Activity
Crafting Connections: Designing a Diplomatic Pin
Taking inspiration from Secretary Albright’s pin collection, students design their own pin depicting their stance on a current event or issue.
Lesson Plan: A Gallery Walk of Secretary Albright’s Pins
In this lesson, students will analyze Secretary Albright’s pins and discuss the power of non-verbal communication as a tool of diplomacy.
Download Lesson Plan
Why would a diplomat want to use non-verbal communication as a tool of diplomacy? Can a pin be an effective tool of diplomacy?
While serving first as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and then as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright wore brooches that purposefully conveyed her views about the situation at hand.
Secretary Albright said, “I found that jewelry had become part of my personal diplomatic arsenal…While President George H.W. Bush had been known for saying ‘Read my lips,’ I began urging colleagues and reporters to ‘Read my pins.'”
While Secretary Albright isn’t the first to use the power of jewelry and fashion as a diplomatic tactic, her pins allow us a window into how jewelry might affect diplomacy. In this lesson, students will analyze Secretary Albright’s pins and discuss the power of non-verbal communication as a tool of diplomacy.
Using objects from the Read My Pins online exhibit, students will analyze the effectiveness of nonverbal communication and create an argument on whether jewelry can be a tool of diplomacy.
Materials & Links
- Lesson Plan Google Doc
- Graphic Organizer Hand-out Google Doc (This resource is set to “view only.” Please make a copy to modify the resource and use it with your students.)
- Teacher’s presentation in Google Slides (This resource is set to “view only.” Please make a copy to modify the resource and use it with your students.)
- Read My Pins online exhibit
Standards Alignment
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source
Recommended Grade Levels
9th-12th
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