The Marvel Cinematic Universe has found much success among comic fans and novices alike. Bringing comic book storylines to the big screen has resulted in the public becoming familiar with once obscure characters and plots. This chapter discusses the use of Captain America: Civil War as a form of popular media to teach middle school students about the United States Civil War. Drawing parallels between historical events and the movie's plot resulted in an increase in students' understanding of the concepts of the United States Civil War and allowed students to connect their learning to their lived experiences and develop agency over their own learning. Through this experiment, the researcher developed a lesson plan for teaching the United States Civil War using popular media, which can also be duplicated for use with other historical events.
TopIntroduction
“Hey, teach, this stuff is confusing. How can the country split in half?”
This was a question from a student that stuck out to the author during his first year of teaching. It was the author’s first year living in Dallas, Texas where he was hired to teach Texas Studies. The irony of this was he had just moved from his home state of Louisiana. The author had never studied Texas history or thought of it as something he would study and eventually teach. Nevertheless, here he was, a first-year teacher teaching the Civil War and its effects on Texas to 7th-grade students. Most of these students had very little prior knowledge of the Civil War, and some have never heard of it. This was a significant challenge. How could he teach his students about the Civil War and give them enough context of the war on a national scale to get them to understand the effects the war had on the state of Texas?
That first year of teaching was interrupted by the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic (Decker et al., 2020). With the transition to virtual teaching and learning, the author was forced to get creative in his lesson plans and find unique and interesting ways to keep his students engaged and make the content relatable. This change in lesson plans set him on a path to discovering disciplinary and media literacy. Media literacy is defined as “the ability to access the media, to understand and critically evaluate different aspects of the media and media content and to create communications in a variety of contexts” (European Commission, 2007, p. XX). For the purpose of this study, the definition for disciplinary literacy will be:
Disciplinary literacy is an emphasis on the knowledge and abilities possessed by those who create, communicate, and use knowledge within the displaces […] disciplinary literacy emphasizes the unique tools that the experts in a disciplined use to participate in the work of the discipline. (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012, p. 8)
Going into the second year of teaching, the author prepared a lesson plan that incorporated popular media to address the Civil War. Inspired by his love of comic books and superheroes, he used the 2016 film Captain America: Civil War, produced by Marvel Studios and part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Russo & Russo, 2016). In this film, the team of superheroes, the Avengers, is divided over the adoption of legislation that would restrict the movement and actions of superheroes. This plot mirrors the events of the United States Civil War. While not exact parallels, the author could still use the movie to introduce the concept of a body split over legislation and how they might struggle or fight against each other.
This chapter will discuss the methodology used to perform this study and measure its efficacy among students. Using a pre-test, post-test, and artistic presentation, the teacher determined that culturally relevant teaching and popular media increased the students’ understanding of the United States Civil War. In addition, using popular media also created a correlation between historical events and students’ lived experiences, which increased their learning ability (Ning & Downing, 2012).
TopThe Texas Civil War Standards
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are the standards adopted by the State Board of Education to determine the curriculum of subject areas and grade level (TEKS for Social Studies). Chapter 113 of TEKS outlines the standards for the social studies curriculum (Texas Education Agency, 2018b, 2018b). Because this study was conducted with 7th-grade students, the TEKS for this research are drawn from subchapter B of Chapter 113 of the TEKS outline, which comprises the middle school standards (Texas Education Agency, 2018b). The 7th-grade social studies focus on Texas history and society in Texas. Therefore, the standards related to the United States Civil War include (Texas Education Agency, 2018b, p. 8):
(5) History. The student understands how events and issues shaped the history of Texas during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The student is expected to: