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 canal — they step inside the crisis of 1903 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)(4)(A), (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 1903. The United States has just won a war with Spain, taken possession of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and awakened to a new appetite for global power. Naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan has convinced Washington that a two-ocean navy is impossible without a canal — the battleship Oregon took sixty-six days to steam around South America to reach the fighting.

President Theodore Roosevelt wants a canal, and he wants it now, through the narrow Isthmus of Panama — then a province of Colombia. But the Colombian senate has just rejected the Hay–Herrán Treaty, holding out for more money and more sovereignty. Roosevelt is furious. He calls the Colombians "bandits" and "contemptible little creatures."

Meanwhile, Panamanian nationalists — encouraged by American money and the promise of U.S. warships — are preparing to declare independence. In the harbor, the U.S.S. Nashville waits. Thousands of Afro-Caribbean laborers wait too, for the work that will feed their families and, for many, kill them.

The decision cannot wait. Whose canal is it? Whose land? Whose terms?

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 1903 secession, the "in perpetuity" concession, and the human cost of construction are taught here directly and respectfully as documented events — not sanitized and not sensationalized (TEC §28.0022).

🏛️ The documented events: read the concise, sourced account — Office of the Historian · Building the Panama Canal ↗ (§113.41(c)(4)(A)).

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 1903.

🎩 President Theodore Roosevelt / U.S. expansionists

You believe destiny and national interest demand this canal. How far will you go — and how will you justify it to history?

⚓ A U.S. naval & business interest (Mahan's argument)

Sea power and trade depend on this canal. What is it worth, and what risks are acceptable to secure it?

🇨🇴 The Colombian government

Your senate rejected the Hay–Herrán Treaty to protect your sovereignty and revenue. How do you defend your nation's rights against a great power?

🕊️ A Panamanian nationalist

You want independence and the prosperity a canal could bring. Do you trust the United States — and at what price to your new nation's freedom?

⛏️ An Afro-Caribbean (West Indian) canal laborer

You will do the deadliest work under the "silver roll," paid and housed worse than white workers. What do you and your family need, and whose promises can you believe?

🌋 A Nicaragua-route advocate

You argue a Nicaragua canal is cheaper, closer, and avoids seizing a Colombian province. How do you make the case against the Panama plan?

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 1903; Colombia rejected the treaty; Panama is a Colombian province; a U.S. warship is present; Roosevelt wants the canal now).	Questions we must answer — What did the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty actually grant? What did "in perpetuity" mean? Did the U.S. help block Colombian troops? Who built the canal, and at what cost?

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: Office of the Historian · Panama Canal ↗ · LoC · Panama Canal collection ↗ · DocsTeach · "I took the Canal Zone" ↗ · PBS · American Experience: Panama Canal ↗. 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 whether and how the United States should proceed in 1903 — and on whose terms — 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)(4)(B)

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 — power, sovereignty, and cost — or just the engineering?
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 — Colombia's, a laborer's?
Transfer & evaluate expansionism (c)(4)(B): knowing what followed — decades of intervention, and the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties returning the canal by 1999 — how do you now judge the 1903 decision? Where else does this decision-making process fit today?

Connect to today & to the standards: nations still weigh strategic interest, cost, and others' rights when they act. 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 1903.