George Washington served the country for many years before becoming President. He was a general during the American Revolution and served as president of the Constitutional Convention, where the Constitution was written. After all that, he was ready to retire. The electoral college had different plans for George Washington though. All 69 electors chose him to be the first President of the United States of America. George Washington was the only President to receive all of the electoral college’s votes. Americans supported the choice for President and celebrated Washington as he traveled from his home in Mount Vernon to New York City, then onto the nation’s capital. On April 30, 1789 George Washington, at age 57, took the first oath of office as President of the United States under the Constitution. John Adams was his vice president.

President Jefferson’s style was very different from that of Adams and Washington; because of that, many Americans looked forward to his inauguration. As people from across the nation gathered in the new capital to listen to Jefferson’s inaugural address, many wondered if the less formal president did in fact, want to limit the powers of government. They didn’t have to wait long.

The nation continued to grow in size and wealth, each region experiencing its own different kind of economic growth which caused them to develop differently. Citizens differed across regions in their ideas of political, economic, and social progress. For the success of the growing nation, Americans throughout the country tried to compromise on their disagreements. Unfortunately, no amount of compromise could minimize the harsh growing pains the nation was about to experience.

During the last part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries, there was a growing interest in social reform, or an organized movement to improve the quality of life for particular groups of people. The motivations behind these movements were both political and religious.

Just like the industrialization that took place in the North, the geographical features of the region played just as important a role in the agrarian way of life in the South. Because geography was responsible for almost every aspect of life in the South (as it was in the North as well), its significance cannot be understated.

In Lesson 1, students focus on the first stave of the novel as they identify the meanings of words and phrases that may be unfamiliar to them. This activity facilitates close examination of and immersion in the text and leads to an understanding of Scrooge before his ghostly experiences. In Lesson 2, students examine Scrooge’s experiences with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and discover how Dickens used both direct and indirect characterization to create a protagonist who is more than just a stereotype. In Lesson 3, students focus on stave 5 as they identify and articulate themes that permeate the story.

Students will learn about how the U.S. government classifies race and ethnicity. The teacher will play a video of students at Park East High School in New York City who contacted the U.S. Census Bureau to start a conversation about the way race and ethnicity are identified in census surveys. Students will also read a blog post explaining how the Census Bureau has changed the way it collects data on race and ethnicity. In the last part of the activity, students will write a letter that could be sent to a leader in their community with the goal of sparking some type of change.