③ Transfer · Solve the problem

Phase 3 — Meet the problem

⛔ Gate check: only open this phase once students have finished Surface and Deep. This is where they transfer everything they built into a real, messy decision.

This is Problem-Based Learning. Students don't answer questions about the New Deal — they step inside the Depression year of 1935 as stakeholders, and the teacher guides rather than tells. The whole phase runs the problem-solving and decision-making process named in §113.41(c)(31)(B).

🎟️ Entry ticket — 1-minute warm-up

Problem-solving teaching · d 0.61§113.41(c)(16)(C), (c)(31)(B)

Step 1 · Meet the Problem

Read the narrative aloud. Read it once for the story, then again for details students will need.

The year is 1935. Six years after the crash, the Depression grinds on. Roughly one in five Americans still cannot find work. Banks have failed, savings have vanished, and on the Southern Plains the Dust Bowl has driven whole families off the land and onto the road.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt has already pushed a torrent of programs through Congress — the CCC, the WPA, the TVA, the FDIC. Now, in 1935, he signs the Social Security Act, the boldest step yet: the federal government promising to help care for the old, the jobless, and the poor. To millions it is a lifeline. To others it is a dangerous new power — a government spending money it does not have, reaching into places the Constitution never meant it to go.

The courts are watching. In Schechter v. United States the Supreme Court has just struck down a centerpiece New Deal law, ruling that Washington reached too far. Critics on the right warn of debt and dictatorship; critics like Huey Long say the New Deal does not go nearly far enough. And for a Black sharecropper in the South, the promise rings hollow — the new Social Security law leaves out farm and domestic workers entirely.

The decision cannot wait. How much responsibility should the federal government take — and at what cost to whom?

First reaction (not answers yet): what did you notice? What do you wonder? Keep it open — the point is to pull students into the problem.

⚠️ Handling difficult history: the New Deal's real exclusions — Social Security's original exclusion of farm and domestic workers, disproportionately Black Americans and women, and the unequal administration of relief — are taught here directly and respectfully as documented facts, alongside the New Deal's genuine relief and lasting reforms and the constitutional fight over federal power (TEC §28.0022).

🏛️ The documented events: read the concise, sourced account — FDR Presidential Library · FDR and the New Deal ↗ (§113.41(c)(16)(C)).

Multiple perspectives · d 0.75§113.41(c)(28)(C)

Step 2 · Take a stakeholder role

Assign or let students choose a stakeholder. Each will reason from that person's point of view. Every role has something real at stake in 1935.

🎩 President Franklin D. Roosevelt / the New Dealers

You believe only bold federal action can save a suffering nation. How far should government go — and how do you answer those who call it too much power?

⛏️ An unemployed industrial worker

You have been out of work for years and a WPA job or relief check keeps your family fed. What do you need from government, and what would you risk if it pulled back?

🏭 A business owner / fiscal conservative

You worry about mounting debt, higher taxes, and a government growing too powerful over the economy. How do you make the case for restraint?

⚖️ A Supreme Court justice on constitutional limits

After Schechter — and with the court-packing fight ahead — you must weigh the New Deal against the Constitution. Where are the limits on federal power?

🌾 A Black sharecropper facing the New Deal's gaps

Social Security leaves out farm and domestic workers, and relief in your county is given unequally. What do you and your family need, and whose promises can you believe?

📣 A Huey-Long-style critic ("Share Our Wealth")

You say the New Deal protects the powerful and does not go nearly far enough for the poor. What more should government do, and how do you rally support?

Problem-based learning · d 0.53§113.41(c)(31)(B), (c)(28)(B)

Step 3 · Hunches → Know → Need-to-Know

Build three shared columns on chart paper. This identifies the problem and plans the inquiry — the first moves of §113.41(c)(31)(B).

💭 Hunches	✅ Know (from the text)	❓ Need to know
Our guesses about what is happening and what each side might do.	Facts we can point to (it's 1935; the Depression continues; FDR has signed Social Security; the Court struck down a New Deal law in Schechter; some workers are excluded).	Questions we must answer — What did Social Security actually promise, and whom did it leave out? What did Schechter decide about federal power? How much did the New Deal cost, and did it work? What did critics on each side want?

Turn "Need to know" into the H of KWHL: How will we find out? (which sources, whom to consult). Record it — this is the class's research plan.

Transfer strategies · d 0.75§113.41(c)(28)(A,C,D)

Step 4 · Inquiry & investigation

Groups pursue their "Need to know" questions using vetted sources (see the facilitator guide for suggested public-access sources). Students gather and use valid information, applying the source routine they practiced in Phase 2. Keep filling the Learned column of KWHL as answers come in.

Teacher-as-guide moves: answer a question with a question; point to a source, not the answer; ask "How do you know?" and "Whose view is missing?"

📚 Investigation sources: FDR Library · FDR and the New Deal ↗ · LoC · The New Deal ↗ · DocsTeach · Great Depression & New Deal ↗ · LoC · Voices from the Dust Bowl ↗. Full list + how-to in the facilitator guide.

Weigh & choose · d 0.75§113.41(c)(31)(B), (c)(28)(E)

Step 5 · Propose & defend a solution

From their stakeholder's point of view, each group develops a recommendation for how much responsibility the federal government should take for the economy and its citizens in 1935 — and at what cost to whom — and defends it with evidence. Assessment happens throughout the process, not only here (the reasoning is the point).

Groups present an 8-part problem/solution brief (poster, slides, or spoken):

Title & group members (and your stakeholder role)
What is the problem?
Why is it a problem — and for whom?
Who are the stakeholders?
Options we considered (advantages & disadvantages of each)
Our recommended solution
The evidence and sources behind it
How we'd know if it worked

Evaluation & reflection · d 0.75§113.41(c)(31)(B), (c)(16)(D)

Step 6 · Debrief & metacognition

Close the loop — the evaluate step of the problem-solving process. Discuss across roles so students hear how the same crisis looked from every side.

Did our solution address the real problem — economic security, liberty, constitutional limits, and cost — or just the symptoms?
Did we use evidence from more than one source? Whose point of view did we still miss?
How did the crisis look different from another stakeholder's chair — an excluded sharecropper's, a justice's, a critic's?
Transfer & compare the New Deal and its opponents (c)(16)(D): knowing what followed — a permanently larger federal government, a lasting Social Security system, and a still-running debate over federal power — how do you now judge the 1935 choices? Where else does this decision-making process fit today?

Connect to today & to the standards: nations still weigh economic security, liberty, cost, and constitutional limits when government acts. Name the steps students just used — identify, gather, list options, weigh advantages and disadvantages, choose, implement, evaluate — that is §113.41(c)(31)(B).

🧑‍🏫 Facilitator guide & sources ✅ Assessment pack

🎫 Exit ticket — check yourself

‹ Phase 2 — Deep Unit home

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 1935.