Teacher brings a little 'Oz' to history class

VERNON — There are some theories that Frank Baum’s classic Wizard of Oz is about more than a little girl and her three strange friends skipping along the Yellow Brick Road.
It is said to be a political satire where Dorothy represents American values, the Lollipop Guild, child labor, the Cowardly Lion, William Jennings Bryan (rhymes with “lion”) and the Tin Woodsman, the industrial workers who were feeling dehumanized by Big Business (the Wicked Witch of the East).
To start her lesson on the Industrial Revolution and its ponderous politics, VTHS social studies teacher Christina Luzzi came prepared to cast a spell on her students dressed as the green-faced Wicked Witch of the West, who, incidentally, was alleged to represent the cruel power brokers and malicious natural conditions that plagued farmers, like droughts and vermin (remember the Flying Monokeys?) Luzzi likes to start every new unit with a “crime scene,” as she calls it, and give her students a series of clues through which they discover new knowledge.
In addition to the clues in the classic children’s story, she provided artifacts, such as political cartoons of the time, a hand-sewn 19th century shirt, a miner’s helmet and original Edison electric miner’s cap lamp, and a conch shell, which was used by boat captains to signal other boats and locktenders on the canals. The students’ curiosity about the clues and artifacts inspires them to make connections.