Mapping Care Project: The History of Black Nurses in Chicago

Why Nursing? And What Can I Do With It?

Lesson Title: Why Nursing? And What Can I Do With It?
Subject(s): Freshman Seminar, Senior Seminar, Health Sciences, Advisory
Grade: 9-12
Keywords: careers, nursing, healthcare, health sciences, college readiness, career readiness, STEM, women in STEM, Black women in STEM
Time: 2-3 45 minute class periods
Jump Straight to Activity Plan
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Essential Questions:

Learning Objectives (choose 1 and modify jigsaw questions accordingly)

IL Standards:

Introduction:

In this lesson, students will explore many reasons people go into nursing, as well as different career paths one could take with a nursing degree. The goal of the lesson is to expose students to the variety of ways that nursing might be a career that fits their interests or strengths. The lesson also aims to help students envision the different steps of how one progresses through a career.

The lesson mostly centers around a number of oral history interviews with currently practicing and retired Black nurses in the Chicago area and encourages students to engage in personal reflection to connect with the stories. Students explore a variety of excerpts of oral histories and then choose 2 oral histories for which they will create a “life road map.” Students then share these in a gallery walk. Lesson wraps up with students reflecting on at least one participant to whom they felt personally connected in some way. 

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Activity Plan:

1) Introductory activity: Word Association activity about "nurse." 

2) Why Nursing Quotes: students choose oral histories to focus on based on quotes about why individuals chose nursing.

3) Creating a Life Road Map (formative): students create a life road map of one oral history participant.

4) Gallery Walk of Classmates' Maps: students explore each other's life road maps and consider which journeys they connect with.

5) Journaling Reflection: students build personal connections to one oral history participant and consider that person's life journey.
 

Assessments 

Materials

Historical Context (for teachers): modified from Mapping Care)

When the nursing profession emerged after the Civil War, its leaders and institutions reflected the ideology that Black people were inferior. Black nurses were usually limited to treating Black patients in segregated hospitals or wards. In the early 1900’s, white nurse  leaders pushed for state laws that required nurse licensing and registration. Many southern states forced Black nurses to take different licensing exams or refused to license them altogether, shutting them out of most job opportunities. And when Black nurses could find work, they were usually paid less than white nurses for the same duties.

Black nurses would not accept this situation quietly. In 1908, Martha Minerva Franklin, a Black nurse leader, helped to organize the creation of the National Association for Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). The NACGN tackled many injustices, fighting discriminatory licensing laws, working to improve the quality of Black nursing schools, and operating a registry to help Black nurses find work. The NACGN also partnered with groups like the National Urban League, the NAACP, and the National Council of Negro Women on campaigns for Black voting rights and against Jim Crow segregation laws.

Among the NACGN’s greatest victories was the passage of the 1943 Bolton Act and the 1945 integration of military nursing under the leadership of Mabel Staupers and Estelle Massey Riddle Osborne. The leaders of the NACGN decided to dissolve the organization in 1951 and merge with the American Association of Nursing. 

Note for teachers regarding historical language: many of these primary sources, written by both Black and white authors, use the term “Negro.” It is important for teachers to provide students with a content warning and with historical context for this term. In the period when these authors were writing, many Black people considered “Negro” to be a term of respect, as compared to “colored.” It had very different connotations than the n-word, which white people used as a slur. In the 1960’s civil rights activists pushed for a shift from “Negro,” to “Black,” making it no longer socially acceptable for non-Black people to use the term “Negro.” In later decades, some Black activists pushed for use of the term “African American.” 

For more resources on this subject, see:

“A Note on Historical Language: 'Negro,' 'Colored,' 'Black,' and 'African American'” from African American Poetry (1870-1928): A Digital Anthology, by Amardeep Singh.

When Did the Word Negro Become Socially Unacceptable?, Jim Crow Museum website.

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Introductory Activity

Show students this image and explain that this was a recruiting poster that the government created to try to recruit more nurses to serve in the military during WWII.

Ask them: based on this image, what is the government’s idealized image of what a nurse looks like? What qualities does she have? 

If teaching standalone lesson: Explain that today students will be examining the question of racism in U.S. institutions through the lens of nursing. This will provide a different point of view that is often not as studied about how Black activists and their allies fought for justice during the Civil Rights era.

If teaching within Teaching Care sequence: Explain that in previous lessons students studied one reaction to racism and injustice within the healthcare system, in which Black leaders created institutions to educate and hire Black nurses and care for the Black community. In this lesson, students will examine a different approach that some Black leaders and their supporters took: fighting for the integration of nursing schools. 

Emphasize that by the end of this lesson, students will be trying to answer one of these essential questions (choose before teaching): Summarize the history of the NACGN based on provided historical context. 
Teachers can pull up this image of an early NACGN convention from Mapping Care or pull up the Mapping Care timeline, so students can understand the broader context of the NACGN’s founding in relation to the post-WWII events studied in this lesson.  

Ask students: Why is the NACGN not well-known today compared to organizations like the NAACP or the Urban League? 

Extension opportunity: discuss the following quote from historian Darlene Clark Hine, who wrote the foremost book on the history of Black nurses:

“There are many reasons for our society’s disregard of nurses. First, and perhaps foremost, nursing is the most female of all professions…Thus, it is daunting to see beyond nurses’ femaleness, to move beyond the ingrained tendency to devalue the labor performed by women, and to develop an appreciation for the special skill they bring to their work. Second, we seldom encounter nurses as professionals until we are devastated by disease and incapacity. However, once health is regained nurses are quickly, perhaps gratefully, forgotten.”

Why Nursing Quotes

Divide students into groups of 4. In each group, 1 student will examine 1 of the 5 provided sources using the source analysis worksheets.

Difficulty of sources (relative to each other, in terms of vocabulary & concept complexity): 
Source #1: moderate
Source #2: difficult
Source #3: moderate (includes a photo for analysis)
Source #4: easy
Source#5: difficult (only secondary source)

If using the Save the Last Word For Me strategy:

Creating a Life Road Map

Students compare their analysis of the primary source with other students who examined the same source. Two options:

Option #1 Academic Discussion

Divide students into groups of 3 (with students who have read the same text).

Instruct students to compare their answers to the final question on the worksheet and notice similarities and differences. Encourage use of academic language in discussion:

"It sounds like you're saying..."
"That is interesting. It connects to what I was thinking about..."
"I respect what you state about…; however, if you look at the text/evidence…"
"You propose that…I’m going to have to disagree for the following reasons." 
"I am going to respectfully disagree because…"

Option #2 Save the Last Word for Me
Divide students into groups of 3 (with students who have read the same text). 

Label one student A, one B, and the other C in each group. Invite the A students to read one of their chosen quotations to their group. Then students B and C discuss the quotation. What do they think it means? Why do they think these words might be important? To whom? After several minutes, ask the A students to read the back of their card (or to explain why they picked the quotation), thus having “the last word.” This process continues with the B students sharing and then the C students.

Gallery Walk of Classmates' Road Maps

Instruct students to return to their original groups of 4. Give each student in the group 1-2 minutes to describe their source and help their groupmates fill out the graphic organizer for that source. 

Jigsaw graphic organizer.

Journalling Reflection

Students answer the final question on the graphic organizer, which is the essential question of the lesson. Note that they should be required to use 2 sources, which will likely be the source they studied and one that a classmate taught them about.

Teacher should choose 1 of these as the essential question of the lesson and modify materials accordingly:
  •  Why did all-white nursing schools and institutions begin to accept Black nurses? 
  • How have Black nurses made gains towards equality in U.S. society? 
  • How does justice advance in society?
  • How do people react to injustice? Is there a best way to react to injustice?
  • Does racial equality depend on government action?

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