Eighth graders will be visiting the Avalon Theater this Friday to see the movie Newsies. The movie, which focuses on a paperboy strike in the 1920s, touches on some of the key issues in the American turn of the century industrialization that students have just learned about in Ms. Coppola-Klein and Mr. Anderson’s history classes. The musical sets the conflict over workers’ rights and pay to music with songs and dances that focus on the employee struggle for fair compensation. Students will be writing a paper about the historical accuracy of the movie’s depiction of big business, child labor, urbanization, unsafe working conditions, and union organizing.