Nursing Justice in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Grade: 6-8
Keywords: essential workers, pandemic, activism, justice healthcare justice, healthcare access, structural racism, civics, unions
Jump Straight to Activity Plan
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Essential Questions:
- How did COVID-19 affect society and culture, not just people’s health?
- What challenges have nurses and other healthcare workers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic?
- What are some ways that healthcare workers have fought for justice during the Pandemic?
- SWBAT discuss the impact of COVID-19 on culture and society using examples from analysis of two relevant primary images, at least one secondary document, and personal reflection.
- SWBAT discuss the complex roles of nurses as essential workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic using examples from at least one secondary document analysis.
- SWBAT discuss essential workers’ activism in response to injustices exposed during the Pandemic using examples from analysis of two relevant primary images and at least one secondary document.
Standards:
- SS.H.1.6-8.MdC. Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.
- SS.H.1.6-8.MC. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant.
Introduction:
In this lesson students will explore how inequality has surfaced in the COVID-19 Pandemic. They will also see how nurses have responded to and played a critical role in healthcare facilities during the Pandemic, advocating for essential workers' rights, especially through activism.
This lesson can be completed as a standalone or with other lessons focusing on historical health pandemics, epidemics, crises, and structural racism.
This is the lesson of the historical Teaching Care sequence, preceded by a lesson on HIV-AIDS.
Depending on time commitment and class pace, instructors may incorporate some or all learning activities. Instructors may also engage students through some or all activities in a single class or across multiple class sessions.
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Activity Plan:
1) Opener: Sociometric Movement analysis of SDOH graphic, developing questions & connections to prior knowledge.
2) COVID Presentation3) Image Analysis: students start building connections to SDOH in their own time and place.
4) Passage Analysis:
5) Essential Question Short Write
Assessments/Materials
Supplemental Resources:
Activities 1,2,4:- COVID-19 Protection
- COVID-19 and Pandemic Timeline-
- Societal Impacts of COVID and Racial Disparities (Census.gov)
- Societal Impacts of COVID and Racial/Economic Disparities (Brookings Institute)
- Societal Impacts of COVID and Youth Mental Health (Lurie Children's Hospital)
Activities 3, 4
- Impacts of COVID-19 on Essential/Healthcare Workers (Brookings Institute)
- Impacts of COVID on UIC Nurses (Block Club Chicago)
- About INA:
- About SEIU 73
- About Strikes-
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/healthcare-workers-join-uic-nurses-on-picket-line-during-strike/2338530/
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/10/1/21497056/university-of-illinois-hospital-nurses-association-strike
https://seiu73.org/2020/09/after-94-vote-to-strike-uic-workers-deliver-strike-notice-to-uic/
https://seiu73.org/2020/09/striking-seiu-local-73-members-at-uic-are-victorious/
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Opener: Sociometric Movement
Engage the class in an activity that measures students’ beliefs and gauges student’s general knowledge about the lesson topic(s).Instruct students to line up along the wall of the classroom. Inform students that they will move to the room's left wall if they hear a statement the instructor shares that they “agree” with. If they “disagree,” they will move to the room's right wall. If they are “unsure” or hear something they only agree with “partially” or “somewhat/sometimes,” they will stand in the middle of the room.
To accommodate mobility needs, this activity can be done stationary. With this alteration, students remain seated at their desks but use hand signals designated by the teacher, such as a “thumbs up" to indicate “agree,” “thumbs down” to indicate “disagree,” or a midway-turned thumb to indicate “unsure” or “somewhat/sometimes.”
Example Statements:
- “Schools should allow students to ___ during the Pandemic”
- “COVID-19 was discovered in the year 2020”
- “Wearing masks helps keep people safe and healthy.”
- “COVID cases have significantly decreased in our city”
- “You should wash your hands for a minimum of 20 seconds to protect from getting the virus”
- “Jobs in healthcare grew because of the pandemic”
- “The COVID pandemic is over”
COVID Presentation
The Opener should be followed with a brief explanatory presentation* on the COVID-19 virus and the impact of its outbreak on the pandemic and further engage students in a discussion about their understanding of COVID-19 as an ongoing global pandemic. The instructor should also clarify facts related to any fact-based prompts.
*Encourage students to start taking notes in their graphic organizers during instructor explanations and explain that it will prepare them for completion of this lesson’s exit activity. Their understanding of content will be assessed through their completion of a written response that addresses one of the lesson’s three essential questions.
Presentation should also include this key vocabulary:
*Encourage students to start taking notes in their graphic organizers during instructor explanations and explain that it will prepare them for completion of this lesson’s exit activity. Their understanding of content will be assessed through their completion of a written response that addresses one of the lesson’s three essential questions.
Presentation should also include this key vocabulary:
- Essential Worker: A person who has a job that is very important for the community, like doctors, nurses, grocery store workers, and firefighters. These people often keep working even during emergencies, like a pandemic.
- Pandemic: A time when a new disease spreads very quickly across many countries and affects a lot of people.
- Activism: Actions people take to bring about change and make things better in their community or society, like protesting or organizing events.
- Justice: Making sure everyone is treated fairly and has the same rights and opportunities.
Image Analysis
Students will conduct an analysis of this image and this image (see right, click to enlarge) from the 2020 UIC Health Strike. From their analysis they should be able to address. Analysis may be done individually, in pairs, or in groups. The instructor will follow with asking students what they see and should elaborate on the connections students make about images, between images, and to other related made during class discussion:
- What are people in these images doing?
- Who do you see represented in these images (racial, gender presentation, visible ability, etc)? Do the people in these images share or differ in appearance? What might you conclude from this information?
- What symbols and texts do you see in these images? Do they have similar or different messages? What do you think is the meaning behind them? How do they relate to the COVID Pandemic? How do they relate to healthcare more broadly?
- How do these images help you to answer our essential questions?
Passage Analysis
Uses excerpts from Mapping Care COVID page.
Students will read this text on healthcare workers' experience with the rising Pandemic during the year 2020, resulting in an inevitable joint strike by two Midwest unions (as seen in Image Analysis activity). Students may work individually, in pairs, or in groups to address some or all discussion questions located at the end of this activity description. Instructors will then lead students through a discussion centered around the reading, going through each question, asking how students/groups responded.
Note: teachers could do the same exercise with other excerpts from the linked page.
Students will read this text on healthcare workers' experience with the rising Pandemic during the year 2020, resulting in an inevitable joint strike by two Midwest unions (as seen in Image Analysis activity). Students may work individually, in pairs, or in groups to address some or all discussion questions located at the end of this activity description. Instructors will then lead students through a discussion centered around the reading, going through each question, asking how students/groups responded.
Note: teachers could do the same exercise with other excerpts from the linked page.
Discussion Questions
- How were healthcare workers’ job conditions in the first year of the pandemic (2020)?
- Why did the INA and SEIU go on strike? What were their demands?
- Which type of healthcare employees are often poorly paid? What demographic groups often hold these low-paying jobs? Are there social factors that you can identify that could have an influence on why these groups get lower paid work?
- Who tried to stop the strike? How did they do it?
- What was the outcome of the strike?
- Did you believe nurses and other healthcare employees got what they deserved out of the strike? What else could they have been given? Were there other methods that you believe they have used to achieve their desired goals?
Exit Activity: Essential Question Short Write
Using information gathered and discussed throughout this lesson, students will write a 1-page response to one of the the essential questions from the beginning of this lesson:- How did COVID-19 affect society and culture, not just people’s health?
- What challenges have nurses and other healthcare workers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic?
- What are some ways that healthcare workers have fought for justice during the Pandemic?