Analysis of the timelines below can help students to locate important events in Disability History in a larger historical framework. Timelines also offer opportunities to explore the impacts of activism, policy, and social change. Disability History timelines work best when students are also gaining contextual background knowledge about larger social forces and events. Thus these particular timelines are recommended for grades 6-12. 

Scan Multiple Timelines 

In this lesson, students learn about the Social Security Act and its provisions to care for the elderly, the unemployed, mothers and children, and children and adults with disabilities.  Students will examine several primary source images and documents related to the New Deal era, using a primary source analysis organizer. The lesson offers options in how students can show their learning. This lesson plan has a special feature: the teacher who authored it offers reflections on how teaching the lesson worked with her class when she taught it the first time.

Who gets accepted as a citizen or as an immigrant?  Who is considered a desirable immigrant? Students will work in small groups to examine a primary source text and image set about immigrants at the turn of the 20th century.  They will use the sources to develop a deeper understanding of the hurdles and discrimination many immigrant groups faced. In addition to learning about race-based entry policies, students will observe that many types of disabilities were considered undesirable and would keep an immigrant out.

In the following lesson plan students will examine several primary source images and documents related to Civil War wounded. From the sources, students will develop a narrative about changes in the responsibilities of the federal government in response to the enormous numbers of wounded Union soldiers. This lesson can stand alone or kick off a research project. 

See the online exhibit How Civil War Transformed Disability. Use the Exhibits pull-down button above. 

This lesson focuses on the study of deformities and disabilities in ancient Greece in relation to their societal norms. Students will compare the images of two Greek gods, Zeus and Hephaestus. They will read excerpts from three ancient Greek philosophers; Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch regarding people with disabilities as well as the myth explaining the birth of Hephaestus on Mount Olympus. Students will be able to analyze a variety of ancient sources to draw conclusions about society’s view of people with disabilities in ancient Greece.

In this lesson students will learn that incurring a disability at work was a common occurrence of the Industrial Revolution.  This lesson integrates disability history content within a larger 14-day unit on the Industrial Revolution. The lesson plan provides a series of activities that highlight the importance of children and adults with disabilities in 19th century workplaces, and the ways primary source photographs provide information and inspire critical questions.

In this lesson, students will explore several primary sources addressing the treatment of people with mental illness at Blackwell Island in New York in the mid to late 1800s.  After analyzing the sources, students will discuss our responsibility and the responsibility of government to people with mental illness and cognitive disability. Period film, photographs, maps, and a written account by pioneering investigative journalist Nellie Bly animate the lesson.

The lesson invites students to think about what life was like as a disabled veteran of WWI and to connect to background knowledge as well as personal experiences. The teacher will provide historical information and guide the class in a read-aloud from the perspective of a soldier wounded and recuperating in Italy from Ernest Hemingway’s “In Another Country.”

The instrumental role Dorothea Dix played in reforming prisons and mental institutions, and the actions of Horace Mann in his campaign for free public education are at the center of this lesson. How did improvements in conditions for people in the public charge, whether prisoners or people institutionalized because of disability, come about? How did the the idea of who gets to be educated change? By focusing attention on the strategies used by these social reformers, the lesson engages students in critical thinking about the methods of reformers as well as their goals.