The Historical Significance of The One and Only Marilyn Monroe
“We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel was a song that came out in 1989, the year the singer turned forty years old. This song included brief references to 118 significant events that happened from his year of birth (1949) to the present day (1989). These events represented the issues facing the world, but particularly American society and the conflicts and issues that continue to “burn” to this day. Our task in this project was essentially to pick one of the said events and gain immense knowledge on it to the extent that we can teach a lesson on the topic to the whole class as well as create a lesson plan, web page and educational video.
“How do we make choices about what is worth remembering?”
Not knowing much about her aside from the basic stereotypes, I chose Marilyn Monroe. I wanted to learn about the things that made her more than just a pretty face as well as her appeal that led her to impact American pop-culture to this day. Out of the other topics chosen by my class, Marilyn was the earliest, meaning that I would be the first to present to the class. I knew this going in but it didn’t bother me as it would allow me to go out of my comfort zone which meant that I could live up to the goals set in my learning plan. Plus by getting it done early on, I got the bonus of having more time to focus on improving my lesson plan and web page afterwards.
When it came to the lesson we not only had to present, but teach to the class which was something I had never done before. In doing so, we had to come up with activities and videos to keep our peers engaged, but make sure they also walk away with an understanding as to the topic’s historical significance. Another challenge to keep in mind was making the lesson possible for other teachers to follow it as well as teach to their students. My lesson started off with a whiteboard activity where the class would write down anything that came to mind when they thought of Marilyn Monroe, which went exactly how I wanted it to; they were filled with stereotypes and things that had to do with her appearance. My goal for the lesson was to not only teach about Monroe’s significance as to how she’s impacted the fashion and movie industry, but the fact that she was even more popular due to the aspects of her personality that made her “more than just a pretty face”. Aspects such challenging the status quo by starting her own production company and being an activist for gay and civil rights which was something pretty rare at the time.
The rest of my webpage included several things: a paragraph assessing Marilyn’s historical significance, a video guiding you through the webpage and also assessing her significance, the lesson plan, a timeline that includes significant dates, an authentic quote by someone I interviewed and MLA citations of all the sources used. So yes, it was quite the web page. Although, my one disappointment from this project was not being able to get as great of an authentic quote as I had hoped. I contacted about five museums and experts but unfortunately got nothing back. I wound up interviewing my grandma who was alive at the time but lived in Canada, which didn’t have the same effect as someone living in the United Staties but was unfortunately my closest connection that I had to Marilyn. Other than that, I was quite happy with how everything else turned out. My webpage was eye-appealing, easy to follow, had visuals, included many extension opportunities and several sources.
I took on several flex opportunities this project by going to tutorial times when I needed it and always asking for feedback to make my assignments better. My goal for our next project is to extend my creativity by coming up with more of the ideas to improve my project. To do so, I would make sure I have a great understanding of the teacher’s expectations from the very beginning. I was quite fond of having the flexibility to choose from such different topics as it meant that we could chose something that we were genuinely interested in, which led to each and every one of our presentations being super interesting and engaging. I particularly enjoyed doing research on Monroe and watching a couple of her most popular movies, but it was still saddening to learn about her tragic death and how she’s been sexualized over the years. This movie star, signer, model and business woman is known world-wide and still continues to inspire celebrities, costume and clothes designers. Despite having passed away over sixty years ago, Marilyn Monroe continues to be relevant and talked about to this day, which says a lot about her significance in itself.