More on Writing a Lesson about William Howard Taft
Next I turned to a couple of standard American History textbooks. Taft didn’t get much coverage in them. The texts mostly focused on Taft’s relationship with Teddy Roosevelt and how the two had a falling out, which led to Taft’s failure to be re-elected in 1912. There was a lot about Progressive politics then too. So I decided I would focus on information about Taft in my lesson that the texts didn’t address.
So then I turned to the Internet. Soon I had dozens of sites bookmarked and had learned some fascinating new things. I hadn’t known that Taft’s wife played a major role in getting the now-famous cherry trees first planted in Washington, DC. And that it was she who really wanted Taft to be President, while he himself wasn’t too keen on the idea; his goal was to be Chief Justice. On a medical site, I read about Taft’s health problems, which included sleep apnea, a condition historians and doctors have “diagnosed” in retrospect. It seems Taft was often lethargic in the early part of the day and often needed to nap, evidence now seen that he wasn’t getting restful sleep at night because of apnea.
After hours of scouring the Internet, I had accumulated lots of good stuff. Now I needed to figure out what to do with it, since there were so many disparate topics. How could I make it all fit together? I decided to create categories and see if I could fit most of the information into them. I settled on five categories, based on periods in Taft’s life, and proceeded to lay out the pages on a table. (I had printed key pages from each website because, hey, I’m one of those people who still like to work with hard copy!)
So then I turned to the Internet. Soon I had dozens of sites bookmarked and had learned some fascinating new things. I hadn’t known that Taft’s wife played a major role in getting the now-famous cherry trees first planted in Washington, DC. And that it was she who really wanted Taft to be President, while he himself wasn’t too keen on the idea; his goal was to be Chief Justice. On a medical site, I read about Taft’s health problems, which included sleep apnea, a condition historians and doctors have “diagnosed” in retrospect. It seems Taft was often lethargic in the early part of the day and often needed to nap, evidence now seen that he wasn’t getting restful sleep at night because of apnea.
After hours of scouring the Internet, I had accumulated lots of good stuff. Now I needed to figure out what to do with it, since there were so many disparate topics. How could I make it all fit together? I decided to create categories and see if I could fit most of the information into them. I settled on five categories, based on periods in Taft’s life, and proceeded to lay out the pages on a table. (I had printed key pages from each website because, hey, I’m one of those people who still like to work with hard copy!)
Check by next week for Part 3
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