Even though this does not specifically include math or even the years I am focused on for a lesson I'm creating (WW II), it is a great idea that can be applicable to any period. I'm going to modify this to have students create and solve time/ rate / distance problems like how long it took for Marcella Le Beau to travel from South Dakota to Palm Springs.

In this post on the Teaching with the Library blog,   Michael Apfeldorf  introduces us to the work of prominent female chemist Ellen Swallow Richards around the turn of the twentieth century. Richards was the first woman to be admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a pioneer in the field of sanitary engineering and “domestic science”.  Click the link to learn more and to discover Michael's ideas for a primary source analysis activity.

In this interview with EdWeek, we learn about the interesting arc of now-retired educator Steve Robinson, who provides insight into STEM education and teacher education, including the community aspect of teaching and development of teaching skills.

Career path

• professor at the University of Massachusetts
• private school teacher
• public high school teacher
• Albert Einstein fellow
• Barack Obama’s legislative aide for education
• White House Domestic Policy Council
• Charter school teacher

Kelsey Beeghly wrote this "Timeless Stories from the Library of Congress" blog post at the end of her tenure as the 2023-2024 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow. As so many Einstein fellows have discovered, the Library has far more to offer than most science teachers might imagine. For example, Kelsey Beeghly writes:

STEM educators need to know about all of the amazing things the Library has to offer. My own past teaching in grades 6–12 and of preservice teachers would have greatly benefited from incorporating the Library’s primary sources.

I’m very confident that every topic taught in a science classroom can be made more engaging by including a piece of history related to it, the people involved with it and its impact on society.

She also suggests a few starting points for STEM educators interested in learning more about what the Library has to offer. One that caught my fancy was her link to a 1987 book titled The Tradition of Science that's a compilation of dozens and dozens of science-related treasures held by the Library of Congress (like the "Raphael of flowers" artist's print below).  

https://www.loc.gov/resource/scd2015.00000935086/?sp=121&st=image 

  Kelsey Beeghly    3 - 5    6 - 8    9 - 12    13+    Science    Teaching Methods  

During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the detainees were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Island in December 1941. Before the war, about 127,000 Japanese Americans lived in the continental United States, of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei ('second generation'; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ('third generation', the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ('first generation') immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii (then under martial law), where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated.