The film HIDDEN FIGURES has been a popular success, filling theaters and receiving many award nominations. Its subject is a previously unheralded group of women whose brilliance and dedication provided a foundation for the space program—the black women known as “human computers” who worked at the NASA Center in Langley, Virginia. Faced with obstacles to their own education and job prospects because of race and gender, these women succeeded and earned respect in a workplace dominated by male supervisors and colleagues and marked by segregated facilities, from office to restroom that reflected life in the pre-civil rights era. Their lives modeled vital lessons in confidence, structural equity, and academic excellence that apply to all students today.
Journeys in Film harnesses the power of film to create educational programs that dramatically improve teaching and learning outcomes. Hidden Figures is ideally suited for use in the classroom, but teachers want students to do more with a film than passively view it. Journeys in Film has prepared eight comprehensive, standards-aligned lesson plans for secondary students. These interdisciplinary lessons can be used independently or through a team approach that gives students multiple lenses through which to consider the relevant historical and contemporary issues raised by the film.
For social studies classes, the first few lessons in this guide explore the context in which the events of Hidden Figures occur: the increasing animosity between Communist nations and the West, the pressure-filled milieu in which the women at Langley were working, the vital role served by the “human computers” in the space program, the costs of segregation, and the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Math and science lessons explore scientific notation, conic sections, orbits, and programming, and additional lessons analyze the film for theme and style.