AP US History 20th Century Business Portfolio
February 20, 2025 2025-11-17 22:53AP US History 20th Century Business Portfolio
by: Zayden Orenstein
In AP US History, an 11th Grade history class, students are in the midst of an exciting project. For this three-part project, each student in the class chose one business that began in the 1800s, rose to prominence in the 1880s-1900s, and persists into the present day; chosen businesses range from IBM to Campbell Soup to the Pinkertons. For each part, the first of which was due February 4th, students make a one-page infographic about their business during the time period of the current unit.
“The 20th Century Business Portfolio semester-long project,” explains Mr. Buning, AP US History teacher, “began when we first introduced AP US History to the school in our second year, when we had our first collection of juniors, and Mr. Barich and I… needed to have a spring project and we [asked]: ‘How can we make this semester-long?’ And I [said]: ‘Well, politicians, we can’t exactly follow them because they don’t live a hundred years, right?’ And I [asked]: ‘What could last that long?’ Well, businesses, corporations, right? And looking at that, it’s like: ‘Well, we could start with the Gilded Age, and the immigrant story of a lot of these companies is a great way to kind of contextualize,’ and then we started to talk through it some more, and we [said]: ‘Hey, there’s really a lot of opportunity to bring the historical reasoning skills that students need in AP History to kind of set up everything, the ups and downs.’”
“Then, I [wondered], ‘What do we actually do?’ Well,” he continues, “they could do one-pagers, right? And you always hear that as a simple sort of thing, but if they’re using research skills, and if they’re using their aesthetics and their design skills in all of the technology tools that we have here at the school, it actually becomes more than just an infographic, right? It’s representative of learning and understanding, those sorts of things.”
“Right now, we just finished the Gilded Age, so they’re done their first part of it. And that really just sets up the story for each business and each company and everything that’s going on in the Gilded Age with the rise of industrialization and global commerce and capitalism and these sorts of things. And the next phase is to look at how the economy fluctuates through the Great Depression, rebuilds through the New Deal, and becomes a superpower with World War II. And so we get lots of continuity and change through those events, we get lots of effects of how those government policies, those economic situations, disrupt or cause businesses to make decisions as far as maintaining their bottom line.”
In class on February 4th and 5th, students presented their one-pager to their classmates that described their company’s origin and business model during the Gilded Age. One student even brought multiple paper copies of his one-pager and handed them out to students to boost his presentation. Students will present for each other part of the project as well.
“When we did [the project] in the past,” Mr. Buning says, “we really just had students present at the beginning to tell the story of the company, because we’re kind of stressed for time as we move closer to May and the exam. But I think it’s important that the students do present at every phase, because it helps the rest of the class understand how a business like Boeing or Ticonderoga deals with things, or maybe is utilized by the US government to support the war effort in World War II or these sorts of things. And so just having students present all three times I think is important because they’re just sharing their learning, their understanding, and students, I think, like to learn from each other, particularly when a student is up front speaking about something that they’re kind of passionate about or they have a vested interest in.”
“The other thing that we’ve been pushed to do this year is to add reflection, is to have intentional review of the learning and for the student, and then to pass that reflection onto the teacher, so that they can continue to iterate the PBL [Project Based Learning] process. So, I think this year, I’m going to do after the second part a reflection so that they can take that information forward to the final process.”
Mr. Buning will introduce the second part of the project to students next week. For that portion, students will be expected to reach out to an industry expert or the business itself for further information on their chosen company’s history. By the end of the semester, their three graphics will stand together to show the history of the company from its founding to the modern day and allow them valuable reference for the AP Exam in May.
