sharply pointed iron rod when storm clouds approached.

He shared his observations with a London scientist, Peter Collinson, who had supplied him with equipment for his electrical studies.

Franklin was planning to conduct the experiment on the new steeple of Christ Church off Market Street, as soon as its construction was completed.

But the work went slowly, and Franklin grew impatient.

He then came up with an alternative way to test his theory.

He was less confident in this method, and decided to do it in secret, trusting only his son, William, to take part.

In June of 1752, with storm clouds threatening, he and William went to a field with a silk kite, to which Franklin had attached a sharp, pointed wire.

Dangling at the end of the kite's long, twine string was a metal key.

They got the kite aloft, and Franklin maneuvered it toward the approaching clouds.

- What he was showing was that the atmosphere became electrified, not that the kite had to be struck by a lightning bolt, which is often the way it's depicted in illustrations.

- [Narrator] Franklin suddenly noticed the individual strands of hemp along the kite string stiffening, and standing on end.

He moved his free hand toward the key, and felt a mild shock on his knuckle.

When the rain began, and water started streaming down the twine, sparks flew off the key.

Franklin was exultant.

"Thereby," he wrote of his experiment, "the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning has been completely demonstrated."

Meanwhile, the theories he had shared with Collinson had been published.

And unbeknownst to him, other scientists were already testing and verifying them.

Experiments using his original sentry box proposal had been taking place all over England and Europe.

"Mr. Franklin's idea," a French physicist wrote, "has ceased to be a conjecture.

Here, it has become a reality."

- [Walter] The kite experiment, that really was the symbol of his breakthrough.

It showed that the atmosphere was electrified, that thus thunder and lightning were electrical forces, and it overthrew centuries of superstition and scientific confusion about what this might be.

- There is an excellent lesson that is geared toward STEM classes that focuses on Benjamin Franklin, the scientist.

It kind of unpacks how Benjamin Franklin applies the scientific method.

It is an excellent and appropriate fit in STEM classes, but can also be incorporated into English or history classes, particularly if you're going through the arc that we're looking at, of all of the phases of Benjamin Franklin's public life.

And so when you get the PDF of tonight's slides, you're gonna see a link to that lesson.

It's wonderful.

All of the lessons that are linked in the PDF I've also gone through.

I stand by that they are applicable to most classes with some modification, and almost every class at the high school level.

I think even in my English language learners English class, the graphic organizers, the way the lessons are set up, they are accessible.

And with assistance, all of you are seasoned educators, you could easily modify them for your specific classroom environments.

Going forward.

So we've had a chance to track Benjamin Franklin as a contributor to the American common good across three areas.

And I wanna kind of begin to wind our time together tonight with looking at, so what does this mean?

How could we bring this all together into either a closing activity for our students, or as a launch pad into a broader project?

Next slide.

So I wanna talk about some of the ways that we can extend tonight's work.

Using that graphic organizer to then serve as a springboard for students to possibly launch their own research projects, as seen in looking at the impact of his contributions to the common good.

Writing a short essay on the topic of Benjamin Franklin and the common good.

One of the things I love in the second video that I didn't get time to show you in the science portion, is this idea of Benjamin Franklin as an inventor who does not patent most of his inventions.

Particularly musical instruments and the lightning rod.

Benjamin Franklin shares his findings, shares his blueprints, and does not patent those designs.

And I think it would be a really cool research opportunity or extension project for students to consider what modern inventions have open patents.

With the emergence of things like at-home 3D printing, students can easily find a number of people who are attempting to solve global and local problems through their own ingenuity, and are not seeking compensation.

What does it mean to contribute to the common good, as an American, for free?

How do the ideas of the common good and a free market system meet?

How do the ideas of the common good and capitalism go together?

There are so many incredible extensions that students in a 21st century classroom are ready to make because this is a constant tension they are seeing in the world.

What does it look like for billionaires to take the Buffet Pledge?

To say, "I've made all this money and I wanna give it away."

That, "My family will only hold onto this percentage for the common good."

What is the duty to people who benefit from public consumerism to the public good?

Some of the conversations that come up within these clips.

One of the things I love in the clip where they talk about the lightning rod, is the reaction of religious leaders, of clerics at the time, who believe that the sheer presence of a lightning rod, in some cases, was amount to heresy.

This is man intervening with the divine justice of God.

If God sends down a lightning strike, he wants your house to burn.

What duty is it of yours to attempt to do away with the the magnitude and the magnificence of the Almighty?

There are so many rich questions for students to explore, and these bullet points here at the end give us some of the ways that that could happen in our classroom.

But I think this is one of those areas where we can be especially culturally relevant and responsive to the specific learners in our classrooms if we're in a STEM-based magnet school, if we're in an art-based humanities school.

Benjamin Franklin creates musical instruments.

How is it that we know about him as a founding father but not as a purveyor and supporter of the arts?

What does that say about how we value various contributions?

Your students, in an outreach method, can develop a project or problem-based activity to take action on a local or school-based problem in that idea of contributing to the common good.

The common good is directly linked to citizenship, civic engagement, and so many of the interconnected social-emotional learning skills we want our students to have.

Being aware of the feelings, needs, and realities of other people, and using our talents, our skills, our ability, our areas of access and privilege to improve the world overall.

So with that, we're gonna go forward.

And I would typically wrap up multiple days of learning with a closing kind of jam board.

Like I said, I'm gonna give these kids the sticky notes again.

They would fill them up, they would run around and talk about one of two questions, how does the common good apply in our society today, now that we've got an idea of what it meant in Ben Franklin's time, but also, and this is kind of a metacognitive skill, how can they see the contributions of Ben Franklin to the common good today?

What has electricity done for us today?

What does the Postal Service do for us today?

How can the inventions, the contributions of Benjamin Franklin in his time, as a man of his time, be directly tied to the everyday lived experience of our students?

That's another way that we make this learning socially relevant for our students.