Guest Post by Lori Austin: A personal reflection on the Industrial Revolution by a 4th grade teacher

Over the summer of 2019, 70 teachers participated in an immersive NEH-funded Emerging America workshop exploring transformational innovation in Springfield, MA and up and down the Connecticut River Valley. Teachers learned about causes and consequences of precision manufacturing processes invented here. On this Labor Day, we publish Lori Austin’s thoughts on how this workshop helped her gain personal connections to the past.

Nellie Bly’s account of her experience as an inmate at an asylum as an undercover journalist offers a gripping entry point into the history of mental health care reform and a discussion of how people in need of care should be treated. In this lesson, students explore several primary sources addressing the treatment of people with mental illness and disability at New York City’s Blackwell Island in the mid to late 1800s.