Sixth graders in Mrs. Kim Miller's social studies classes at Ashdown Junior High School recently got a more "up close and personal" lesson when studying about the Great Depression and President Roosevelt's New Deal, a series of economic programs passed by Congress in the early 1930's. 

 

A young mother of five named "Miss Jo" from Kansas visited the classroom to enlist the students' help for her family who had lost everything they owned, including two children from illness and starvation, and whose 31-year-old husband, once a farmer, could find no work. It became the students' task to search their textbooks and other resources to find any means by which Miss Jo and her family (including her elderly mother) could receive government help in 1933.

 

Miss Jo, enacted by Ashdown High senior Shelby Fiegel, was costumed in period dress and fielded endless questions from the classes about her plight, which Shelby answered always in character, supplying the students with real-life interaction about what their textbook was telling them.

 

The unique classroom experience forced the students to "think deeply" about the three r's of the New Deal -- relief, recovery, and reform.  Prior to the visit from "Miss Jo," the class had watched "The Grapes of Wrath" and studied Dorothea Lange's photograph "The Migrant Mother" taken during the Great Depression.

 

 AJHS sixth graders ShaCoya Poole, Jami Vanwhy, and Jared Stultz tell "Miss Jo" that perhaps she could get assistance from the CCC (Civilian Conservation Court) or the newly established SSB (Social Security Board) with monthly payments for her homeless family.

  AJHS Assistant Principal Tracy Forte partners with Jennifer McClain to search through the textbook for New Deal programs to assist "Miss Jo" and her family during the tribulations of the Great Depression.

 

  "Miss Jo," portrayed by AHS senior Shelby Fiegel, reveals the emotional experiences of a young mother suffering through life in the U.S. in 1933.  Shelby helped the sixth graders to feel an attachment to history with her enactment.