Women's History Month - C-SPAN Classroom's collection of Women's History video clips

This is a collection of video clips on prominent (and perhaps less well-known) women in American history, particularly in the past century. There's an eclectic mix here and a teacher either needs to have a person in mind OR be willing to preview the clip (these are definitely documentaries and some are more interesting - at least to students - than others). I'll also add a few other links to other new C-SPAN materials.

Jay LeBlanc

3/2/20265 min read

I received an e-mail from C-SPAN Classroom on Sunday, with a number of different updates they wanted to feature for the month of March. I will mention a couple of other ones at the end when I share some more general links to C-SPAN resources. To provide a little bit of context, hopefully you are aware that the C-SPAN cable networks provide live coverage of Senate and House proceedings (and occasional committee hearings) but also provide a lot of coverage of other historical, civic, and literary events throughout the year. I got involved with them during my teaching career when I was selected one summer to attend their in-person Summer Educators Institute in Washington D.C. in late July - there I learned a lot about their programming, historical databases of video coverage from (now) 45 years of broadcasts, and the variety of lesson plans and resources they have to support the video clips.

Interestingly, the part I am featuring here was down at the very bottom of the e-mail - a summary of "some" of the resources they have available for Women's History Month. What I'm going to do is copy the sampling of links they provided, then feature a couple of them. Then further below, I will link their larger collection (and other collections you might find helpful).

In celebration of the women who were instrumental in the foundation and growth of the United States, C-SPAN offers the following sampling of resources to help you recognize Women’s History Month with your students:

I want to feature two of these items simply as a demonstration of the two main types of resources offered in the list. First, C-SPAN does a lot of "bell-ringers", intended to be a quick introduction either to a larger lesson or a topic of study in your classroom. So if I was studying World War I, for example, I might use this Bell Ringer on US Women Soldiers During World War I to open students' eyes to less-traditional "doughboys":

Beyond the 4.5 minute video (a clip edited from a longer presentation) the bell-ringer provides vocabulary connections and 2-4 possible discussion starters or writing prompts to use with your class:

The second kind of material created by C-SPAN is a more traditional lesson plan, usually based around multiple related video clips on a similar topic. So this one below might connect to a civics unit on the introduction of women as Congressional representatives (which, by the way, predates women getting the right to vote nationally in 1920). So here is the beginning of the lesson plan:

And then this is a screenshot of a portion of the "Early Women in Congress" handout mentioned above - more details are obviously provided in the full lesson plan:

Again, the resources below are divided into two groups: 1) specific links to the materials I featured here and to the women's history collection within C-SPAN Classroom; and 2) more general links to resources from C-SPAN, including some of the other material they were featuring for March.

Specific resources related to the C-SPAN Women's History collection:

"Early Women in Congress", (lesson plan), C-SPAN Classroom, Apr 2021, https://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?17780

"Early Women in Congress", (handout), C-SPAN Classroom, Apr 2021, https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Q4s_hEEHYC0hq9B8TnHpQDUjwkfHY30GRKL52bk5Ls/edit?tab=t.0

"US Women Soldiers During World War I" (bell ringer activity), C-SPAN Classroom, May 2017, https://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?6510

"Women's History Resources", C-SPAN Classroom, hhttps://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/u-s-and-state-history/u-s-history?utm_campaign=20190214-C-SPAN%20Classroom&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--wqPVv9r1Y-j-7nm11UE1QjGXBrSFgLx8Lm7bR_Hci5lMdT2BzDpL-ANCaoehHzCu4t9z9RgLMEdQQDvJHcF75sEKn5w&_hsmi=406228006&utm_content=405958094&utm_source=hs_email#h.p_TijFQfZU0Chw

General information on C-SPAN Classroom materials:

C-SPAN Classroom home page - https://www.c-span.org/classroom/

C-SPAN Featured Resources collections - https://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/home Make sure you note the free posters available at the bottom of that page

"Economics and Financial Literacy Resources", C-SPAN Classroom, https://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/economics-and-financial-literacy

General C-SPAN Classroom's Bell Ringers (sorted by subject area), C-SPAN Classroom, https://www.c-span.org/classroom/bellringers/

General C-SPAN Classroom's Lesson Plans (sorted by subject area), C-SPAN Classroom, https://www.c-span.org/classroom/lessons/

"Geography (including AP Human Geo) Resources", C-SPAN Classroom, https://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/geography

"U.S. Government and Civics Resources", C-SPAN Classroom, https://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/u-s-government-and-civics

"U.S. and State History Resources", C-SPAN Classroom, https://sites.google.com/view/c-spanclassroom-featured/u-s-and-state-history

And then two sites I have to include, even if they are not "technically" education-related:

"American History TV: Explore Our Nation's Past", C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/ahtv/

"Book TV: Television for Serious Readers", C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/bookTv/

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