How We Can Teach Social Studies More Effectively
I was humbled and honored when Larry Ferlazzo sent me an email a couple of months ago to answer one of the questions for the wonderful teacher advice column he does at Education Week. I’m even more humbled to be featured in a column with Bill Bigelow, curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, and co-director of the Zinn Education Project, whose work I have long admired. The question for this week is, “What’s the best advice you can give to Social Studies teachers who want to be more effective?” An excerpt from my response:
The best advice I can give Social Studies teachers who want to be more effective is to remember that we teach students, not content.
While standards may dictate that students be able to explain the Green Revolution, the human beings in our classes demand that the information we help them learn also help them develop as people. Students may enter our rooms asking, “when am I ever going to need use this information?” We need to help them leave wondering, “what lessons can I learn from the past to help myself and our society make better decisions in the future?” A study of the Green Revolution, then, becomes a lesson in how a seemingly wonderful solution to problem (hunger) can have unintended consequences that are potentially far more catastrophic (overpopulation, increased reliance on polluting fossil fuels). By focusing on transferable goals, students will not only be more engaged, but will better remember and understand the content.
The rest is here. Part two and three to come, and they’re still looking for answers, so please contribute your suggestions!
How NY is Screwing Up the Common Core
Previously, I’ve explained why I like what the Common Core does for Social Studies learning and teaching. My latest piece for the New York Times’ Schoolbook takes on the implementation of the new standards:
Teachers who focus on content and test-prep are sadly doing all that is necessary to prepare students for the exam. A recent study by Gabriel Reich of Virginia Commonwealth University found that the Global Regents Exam does not call for any historical thinking skills, but rather knowledge of history content, basic literacy and “test-wiseness.”
The history Regents exams do not ask students to do anything that meets the overwhelming majority of the new Common Core standards.
It is particularly troubling then to find that the state does not seem to have a concrete plan in place to change the history regents exams.
Please read the whole piece, and add your comments here or there.
What the Common Core Means for History Learning & Teaching
I’m part of a roundtable on teachinghistory.org on the question, “What do the Common Core State Standards mean for history teaching and learning?” My take:
I am pretty sure I am supposed to be against the Common Core Standards…[but they] offer us an opportunity to broaden the conception of our discipline from one that focuses on helping students acquire an established body of knowledge to one that emphasizes the historical thinking skills that are central to constructing this knowledge. What the standards do in a simple and elegant fashion is clearly articulate the disciplinary skills necessary not only for reaching the relatively low bar of “college and career readiness,” but also for the much greater calling of creating an informed and critical citizenry.
Read the rest of mine here, and the whole series of insightful posts here.
3 Ways to Honor Martin Luther King, Jr.
Have Your Students Participate in the Manning Marable “Along the Color Line” Speech Contest
While there is more to the contest than just writing about King, one of the suggested lessons focuses on King’s legacy, and Dr. Marable’s view of it. The King lesson is here, and full contest information and suggested lesson plans are here.
Remember King’s Reality
Last Martin Luther King Day, I wrote about four lessons students, and their teachers, can learn about Dr. King that challenge common misconceptions about his life and work:
- Sometimes, history happens by accident
- King dreamed of a whole lot more than white and black boys and girls joining hands
- King fought against terrorists
- King was a human being, with flaws
Teaching World-Changers: Lessons From the Civil Rights Movement
Seven years ago I fell in love with two wonderful woman named Bernice Robinson and Septima Clark, who founded the Citizenship Education Program, the little known backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Without these two, I am certain we would not be celebrating Martin Luther King Day this Monday. We in education have much to learn from them:
The primary goal of the Citizenship Education Program was to teach and develop first-class citizens. And every aspect of the program was grounded in this goal—from teacher training sessions to day-to-day practices to the rhetoric of staff correspondence. Dozens of adult literacy programs had targeted African-Americans in the South—but none were as successful as the CEP, because too many narrowly focused on the skill of literacy, rather than its application in citizenship.
In my opinion, we have made a similar mistake with skill-based competency testing under No Child Left Behind. A curriculum and testing regimen that only focuses on skill development outside of meaningful and relevant application cannot prepare students and communities for 21st-century success. I hope that with the implementation of the Common Core standards, we will not make the same mistake again. As teachers, we need to develop a clear sense of our own purpose—and make every effort to ensure that how we teach each day aligns with that purpose.
Read the rest at Education Week Teacher. It’s an honor to share part of their story.
World History for All of Us
Last year, I found myself teaching a Global History course for the fourth time in my career. Like many history teachers in the US, most of my historical training had focused on American history, and it was my passion for it that led me to become a Social Studies teacher in the first place. The first time in my life that I was in a classroom learning about Ancient Greece and Rome was when I was teaching it as a student teacher, in East Greenwich, RI. There, the course was still “Western Civilization”. I later taught “World History 1” in Virginia (Beginning of Time -> Renaissance), and “Global History 3/4” in New York (Renaissance -> Now). What was evident to me in all courses was that a dominant narrative of the progress of western civilization was the backbone of the course: River Valley -> Ancient Greece & Rome -> Middle/Dark Ages -> Renaissance/Exploration/Scientific Revolution -> Enlightenment/Atlantic Revolutions -> Modernity. The Rhode Island curriculum basically took that as the story, while Virginia and New York used that to organize chronological periods, then adding in units about other portions of the world, often leading to illogical breaks in the stories of other regions, particularly China. I realized there was something problematic about this conception of World History, but did not have the vocabulary or knowledge to articulate anything more than “this seems Eurocentric.”
Thanks to a recommendation in the October issue of Social Education, however, I now have that language. Ross Dunn’s article, “The Two World Histories” is the most important piece I’ve read about teaching World History, and needs to be required reading for anyone who teaches the subject. It clearly articulates two camps on World History:
- World History A: This is the home of most current scholarship on World History, where the focus is on major trends, patterns, and changes on a global scale.
- World History B: This is the home of both conservative Wester Civilization preservationists and those, like my least-thoughtful self, who want to see more attention paid to all cultures, particularly those that are the heritage of the students I teach. This is history as the history of civilizations, cultures, nations.
Nearly all political argument around history, and therefore the development of all state standards, occurs in domain B. The New York Global curriculum and its Regents exam are no exception. Of the 85 terms that are assessed most frequently in the Multiple Choice portion of the exam, 75 represent people, places, periods, achievements, or events that take place within specific regional or national histories.
Dunn argues that what is needed instead is:
to study the history of humankind writ large, recognizing that the Earth is a “place” whose inhabitants have a shared history. To be sure, important developments have taken place within the confines of continents, regions, societies, and nations, but those ver-changing human aggregates remains parts of the globe in all its roundness.
He recommends the AP World History and World History For Us All curriculums as good models of World History A, as well as the National Standards for History. It’s also clear though, for those like myself without a strong background in World History, that further reading and professional development is needed. Though I didn’t fully realize until now why I found it so insightful, I would recommend World History Connected as a good place to start reading.
I hope you will take the time to read the article in its entirety and let me know what you think about it in the comments.
