Week 16: My ETE 375 Experience

All of my classes at Bradley, up until this one, was either dedicated strictly to history or to education. It was frustrating sitting in a history class and contemplating how I would teach such material to high school students or in an education class and trying to figure out how such a strategy would work in a history classroom. Finally, ETE 375 put the two subjects together so that I no longer have such a dilemma.

I think what I took the most out of this class was how to present history in an interesting way. I love history so it does not take much to get me excited about the subject but the majority of students could care less. The two unit plans that we had to do throughout the semester really helped to push my creativity level to the maximum. Most education courses just have you write down what you might do, this project made you create everything as if you were going to teach the unit (and some people did). It wasn't as if the teacher was the sole person to see your lesson plans either, you had to present this to the whole class which added to the pressure to push the envelope. I enjoyed researching and creating these lesson plans as well as listening to those of my fellow classmates as they were presented. I felt like the project will truly benefit me in my future career.

This class also presented me with various resources in which I can come back to when they are needed in the future. Believe it or not, the other NCSS standards and the history standards had yet to be presented to us as Bradley Students until our final year of school. These standards really helped to narrow down the enormously broad Illinois Learning Standards into something much more manageable for a teacher. Other valuable resources came from the lesson plan frameworks, the graphic organizers, and the practice of Prezi and PowerPoint.  

Week 15: Unit II Presentations

I am always amazed at how creative my classmates are in their unit plans. The unit plans that were presented so far have been truly inspiring! I am definitely going to use many of the ideas of my classmates' lesson plans in my own teaching. I love how everyone used such a variety of resources to present their lesson plans from music to documentaries. I especially liked Jacob's idea of the two versions of the Justin Bieber song. I'm sure that students would thoroughly enjoy that exercise!

As for my own lesson plan, I thought my strengths were in the hands on activities that I created and the multiple primary sources integrated into the lesson plans. In my fourth lesson I planned for students to participate in a mock peace conference that occured between the British and the Americans after the American Revolution. The students would be divided into two groups and asked to make a list of demands to the other side. They would have to work together in order to come up with a peace treaty at the end of the lesson. Students would then compare the peace treaty they made with the actual Treaty of Paris of 1783. I was the most proud of this activity because I think it will truly be effective in the classroom for students to understand really the basic arguments of each side during the war and which direction both countries would go after its conclusion. Another hands-on activity occured in the first lesson for my unit in which I planned for students to participate in a debate so that they could understand again the opposing viewpoints and arguments of each side of the war.

I also really liked my idea for students to work on a journal, pretending that they were a colonist in America during the American Revolution and to describe what this person's life might have been like throughout the war. Students were given a prompt at the end of each lesson in order to reflect on what they had learned and also as an opportunity for them to be creative. They could create a character for their journal and have that character progress as did the war. At the end, the students could review their journals to better understand the war and its overall  impact.

I thought this lesson plan was easier to accomplish than the first simply because I knew what to expect. In my first unit I spent a lot longer time just figuring out how to plan my lessons using the provided frameworks. I tried to pair my lessons with the frameworks before truly knowing what I wanted to cover or do in the lesson and that turned out to be a disaster. This time I had a relatively basic idea of what I wanted to do in each lesson and then chose the framework that would best match that idea. This worked out much easier. Overall, I was really happy with this lesson and I cannot wait to be able to teach it in a classroom one day.

Week 13: A Better Way to Use PowerPoint

As much as I enjoy making a prezi presentation, it still cannot beat a traditional PowerPoint. Though the PowerPoint presentation is abused and often used poorly in the classroom, it is the best and most efficient tool that can be used to teach a lesson if used properly. A prezi presentation is visually appealing ... so too can be a PowerPoint presentation. A prezi presentation is nonlinear... so too can be a PowerPoint presentation. A prezi presentation is also animated ... and so too can a PowerPoint presentation. There is truly nothing that a PowerPoint presentation cannot do in comparison to a prezi.

Whenever I make a PowerPoint presentation, it generally takes me hours to complete it because I thoroughly enjoy making my presentation as visually appealing as possible. The various PowerPoint presentations that I created for the last unit were designed to enhance the lesson in some shape or form rather than to be a monotonous bullet list of information that students would be required to write down. Due to this purpose, I think I spent more time creating my Power Points than writing my four lessons. Now that I have been introduced to even more functions of PowerPoint, I am truly excited to take my PowerPoint presentations to another level for unit two. With a topic like the American Revolution, it should be easy to find primary source backgrounds and sources to enhance the topic of the lessons. I am especially excited to use PowerPoint for my propaganda lesson. My only concern for teachers would be the time that it would take to create these visually powerful presentations. How can teachers find the time to make the most out of PowerPoint?

Week 12: de Bono's Thinking Hats

In my limited experience in the typical American classroom, I have noticed a lack of red and green hats in everyday instruction. The white hat is perhaps the easiest one for a teacher to place upon his or her head and it is used in a classroom every single day through lectures and PowerPoint presentations. Both the yellow and black hats are often used simultaneously in instruction usually through comparisons and the blue hat is also used generally at the end of a unit or lesson to reiterate the main ideas of the day to the students. When it comes to creativity and emotions, many teachers fall short of this kind of instruction.

In the classroom that I am currently in for novice teaching, emotion is perhaps the least used hat of the entire bunch. I think this is a result of the subjects that my CT teaches: government and psychology. The government classroom is the least likely to have emotion placed into the curriculum because most of the instruction is rather dry rules and procedures of the federal government. Similarly, in Psychology a lot of the instruction is explanation of an experiment or a description of a process of the brain. These are very scientific like subjects than generally appeal to the brain rather than the heart.

In history, however, the red hat is perhaps the easiest hat to achieve in the curriculum. History is all about people and their stories. How can emotion not be a part of a person's life story? I think one of the most emotional stories that could be told in a history classroom is one about a mother with every male child off to war (kind of like Saving Private Ryan). You would have to be a robot not to have so kind of emotion disturbance with that type of story. There are countless of other examples throughout history that can be presented to students in such a way that would allow them to feel a part of the historical character's life and empathize with their situation. That is why primary sources are absolutely critical to a social studies classroom. They help students to better understand the story or viewpoint of a historical person.

Week 11: Chapter 12 Lowen and Junior Achievement

"The highest result of education is tolerance" - Helen Keller

Loewen in chapter 12 brings up the issue as to why our Social Studies textbooks are lacking any kind of controversy or alternative points of view. One of the major reasons, Loewen discovered, was that people in the U.S. believe the purpose of educating students in Social Studies is to instill pride in our country. As I was reading this chapter in Loewen, I asked both of my parents whether or not they believed that the United States was the best country in the world and they both replied in the affirmative. Though my parents were in high school decades ago, they still retained the same message that kids are being taught today: America is the best country in the world because of the American dream, democracy, freedom, etc. Its almost as if democracy does not exist anywhere else in the world or that every other country in the world is evil and dictatorial. Even though the American system of government was rather unique in the eighteen century, it does not mean that it is the best form of government nor the only form of democratic government.

I am not saying that as Americans we should not be proud of our country or that we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back for the freedoms and liberties that our citizens enjoy. However, I think that by constantly repeating the message that the United States is the best country in the world and that we do no wrong is not only extremely misleading but it paints other countries in a negative light when we do so. There also exists large contradictions to the arguments of American democracy and freedom. Throughout history, the United States has violated its most basic freedoms but yet our students are never informed of those instances (such as Japanese internment camps during WWII). I say we can instill patriotism without false information and the alienation of other democratic countries.

Helen Keller once said, "The highest result of education is tolerance". In Social Studies classrooms, we have the responsiblity to teach our students that there are no correct viewpoints in life. The beauty of our world is that everyone is different and views life each a little bit differently. We shouldn't brainwash our kids into thinking that there is only one way of looking at things or only one way of doing things. This will only lead to further problems in society like hate crimes. The United States is an amazing country (the only country I want to live in) but it isn't the best country in the world. There are no superior countries in the world. All countries have made poor decisions, they have restricted the rights of their citizens, and they have progressed and degressed over time. The United States has had both its heroic moments and also its blunders. As educators, we have to teach tolerance or else we have failed to truly educate... we have instead forced a singular opinion on the suspectible minds of our children.



Last week, Meghan and I went to meet with our cooperating teacher for Junior Achievement, Mr. Pantages. He was extremely kind and accomodating. He gave us some ideas about what will most likely work in his classroom with his students and those things that probably would be too difficult or not interesting to the students. I felt much better about teaching economics after our meeting, since economics is not a subject that I know very much about. It also helps that there will be another Bradley student with me so that I will not have to teach it on my own. 

Week 10: Presentations and Sternberg's Framework

Once again I thoroughly enjoyed the lesson plans that my classmates presented this week. It was apparent that everyone took a vast amount of time and effort to complete their units and they each produced truly fantastic ideas. I think each and every single one of my classmates will someday soon become fantastic teachers whose students cannot wait to attend their classes each day. They will create lesson plans that are informative, engaging, and applicable to their students' lives and their students will love them!

As I began researching for my second unit plan, I wanted to set the bar even higher for myself in relation to my first unit. In many ways, I believe that my first unit was well organized and if it would have been taught in the classroom I think it would have been an effective learning tool. However, there were some aspects of certain lessons that I thought could have been improved or conducted in different ways that would have made the lesson plans even better. My second unit is on the American Revolution and again I will not be able to teach it in my current novice teaching placement but I know I will be able to use it in my future classroom, perhaps even during my student teaching experience. I am currently trying to decide how to break up my unit into four lesson plans in an interesting and creative way. I could just break it up in terms of battles or in a chronological format, but I want to do something beyond the timeline method in order to more effectively engage my students in the lessons. I want to include aspects of the Revolution that most students will not have heard about before such as that Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was a loyalist and the war ruined their relationship or that Washington's son fought in the Battle of Yorktown and Washington was mourning his death while everyone else was celebrating America's victory. I think these kinds of stories will make the war come to life for the students. The American Revolution is filled with valuable primary source materials and interesting stories that I cannot wait to implement and try out in my lesson plans!

Week 9: Presentations of Unit 1

I thoroughly enjoyed being able to hear and see my classmates' lesson plans. Everyone did a fantastic job at creating lessons that were well structured and creative for their respective topic areas. It was clear that everyone spent a large amount of time creating and perfecting their lesson plans. I was also impressed by the wealth of primary sources that each person used within their lesson plans. Though the amount of time to research and find such sources might be exhausting, I think that it is obvious that such lessons will wow students and improve their learning and comprehension in the long run. Overall, I gained several valuable and practical ideas to use in my future classroom from my classmates presentations and I am excited to be able to implement them when the time comes.

I was really impressed by Chloe's use of choices within her lessons. In almost every one of her lesson plans she gave her students options on the activities that they could complete. Therefore, each lesson incorporates all learning styles and intelligences of the students. This is an area in which I struggle for I tend to create lesson plans that correspond with the way in which I learn, not the various ways my students learn. In the future, I need to think more deeply to create lesson plans that all students can learn from.

I was also excited by Kevin's hands-on activities in his lesson plans. Instead of just talking about Hammurabi's Code or cuneiform, he is having his students understand both concepts by creating their own laws and forms of writing. Every student, no matter what age, would prefer hands-on experience rather than being talked at for a whole class hour. Any time that a lesson can include a hands-on activity, I plan on using it in my own lesson plans.

I thought Katie did a really good job at integrating primary sources into her lesson plans. Since there is such a wealth of primary sources out there on the American Civil War, I cannot see how a teacher could avoid using primary sources in his or her lessons. I especially liked her lesson in which she was having her students write letters back home as if they were from the Civil War time period. She did not just verbally explain what life would be like back then, she included primary sources to actually show students what life might have been like. I thought that was an incredibly smart idea and I plan on using it in my own classroom as well!

The only issue that I had when reviewing these lesson plans was the time aspect that each unit would require. Excluding those lesson plans on wars, the majority of the topics for the units I feel would not normally be so thoroughly covered in a classroom. My current cooperating teacher, covers an entire chapter in a week. Such a schedule would not be able to incorporate my four days strictly on voting. The same applies to other topics like the West or Mesopotamia. I remembering covering those topics each in a day when I was in high school. So I am wondering if some of these unit plans are truly practical for an actual classroom? Or can only one or two of the lessons of the unit be incorporated into the curriculum?

Prezi Unit Outline

http://prezi.com/ubkepvus8egr/ete-375-unit-one/

Week 8: Individual Conferences Regarding Unit 1

As I was preparing and creating my four lesson plans for our first required Unit for ETE 375, I was having issues creating lessons that went beyond what I like to call robot teaching. The teacher inputs data into the students (aka the robots) and they repeat the information word for word back to the teacher. I feel as if this type of "learning" occurs when students are not engaged in the topic of lesson and they are unable to find any meaning or relevance to their own lives. In my own lesson plans, I wanted to move beyond the PowerPoint presentation/lecture method with a random worksheet thrown in at the end of lesson. This is a cookie cutter type of method of instruction that students receive, at the high school level, about six times a day. It is a personal goal of mine to not add to a student's grief on a daily basis in such a manner.

I've noticed this type of traditional lesson plan in my novice teaching experience, but I do not necessarily blame my cooperating teacher for this phenomenon. In my opinion, my cooperating teacher is a brilliant teacher whom loves her job and gives 110% every single day to her students. The problem, I believe, is the lack of time rather than necessarily the actions of my teacher. She covers and tests on a  chapter every single week. Therefore, students have very little opportunity once they have been taught the basics about a topic to explore it further. I had this exact problem as I was teaching this week since I had to cover a chapter on a week that began on a Tuesday, since they had off Monday for Columbus Day, and there was a shortened period on Wednesday because of a teacher's in service. As a result, I was forced to fly through this information at record speeds and honestly, I have little idea as to whether or not my students grasped the concepts that I wanted them to grasp.

I want to defy this traditional way of teaching, but I am still undecided on how to accomplish this goal. I dabbled with the idea of simulation activities, which I did include in at least two of my lessons. The first lesson deals with voting registration and the process of voting, so I figured why not let the students actually register to vote and to literally go through the process of voting. That makes sense. However, what about those lesson plans that cannot be so obviously simulated or literally role-played in the classroom? How can a topic like the powers of Congress be simulated? How can you create a lesson plan that goes beyond listing the expressed, implied, and denied powers of Congress on a PowerPoint slide and reading them off to students? Even if a topic can be simulated how can the teacher find time to actually conduct the simulation? Time is too precious for a teacher.

Week 7: Chapter 9 Cantu, Scaffolding in Prezi

For the past couple of weeks, we have been reviewing different lesson frameworks and it got me thinking about how experienced teachers do not use formal lesson plans. My cooperating teacher's only responsibility is to type up a brief description of what she is going to do for the week and that is considered her lesson plan. For example, October 6th-ch. 6 quiz and debate topic. That can't even really be considered a description. I may be reading too much into this, but I feel as though the lack of accountability for teachers out in the field can become a serious problem. I know that teachers are extremely busy and writing out a formalized lesson plan for each week will only add more to their workloads, however, there are many teachers who are able to do the bare minimum in the classroom and get away with it and that is not acceptable.

I think that teachers should at least have to give more detailed explanations of their plans for the week. Instead of just listing that one is going to cover chapter 6, teachers should at least be required to write perhaps some essential questions or goals that they want to see resulting from the coverage of the chapter. These "lesson plans" then should be sent to the department chair to be looked over. If the department chair notices that the teacher is missing something or taking shortcuts then the appropriate action should be taken. It would be preferable for teachers to have to write formal lesson plans so that the students do not suffer from "teacher's rut," meaning teachers doing the same things every single day over and over again.

 I have already noticed that my lesson plans are being adapted to fit my own method of learning and my own interests. I learn in a structured, formal manner and I tend to create lesson plans that fit that mold. This is so easy to do too. I had not even realized it until about my third lesson. It is understandable that teachers who have been in the profession for years can get into this same sort of rut. I do not believe that there ever comes a point in a teacher's career in which he or she has become all-knowledgeable and without the need for a mentor. Everyone benefits from conversing with someone who is in the same field. I think that every school needs to implement a mentoring program for teachers that exists for as long as the teacher is working in the school. This is another method in which teachers can be held accountable. Each year the mentoring pairs should change in order to bring in different perspectives and ideas for the classroom. Otherwise both teachers could fall into the "going through the motions" type of teaching. This mentoring program might alert more experienced teachers to that rut and convince them to change things up a bit.

My question for this week would be ... What are some other ways in which teachers can be held accountable for what they are doing in the classroom? Or what are some ways in which a teacher can become self-aware of his or her teaching "ruts" and avoid them? 

Week 6: Cantu Ch. 8 and Loewen 6

This week we were discussing various lesson plan formats and how imperative it is to design one's lessons so that students start out with the basics and gradually make it to critical thinking and making connections to their lives. This is the best way for our students to learn and gain the necessary knowledge and skills they need in order to move on with their educations. In my Novice Teaching experience this week, I attended school-wide teacher's meeting and one of the core issues that they were discussing was how to improve student achievement and how to get the students to the appropriate benchmarks in order for them to be prepared for their ACTs and, ultimately, college. Pekin High School has this program in which the fourth hour teachers discuss with their students their grades across the board so at least they are aware of their current grades and can potentially raise them higher. They also have a huge problem with their students not completing their homework so they have designed a detention system so that the students are required to make up missed homework during their detentions in order to receive partial credit for the work they get done. If students do not attend their homework detentions they have to serve a disciplinary detention and then beyond that they are referred to the deans. My teacher has already referred four students to the dean in the four or so weeks that school has been in session for the year. Also in the meeting was a presentation on a online tool to track student progress that enables teachers to view their students' grades on their benchmark tests and determine where they are struggling and which ones are prepared for the ACT.

The one thing that I did not hear during the meeting was how teachers can improve student progress and achievement within the classroom. Understandably, the school could have discussed this issue at another point in time but in my opinion, it all starts in the classroom. My teacher and I did discuss how once these students reach their senior year, there is not much teachers can do to fix all of the problems of their educations up to that point. By that point, the students are pretty much stuck in their ways. Pekin administrators and teachers are trying to focus on freshman students so that by the time they become seniors, certain problems will not be as prevalent (hopefully). To return to my original point, I feel as though there is more that teachers can do in their own individual classrooms to raise student achievement such as better lesson plans! A solid lesson plan that includes a stair step type approach that engages students in the learning and approaches topics from different angles has the power to make a huge difference in these students' educations. I am not saying that every student can be an A student because one teacher steps up his/her game but if every single one of a student's teachers step up then something positive will result from that.

There are so many teachers that get stuck in their ways and forget their training. There is a teacher in the same department as my CT who lectures all hour and gives students worksheets. That is unacceptable! Even my teacher, who I love dearly and who is an amazing teacher, has a consistent routine that does not (in my opinion) effectively reach all learning styles and intelligences. This is one of the hardest things about teaching ... not getting stuck in a rut and repeating the same old thing year after year. I know teachers are busy and I know its so much easier to keep a lesson plan from the year before, but we need to find some way that teachers can devote more time to create solid lesson plans that get students interested in learning again. Most of the students that walk into the government classroom could care less about the subject and their grades show that apathy. It is our job as teachers to get them excited about walking into the classroom and learning about our subjects. My question then becomes: How can districts create more planning time for teachers and how can teachers be held accountable for their actions in the classroom on a daily basis?

Week 5: Cantu chapter 5; Loewen Chapter 5

In my novice teaching class this week I was surprised at the controversial topics that my teacher was allowed to introduce in her classroom. I grew up in an extremely conservative community which had a tight grip on the curriculum of its schools and therefore omitted many of the controversial issues in American society today. It was not until I reached college that I was exposed to the more uncomfortable topics and asked to take a stand on them. In a way I feel sort of jipped as a result of this censored curriculum and I think that this is a part of Loewen's argument in chapter five about "invisible racism". Luckily, I have a cooperating teacher who does not allow any form of intolerance in her classroom in any shape or form and she feels the need to introduce and discuss those more uncomfortable topics that many teachers try to avoid. In her classroom, the intolerance does not come from racial differences, since every student in the class is white, but more from socioeconomic status or gender differences.

Loewen seems to be making the point that racism is a sort of taboo topic that is neither directly nor indirectly taught in schools today. The kinds of stories discussed in classroom are the more rosy stories about peaceful resistance or African Americans fighting courageously in the American Civil War. The stories that are omitted from the curriculum are the tales of murder, torture, and abuse of African Americans by their fellow communities. That's the real story, so why don't history books include them? Going back to previous weeks the answer could be as simple as history textbooks try to avoid controversy. They want to present a history in which everyone shakes hands at the end.

I think discrimination, unfortunately, has to be included in every social studies curriculum. Think of how many examples and discussion questions that can be taken from history to teach about this issue. My CT showed a video in her class about an experiment in which a third grade teacher, Mrs. Elliot, conducted in the 1970s to teach her students about discrimination. The first day she convinced her students that blue-eyed people were smarter, better, and more deserving of an elevated status in society than brown-eyed people. The second day she switched and had the brown-eyed people on the top of the social hierarchy. The students who were a part of her class and who are now adults today consider Mrs. Elliot's lesson as one of the most important life lessons they have ever received in a classroom. I think that sometimes it is necessary to deal with the uncomfortable or the controversial in order to get a point across. We are not doing our students any favors by telling them fairy tales! If we teach discrimination now...hopefully one day it will be extinguished for good.

The only issue with controversial and uncomfortable discussions in the classroom is getting the school district to agree that it is necessary and vital to their child's education and life long learning. It seems almost necessary that the federal government should mandate that every school district deal with certain controversial issues in some shape or form, especially discrimination so that every child will become aware of it. So I guess the question is...Should the federal government require every school district to talk to their students about discrimination?

Week 4: Cantu Ch 4 & Lowen Ch 4

I find it interesting that James Loewen in his book goes to great lengths to expose the American public to the crimes and atrocities committed by Europeans and their descendants throughout history. He claims that education these day is completely one sided focusing on the white contributions to society and ignoring those of the minority groups entirely. Loewen suggests that history textbooks should be rewritten in order to include the contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, and so on and so forth. The problem with this argument, in my mind, is that the focus of history will once again be viewed from the perspective of one ethnic group. When talking about Native Americans, Loewen wants history teachers to talk to their students about how Europeans invaded this land and massacred all the Indians. Once again there is a bad guy and a victimized good guy. I think as history teachers we should present our lessons as Switzerland. There are no good guys or bad guys (or good or bad women)! There is only imperfect people prone to making mistakes. History should not be about good verses evil or right verses wrong, it should be about differing people interacting with one another.

This discussion of ethnic groups got me to thinking about the privileges I have experienced being born as a white person. The idea that my values and beliefs are consistently represented in the institutions that govern my country and the curriculum that is exposed to the country's children, makes it difficult to put myself in the shoes of a Native American who has not received those privileges. For example the caricature of the Cleveland Indian would not have crossed my mind as offensive unless I had not been exposed to it in the classroom. There are just some things that one does not think about until someone else points it out.  With this knowledge I think it is important to constantly be in check of those values and beliefs while in the classroom. I think without even realizing it, I could start teaching with a Euro centric standpoint and will continue doing so until someone alerts me to the inconsistencies in my curriculum. My question then remains...how can a teacher avoid this trap in the classroom? What could a teacher do in order to include every group, whether that be women or men, whites or blacks, Christians or Jews, into their classroom curriculum everyday? 

Week 3 (Cantu Chapter 2; Loewen Chapter 2)

This week's discussions and readings got me thinking about my role as an educator and what should be included in my curriculum. After reading Loewen's perspective, I started to agree with him that as historical educators, it is our jobs to teach our students the truth... but at what cost will this "truth" have on our students as citizens of the United States? I remember entering into college and having to basically re-learn everything that I had been taught "wrong" in high school and being legitimately disappointed to hear that some of my heroes growing up weren't the people I thought they were. All the individuals that I idolized growing up were slowly being revealed as racists, sexists, lazy swine. It made me question the rest of the subjects I was taught and what those teachers "lied" about too. Therefore, I think there is a line in historical teaching in which teachers do not necessarily have to "lie" about the past, but they do not have to go through all the nitty gritty details about an event either. The men and women who are so-called heroes in history textbooks were not perfect human beings. I think its safe to say that is a universal notion. Yet these individuals are in history textbooks because they accomplished some miraculous feats in their lifetimes. Their stories should be told without also including that they were alcoholics or bigots. Social Studies teachers really only need to include those details if they are important to the event being studied such as Columbus and his so-called "discovery" of America. It is necessary in this instance for students to know that the Native Americans were in America first and that millions died when the Europeans came across the Atlantic. So I suppose it is up to the teacher's discretion as to what nitty gritty details are necessary to include in the curriculum. Is this a fair solution? Are our students being cheated out of something by presenting history this way? In my opinion, sometimes less is more.

Week 2: Origins of Teaching Social Studies

In class this week we discussed a brief history of how social studies education began and how it has evolved over the years. In general, the pattern switches every twenty years or so from conservative approaches to more liberal approaches. We debated whether social studies education in today's society was taught using more traditional approaches to teaching or was, in fact, more directed towards critical thinking. It has been my experience, both in the classrooms I have been a student in and the classrooms I have observed that social studies in our schools today is being taught very traditionally. Social studies teachers teach their students history in a chronological manner emphasizing dates and heroic figures. There are no debates or controversies that make history/social studies so exciting. Students, more than likely, sit in their desks, listen to their teacher lecture, and take notes. When the test comes along, students memorize their notes. I have yet to witness or have a social studies teacher that has done anything different.

In response to the ideas we discussed in Loewen's first chapter, the reasons why high school students hate history is not because the subject itself is boring but because history/social studies teachers fail to get students to see what all the excitement is about. I did not become a lover of history because I had an amazing history teacher growing up, I fell in love with the subject based on my own research and through certain media that made it come to life for me. Though I did have one amazing teacher that came to class in costume and used a film reel to teach all his lessons. His lesson were taught traditionally but with style. Another factor that makes history dull to most students is that its about a bunch of old white guys. Students don't get to learn about amazing African Americans throughout history except when learning about the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement and they don't get to learn about spectacular women except when learning about the Suffrage Movement in the 1920s. The subject of history involves so many interesting people but in school we only recognize the men in the White House. I want to know how we as future Social Studies teachers can help to add more depth and variety in Social Studies education? How can we avoid just covering African Americans or Women in "spotlights" and integrate them fully into our curriculums so that our students can recieve the whole story?  

The Week of August 24th, 2011

Though this week only consisted of a short introduction of my fellow students and of the teacher, it was valuable in the fact that I am now at least vaguely aware of the teaching standpoint and perspective of the professor. Each time I walk into a class with a professor that I have not had before, I am nervous as to their expectations and the overall atmosphere of the classroom that the teacher creates. Some teachers, right off the bat, will start with the syllabus and outlining all the assignments, rules, and procedures of the classroom. I appreciated the fact that Professor Cantu took the time to at least briefly explain his teaching philosophy and to learn a little about his students before going into the inner workings of his classroom. I am truly excited to be taking this class to learn how to better implement a variety of methods and strategies in my future social studies classroom.