High School · US History Since 1877 · §113.41 · Problem-Based Learning
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 — Thirteen Days on the Brink
A Problem-Based Learning unit. Students step into the thirteen days of October 1962, take on a stakeholder's point of view, and work a real, ill-structured question about deterrence, sovereignty, and survival — building from surface to deep to transfer learning. The teacher is a guide, not the answer key.
Driving question: October 1962: Soviet nuclear missiles are discovered in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. How should the United States respond — without triggering a war that could end the world?
The three-phase path (do them in order)
Problem-solving is a transfer move — it only works once students have knowledge to reason with. So the problem in Phase 3 is deliberately gated behind Phases 1 and 2.
⛔ Gate: don't open the Phase 3 problem until students have finished the surface and deep activities. Meeting the problem too early turns inquiry into guessing.
Big idea & objectives
Big idea: Leaders weigh national security, deterrence, and the risk of catastrophe when a rival's move threatens them — and the choices Kennedy and Khrushchev made over thirteen days in 1962 brought the world to the edge of nuclear war and then, narrowly, back from it.
Know: what the Cold War, deterrence, and MAD were; how the U-2 photos revealed the missiles; and what the blockade, the letters, and the secret Jupiter-missiles trade actually did.
Understand: the same thirteen days look profoundly different from each stakeholder's point of view — American, Soviet, and Cuban alike.
Do: run the problem-solving and decision-making process end to end — identify the problem, gather information, list and weigh options, choose and defend a solution, and evaluate it (§113.41(c)(31)(B)).
Standards this unit is aligned to (§113.41)
TEKS SE
Where it lives in the unit
(c)(8)(A)
The Cold War, incl. Kennedy's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis — Surface facts, Deep sources
(c)(8)(B)
Cold War tensions and the arms race — Deep concept map, Transfer debrief
(c)(28)
Source analysis, validity & bias, claim + evidence — Deep & Transfer
(c)(29)
Communicate findings in written and oral form — Deep argument, Transfer brief
(c)(31)(B)
The problem-solving & decision-making process — the entire Transfer phase
Teacher prep & materials
Print the facilitator guide (teacher moves, map of possibilities, role cards, debrief prompts) and the assessment pack (rubric + individual-in-group).
Chart paper or a projected space for three shared columns: Hunches · Know · Need-to-Know (the KWHL chart).
Vetted sources for investigation (district-approved). Suggested public-access sources are listed in the facilitator guide.
No logins, no accounts — every page runs in the browser. Student writing and products live on paper or in tools your district already vets.
⚠️ Honest history: this unit teaches the thirteen days directly, factually, and respectfully (TEC §28.0022) — including the genuine risk of nuclear war and civilian catastrophe, the secret U.S. promise to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey that helped end the crisis, and the reality of Cuban sovereignty and that Cuba itself was not at the negotiating table.
Aligned to (not reproduced from) 19 TAC Ch.113 §113.41; effect sizes from Visible Learning MetaX. The Meet-the-Problem narrative is a teaching fiction grounded in the documented events of 1962.