Madame C. J. Walker
Madame C.J. Walker was a self-made businesswoman who created opportunities for herself and for other African American women at a time when both educational and career opportunities were limited. Walker was the first African-American woman to become a millionaire, and (according to the Guiness book of world records) the first woman to earn a million dollars through her own efforts. She was also a philanthropist and a tireless worker for several causes, including the end of lynching and equal rights for African American veterans.
Madame C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, on December 23, 1867. Her parents had been slaves, and became sharecroppers after the Civil War. Both of them died when Walker was seven years old. She moved to Vicksburg with her older sister Louvenia a few years later, but Louvenia’s husband was abusive, and Walker ran away and married when she was only 14 years old.
Walker had one daughter, Lelia, who was born in 1885 when Walker was 18 years old. Her first husband died at the hands of a lynch mob, and Walker went on to marry twice more.
Walker was an entrepreneur and an inventor. She created hair care products, first as a solution to her own hair loss and then for sale to others. She began by selling her products door to door, added a mail order business, and then opened a “hair culture” college. Among the 3,000 people employed by Walker’s company were tutors who helped Walker to get the education she had not been able to achieve when she was young.
Walker’s third husband, C.J. Walker, and her daughter Lelia worked with her in her business. Lelia, later known as A’Lelia, managed the mail order side of the business while her parents traveled in the U.S., South America, and the Carribean promoting the Walker products. In 15 years, Walker built an empire of cosmetics and beauty products, including an improved permanent wave machine developed in 1928 by a Walker employee, Majorie Joyner.
Walker’s goal was not only to improve her own life, but also to provide better jobs for other African American women, who at that time had limited job opportunities. She described her career path in this way: “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”
Walker employed (and the company still employs) independent agents to sell the products directly to their friends and neighbors. Agents buy their stock at a deep discount, sell it at retail prices, and keep the difference as their commission. The company also offered sales training for agents. This arrangement allowed women to go into business for themselves without education, experience, or investment. At a time when many African American women saw domestic service as their only job opportunity, and unskilled workers of any ethnicity could expect to make less than $50 a month, Walker Agents could make $1,000 a month. By 1910, there were more than 1,000 Walker Agents.
In 1916, Walker built a 34 room house on the Hudson River and in 1917 she led a march of women to Washington to protest the segregation of the military. Just as she had used her business to help provide economic opportunities for African Americans, she used her wealth to provide educational opportunities for African Americans. She donated money to colleges that accepted African American students, gave scholarships, and supported young writers and artists. In 1919, when she died, Walker was widely known as an example not only of business and marketing skill, but also of social activism.
Madam Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the National Cosmetology Hall of Fame and the National Direct Sales Hall of Fame. Her face was on a U.S. postage stamp, and she continues to be a source of inspiration.
“If I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I am willing to work hard,” said Walker. “Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”
Entrepreneurship Education Contests
At this writing, there are two entrepreneurship contests going on. Use them to focus your entrepreneurship lesson plans, or recreate them just for your class or school.
Interview an entrepreneur
The first is the Hot Shot Entrepreneurs Video Contest for students.This contest clebrates Entrepreneurship week (February 18-25 in 2012), and entries are due on February 13th. Click the link for the full rules of the contest.
This is essentially an oral history project. Students must identify an entrepreneur, interview him or her about business accomplishments and obstacles overcome, and produce a video to upload to YouTube.
Here’s how we see this project:
- Research local entrepreneurs through newspapers, online search, or visits to business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or business incubators.
- Choose an entrepreneur and conduct further research on this individual.
- Write a letter or email requesting the interview.
- Prepare for the interview by developing questions.
- Conduct the interview.
- Get required permissions and upload the files, if taking part in the contest.
- Edit the video.
- Upload the video to YouTube.
- Send the submission forms electronically, if entering the contest.
That’s a lot of technology practice! Plenty of research, writing, and art as well. Students can work in small groups, gaining skills in collaboration as well.
If you’re not entering the contest, plan a day for students to share their videos with the class or the school.
Resources:
Inventive entrepreneurs
There is also, at this writing, a contest to find the best new consumer products being run by Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. The “Get On the Shelf” contest, accepting entries till February 22, lets people vote for their favorite product, much as people vote for their favorite singer on American Idol. Just as the winner on that TV show gets a recording contract, the winner of “Get on the Shelf” will get a contract to sell their product.
Current entries include dog shoes and zombie repellant spray, so we see no reason that your class shouldn’t enter, or at least play along at home. Click the link above to see examples of video entries people have already created.
The plan here is to come up with an idea for a new product (an item people would buy) and to make a video showing how it works.
FreshPlans talked with the experts at 8th & Walton, a company that provides training for entrepreneurs who want to see their products on the shelves, and for suppliers. They told us that this contest was ” tremendous opportunity.” It can take years to get to see a Walmart buyer in the usual way, and inventors typically have just one chance to impress the buyer. They also told us that a new product invention needs to be really new, but also something that people want. It needs to be safe. It has to be possible to make the new product for a price people are willing to pay.
Have students begin by coming up with an idea for a product. One of the best ways to start inventing is to think of a problem that could be solved by a new invention. Brainstorm with the class to identify pet peeves that could be solved by something bought at a store. Examples of problems solved by inventions:
- Ordinary light bulbs use too much electricity.
- People get cold when they have to take their arms out of the blankets to use the remote control.
- Women have nowhere to put their purses when they’re eating at a restaurant.
- The Earl of Sandwich didn’t like to stop playing cards long enough to eat dinner.
- People get lost while driving, and can’t read a map while they drive.
Check out a collection of problems needing solutions if you need help thinking of ideas.
Once students have come up with an idea, they should do some market research. Draw a model, using SketchUp (you could then have a 3d print made) or classroom art supplies, and show it to lots of people, asking their opinions. Help students practice listening and taking notes instead of defending or explaining their products — paying attention to feedback is a useful skill! Students should also ask what people would be willing to pay for their inventions.
Have students incorporate the feedback into the invention and perfect their inventions. If possible, have students create a working prototype of the invention. If this is not practical, encourage students to be as realistic as possible in planning their inventions. They should, for example, think about what materials could be used to make the invention and how they could keep prices in line with what people would be willing to pay.
Now to make the video. SketchUp allows you to create 3d models and fly around them, as in this video from the “Get On the Shelf” site:
Students can also create live videos. If you’re not planning to enter the contest, students might enjoy making an infomercial type video, beginning with the problem they plan to solve and then showing the happy users of their imaginary product.
Art, technology, writing, critical thinking, and research skills are all required for this project.
Either of these contests — whether students actually enter or you just produce videos simulating the entries — will make a great introduction to entrepreneurship.
John Muir
John Muir was an inventor and a rancher by vocation, but he was also a naturalist and a writer, and it was this avocation for which we remember him. During his lifetime, he published 10 books and more than 300 articles of observations about nature. His writings detailed his travels from Panama to Canada and particularly in the Sierras, mountains in the Western United States.
Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21st, 1838, but he came to the United States at the age of 11. His family was unable to send him to school, but he studied on his own, continuing to be a passionate reader and amateur scientist all his life. As a boy, he came up with inventions to improve his family’s life — including a machine that dumped him out of bed in the morning so he would get up and do his chores.
He went to the Wisconsin State Fair in 1860, when he was 22, to exhibit his machines, including a table saw and hand-carved clocks. He started school at the University of Wisconsin the following year, but the Civil War interrupted his studies in 1863.
He traveled gradually into Canada, working at a succession of factories where his inventiveness helped to make the work more efficient. After an accident which left him recuperating for a month, he walked 1,000 miles south and took ship for Cuba, New York, Panama, and at last, at the age of 30, he reached San Fransisco. He walked into the Sierras and spent the next 12 years in study and observation, tending sheep along the way.
Muir described himself as a “trampogeologist’” but his work was published and its value was recognized. It was Muir who suggested that the action of glaciers had formed the Sierras.
In 1880, Muir married Luisa Wanda Strentzel, and settled down for the next decade as a rancher. He still traveled, observed nature, and wrote during that time, but he also brought up two daughters and worked toward goals in conservation of the environment.
In Muir’s day, many people worked toward causes by writing letters, and Muir was one of them. One of the letters he wrote was an invitation to President Teddy Roosevelt to come camping in the Sierras, in Yosemite. Roosevelt took Muir up on his invitation, and was just as impressed as Muir hoped he would be.
In 1890, Yosemite became the first National Park. Since then, the national parks system has preserved 84 million acres) of American wilderness.
Muir relied on scientific information and education to reach his goals in life. He was also good with people. He was able to influence people who had power, and he also gathered ordinary people together and gave them power when he cofounded the Sierra Club.
John Muir died on December 24th, 1914.
Learn more about John Muir:
- John Muir founded the Sierra Club, and they have an online exhibit about him.
- Biography of John Muir at the Ecology Hall of Fame, with nice quotes from Muir’s writings.
- John Muir : Nature Writings is a collection of Muir’s writings.
Galileo Lesson Plans
Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, mathematician and physicist who is sometimes called the Father of Modern Science because of his use of observation and experimentation, which we now call the scientific method. We’d like to share with you some of our favorite lesson plans for learning about the life and work of this important man.
Galileo was born in Pisa on 15 February 1564 and lived in Pisa, Padua, and Florence until his death on 8 January 1642. During his lifetime, he made a number of discoveries and experiments in different fields, but it is probably his work in the philosophy of science that has been most important over time.
The life and work of Galileo
Begin by adding Galileo to your classroom timeline in the year of his birth. You can also add other events from Galileo’s life. We like to use a paper cutout for each important person on our timeline, with the name, dates, and place of each person’s life. On the other side of the cutout, have students draw Galileo in the clothing of the time. We like the statue below, from the Ufizzi Gallery, but students can use an online image search to see paintings and drawings of Galileo, or do general research on the clothing worn during the Italian Renaissance.
Each student can use his or her cut out of Galileo to make a file folder project, as we see in our Heroes lesson plans (we think Galileo belongs in your heroes study too, so check out the ideas there and also in Science Heroes for more activities). Students can use graphic organizers and illustrations to show the things they learn about Galileo, and they can also add pockets to hold written reports, or staple a more formal paper into the folder.
With a nice collection of mini presentation board projects, you can create a display on the life and times of Galileo in your classroom.
Some of the things you might like to include in your study:
- Galileo’s father, a musician and composer, was the first person to prove that the pitch of a string varies as the square root of the tension. This was not exactly new information. since people had been tuning stringed instruments by the Pythagorean system for centuries by then. However, Vincenzo Galilei was the first to do the experiments which showed the math and physics clearly. Galileo brought the same scientific approach to other topics.
- One of the areas in which Galileo was most influential was in materials science, the study of how different materials behave. Another is in the study of motion. A famous experiment combined the two topics. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, had claimed that objects fell at speeds related to their weight. A light object would therefore fall more slowly than a heavy one. Galileo tested this claim and found that it was false. The story is that Galileo dropped a one pound weight and a ten pound weight at the same time from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to check the claim. Read more about this at the Physics Hypertext and try the experiment with instructions from The Exploratorium. The point, in terms of Galileo’s life, is that he made the experiment in a controlled way. Before Galileo, people had already noticed that Aristotle was wrong, but it was Galileo who prepared a controlled experiment to prove it.
- Galileo made important improvements to the telescope which allowed him to see a new star, to track the phases of Venus (as our moon has phases that make it appear to have a different shape, so does Venus), and to become very sure that the earth went around the sun and not the other way around. Copernicus had already said this, but Galileo was very dedicated to making it known to the general public. It’s difficult to do astronomical observation with a telescope in school (not dark enough), but Science Netlinks has a lesson on telescopes which focuses on the scientific method.
- Galileo got into trouble with the Inquisition in 1633, even though he was a devout Catholic and a friend of the Pope, and ended his life under house arrest. When FreshPlans went to Rome, we had the opportunity to visit an exhibit on this interesting part of Galileo’s life at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs, an extremely beautiful church designed in part by Michelangelo and built on the Diocletian Baths, an enormous bathhouse of Ancient Rome. The photo at the beginning of this post shows the dome of the basilica, designed in honor of Galileo, and we have a little slideshow below that shows some other parts of the church, including a statue of Galileo designed by a Chinese artist in the 21st century. In 2000, Pope John Paul II publicly expressed regret for the condemnation of Galileo, but there is still a surprising amount of controversy — not about whether the earth moves around the sun, but about what the Galileo Affair tells us about the relationship between science and religion. Have older students research “the Galileo Affair” and write about it. We would have them include both sources from the Catholic church and from the scientific community, because both groups have interesting things to say on the subject, but you know your community best.
The book Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei by Peter Sis is a wonderful and accessible book about Galileo for kids.
Galileo was a fine writer, and his books were very influential. Perhaps even more influential were letters that he wrote; they were shared publicly in the same way that we might now share a really good Facebook post. We haven’t found any versions of Galileo’s works that will be readable for students, but you might like to read The Essential Galileo for background. Quotes from Galileo:
“The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.”
“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
Robot Lesson Plans
Some of our favorite robot lesson plans…
Robot Design
You can certainly build working robots in your classroom, using Lego Mindstorm:
- LEGO 8547 Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Robotics Kit
- LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders: Ten Inventions to Spark Your Imagination
- The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book: A Beginner’s Guide to Building and Programming Robots
While Mindstorm is usually used in competitions, iBotz and OWI kits are another option:
For younger students, Gearbotics from Learning Resources is an accessible alternative:
- Learning Resources Gears! Gears! Gears! Illuma Bot FX
- Learning Resources Gearbotics Sonic T-Rex Motorized Set
We also really like the recyclable robots from Toysmith. Students might be inspired to build their own nonworking models of robots from recyclables, too.
You can also build robots from scratch. We’ve never tried that, so we’re guessing that you know as much or more about it than we do. (We’d love to hear about your experiences!)
But if you don’t need real robots that move, you can design robots from just about anything. Simple shapes cut from paper can be used to create collages, recyclables can be put together to make models, or you can use candy on cupcakes:
No reason you couldn’t do the same with vegetables on crackers, by the way. Cream cheese would keep the veggies on the cracker till snack time.
Robot Research
The cute little robot at the top of the page may be our mental image of robots, but it’s very far from the reality. Most of the robots currently in use don’t look anything like people, don’t talk, and are very useful but not very playful. Here are some real-life robot resources:
- Robots.net is a central clearing house for robotics news. At this writing, you’ll find lots of information there about President Obama’s new national robotics initiative.
- How Stuff Works robots page compares humans and robots, with lots of examples. Get out your Venn diagrams and have students develop their own comparisons.
- Our Robots Classroom Theme Ideas page has a bunch of links and resources.
Not only can you use Venn diagrams to compare humans and robots, you can also compare real robots to fictional ones. You can make lists of jobs robots currently do. You can find the kinds of places where robots work, and contact similar companies in your community to see whether they use robots in those jobs.
For older students, have the class develop a research question and have students list the relevant resources they find in a Google Doc. It’s a good way to practice citing references, and you’ll have a collection of resources for a class discussion or debate on the question you choose. Finish up with a writing assignment.
Robot Rules
In Isaac Asimov’s novel I, Robot, there is a set of rules for robots (laws, in the book):
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This great story is also available on DVD if you want to refresh your memory without reading, but we like the book for middle school or high school students.
Discuss the Robot Laws in relation to modern robots now in use. Then use them to develop a set of rules for your classroom. We think the process of determining the most basic rules will be useful for your students, and three rules will be way more effective than 55.
Thomas Edison Lesson Plans
Today is Thomas Edison 164th birthday, or would be if he were alive. It’s also National Inventors Day.
This is a great day to invent something. Here’s a fun lesson with minimal preparation:
- Ask students to talk with their neighbors for three minutes about irritating things that come up in their lives.
- List a good number of their suggestions on the board.
- Have students form small groups and ask each group to choose one of the pet peeves listed.
- Ask each group to come up with a solution for the irritating thing they’ve chosen. If the inventions they come up with aren’t possible with current technology, students should list the inventions or new technologies that would be required for success with their invention. For example, if I decide to overcome the frustration of hard to open milk cartons with a new design for the milk carton, but my new design assumes the existence of zippers that can be inserted into glass, I need to specify that.
- Have students create diagrams or models of their solutions, using poster board, Model Magic, or SketchUp. Ask students to present their inventions to the class, and film the presentations.
Online resources:
- ThomasEdison.com has a nice biography of Edison which should be a comfortable read for middle school and up. There’s also a gallery of photos of Edison.
- Edsitement provides interesting background that will help students get a sense of the state of technology in Edison’s time, and therefore of the difference his work made.
- The Library of Congress has a lesson plan exploring Edison’s role in bringing electricity to America, a change as significant as the internet in our day.
- FirstLadies.org suggests having students research and write about Edison’s inventions.
- Thomas Edison for Kids explores the relationship between science and invention.
- The Black Inventors Museum has information about Lewis Latimer, a member of Edison’s team whose work on electric light bulbs was essential to the practical use of electric lights.
- Our Heroes Lesson Plans has ideas for several different activities that can be used to study any individual hero, and Thomas Edison is certainly in that category.
