During the first winter of the Jamestown settlement, many settlers died. Those who lived faced unbelievable difficulty and needed vast quantities of strength, skill, and mental fortitude to survive. I would introduce my unit on Jamestown with the quote and conversation from Epictetus about stress management, asking students to first discuss what they think the quote means, then apply it to the early settlers. I would ask them to use their background knowledge to brainstorm the various stresses that colonists would have had to respond to. Throughout the unit, we would keep a running log of new challenges the colonists faced and their responses.
Level: Elementary social studies
Subject Area: U.S. History
Author: Tiffany Heitman
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