I thought today's discussion about Hamilton was rich--though I wished a few more people felt comfortable jumping in. Thanks to everyone who spoke! (And sorry if any of you felt lost through parts of it! I'll do better on that in the future.)
What today's discussion boiled down to for me was that the musical Hamilton challenges how our society popularly remembers Hamilton--as an old, white-haired, "Founding Father"--who must therefore be dignified, stoic, selfless, and the like.
Instead, the musical portrays a "bastard, orphan, son of whore," an immigrant who, "just like [his] country," is "young, scrappy, and hungry." He drinks with his bros, he shoots off his mouth, he gets into duels, and he womanizes.
Is this what you thought of when you saw a ten-dollar bill?
Showing you the Tony performance of Battle of Yorktown was meant to complicate things further. You don't just hear the music and lyrics, but you see Black actors inhabiting white, slave-owner roles. Truly, the "world turned upside down!"
My question was whether we should embrace this or be careful with it? Is this redefining the traditional American narrative or confirming it? Are we led to think differently about women's and African Americans' roles in the Revolutionary period?
I don't think there is a clear answer to that question.
This leads me to your popular memory lesson plan assignment. As you think about your popular memory lesson, here are a few things to consider:
1) What form should your lesson plan take? Does it need to be elaborate?
My answer: It's up to you, but I think a formal lesson plan is best. If your school has a way to do official lesson plans, use that. If not, use the format we used last year. Create a "show-stopper" lesson plan, with all the bells and whistles, that you can use for the job search.
2) Should I critique how an event is normally remembered by Americans?
Yes, I think so. A really easy way to plan interesting history lessons is to take the "popular" or "Hollywood" version of a historical event and see what is changed, what is emphasized, and what is downplayed. Downright inaccuracies are interesting too!
If popular memory of the Holocaust is Germans = aggressor, Jews = victims, then a movie like Defiance, which shows the Jews actively resisting Germans, challenges us. If popular memory of the Holocaust is Germans = bad, Jews = good, movie like Schindler's List, which shows a German war profiteer coming to care about Jewish victims and working to save them, challenges us.
3) Can I use a non-written text?
Yes! Movie or movie clips are probably the best for this. But so are photos, or museum exhibits, or memorial plaques. Remember the past is all around us. So take a place where the past is commemorated or explained for the public and start to think about it with your students!
4) Anything else?
Yes. As I was thinking about it, you probably want to get student input as you start the lesson. Ask them to create a timeline, narrative or story about what happened and who was involved. It can be short and quick. That raw input lets you see how students remember the past and what differences exist in the class.
The point of this assignment is to help students challenge how we (however "we" is defined) remember the past and to ask how particular versions of the past reinforce stereotypes or benefit certain groups at the expense of others.
I think this is something that interests most people, so I'm hoping your students will find it interesting and you will have a successful lesson.
I really look forward to continuing this topic through viewing the film, Detroit, and discussing the complications involved in understanding the 1967 Detroit riots (disturbances? uprising? freedom fight?) and what it means for us today.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Curiousity and Teaching!
One of my all-time favorite commercials reminds us to, "stay curious, my friends!" Especially good advice for teachers.
This week, I asked you to figure out how your school community voted in the last presidential election and how that might impact your teaching. I thought it was a wonderful conversation. One thing that surprised me, though, was how hard this task was going to be for some of you.
For East Lansing, it was somewhat easy. The boundaries for the East Lansing School District overlap nicely with the city borders. This is not the case for many of you, that have school districts that draw from diverse townships and counties! Of course, even in East Lansing, with schools of choice, there are many students attending from outside the city borders. So defining who is in the East Lansing School District community is not so easy after all!
While information on Ingham County is easy to find, the city of East Lansing was a bit harder. Nonetheless, I could pretty easily find a chart of precinct reporting and do some easy math!
But some of you were going to have a harder time, with precincts spread across diverse political boundaries. It took some searching, but finding this map with the national precinct results--put together by a graduate student at Washington State University--was well worth my time spent looking around. What a great resource to use with our students!
There is a lesson here. As teachers, our own questions can drive our search for resources, which we can then share with our students! We never stop learning!
I look forward to talking about Hamilton and the power of collective memory over the coming weeks!
This week, I asked you to figure out how your school community voted in the last presidential election and how that might impact your teaching. I thought it was a wonderful conversation. One thing that surprised me, though, was how hard this task was going to be for some of you.
For East Lansing, it was somewhat easy. The boundaries for the East Lansing School District overlap nicely with the city borders. This is not the case for many of you, that have school districts that draw from diverse townships and counties! Of course, even in East Lansing, with schools of choice, there are many students attending from outside the city borders. So defining who is in the East Lansing School District community is not so easy after all!
While information on Ingham County is easy to find, the city of East Lansing was a bit harder. Nonetheless, I could pretty easily find a chart of precinct reporting and do some easy math!
But some of you were going to have a harder time, with precincts spread across diverse political boundaries. It took some searching, but finding this map with the national precinct results--put together by a graduate student at Washington State University--was well worth my time spent looking around. What a great resource to use with our students!
There is a lesson here. As teachers, our own questions can drive our search for resources, which we can then share with our students! We never stop learning!
I look forward to talking about Hamilton and the power of collective memory over the coming weeks!
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Dialogue Poems
Here's a link to the Honeybees Poem. Dialogue poems are a great activity for ending up a unit or applying some work you've done to explore multiple perspectives.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
The Office of Citizen in our Republic
Our unit on civics was quick, but hopefully you got some great ideas
about how we can teach about government, the "office of the citizen,"
how deliberation fits into this all ("what should we do?"), and what the
Michigan civics course looks like.
Note that while our unit focused in particular on mock trial, we can imagine doing mock townhall assemblies, legislatures, senate committee hearings, model UN, moot courts, and presidential cabinet meetings (Atomic Bomb, Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.). We'll get some more great ideas from each other as we go through our microteaching next week.
Here is the mini mock trail manual from which I am pulling our course--it's a great resource, so you will want to keep it handy.
Note that while our unit focused in particular on mock trial, we can imagine doing mock townhall assemblies, legislatures, senate committee hearings, model UN, moot courts, and presidential cabinet meetings (Atomic Bomb, Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.). We'll get some more great ideas from each other as we go through our microteaching next week.
Here is the mini mock trail manual from which I am pulling our course--it's a great resource, so you will want to keep it handy.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
ELL Learning from Scott Johnson
Thanks to Scott Johnson for an awesome discussion about his sheltered social studies classroom at Everett High School. We saw the amazing diversity of his classroom, with 38 students from 16 countries represented!
Scott gave us some great tips and materials. Here are some of my own takeaways:
1) Scott has high expectations for his students, but he balances that with a realistic assessment of where they are at. He works to have his students meet him half way--sometimes, there is no perfect solution, just slow progress.
2) Scott actively teaches vocabulary. It's not enough to know a definition. Kids have to use the words, understand their importance, relate them to their own local context, and get lots of practice hearing and using social studies concepts.
3) Scott shows us its possible to ask big essential questions--what is a revolution?--while still adapting content and resources to the levels of an ELL learner. His webquest probably had reading material anchored at the upper elementary level, but he used it to leverage big ideas and important content.
4) Scott uses lots of picture--everywhere. On his PowerPoints, and in his exams!
5) Scott allows students to use their native language in his classroom--in particular, he allows more advanced students to translate for less advanced students.
6) Scott gets to know his students, but allows this to develop over time. His writing assignment about the American Dream happened in the second semester. Because students might be sharing traumatic memories and experiences, he wanted to build some trust before he jumped right into this.
Below are the material Scott shared with us. Thanks, again, Scott!
PowerPoint Presentation
Primary Document reading
Webquest
Adapted readings on inventions
Graphic organizer on inventions
Scott gave us some great tips and materials. Here are some of my own takeaways:
1) Scott has high expectations for his students, but he balances that with a realistic assessment of where they are at. He works to have his students meet him half way--sometimes, there is no perfect solution, just slow progress.
2) Scott actively teaches vocabulary. It's not enough to know a definition. Kids have to use the words, understand their importance, relate them to their own local context, and get lots of practice hearing and using social studies concepts.
3) Scott shows us its possible to ask big essential questions--what is a revolution?--while still adapting content and resources to the levels of an ELL learner. His webquest probably had reading material anchored at the upper elementary level, but he used it to leverage big ideas and important content.
4) Scott uses lots of picture--everywhere. On his PowerPoints, and in his exams!
5) Scott allows students to use their native language in his classroom--in particular, he allows more advanced students to translate for less advanced students.
6) Scott gets to know his students, but allows this to develop over time. His writing assignment about the American Dream happened in the second semester. Because students might be sharing traumatic memories and experiences, he wanted to build some trust before he jumped right into this.
Below are the material Scott shared with us. Thanks, again, Scott!
PowerPoint Presentation
Primary Document reading
Webquest
Adapted readings on inventions
Graphic organizer on inventions
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
World History Lecture Notes
World History Standards for Grade 7
1) Disciplinary Skills and Processes
2) Study of Specific Eras
o WHG Era 1 – The Beginnings of Human Society
o WHG Era 2 – Early Civilizations and Cultures and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples
o WHG Era 3 – Classical Traditions, World Religions, and Major Empires
o WHG Era 4 – Expanding and Intensified Hemispheric Interactions
3) Final Project
4) Integration of Other Disciplines
High School World History Standards
1) Study of Specific Eras x Lens/Frames
o WHG Era 5 – The Emergence of the First Global Age, 15th to 18th Centuries
o WHG Era 6 – An Age of Global Revolutions, 18th Century-1914
o WHG Era 7 – Global Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
o WHG Era 8 – The Cold War and Its Aftermath: The 20th Century Since 1945
2) Final Project on Contemporary Issues
3) Social Studies Processes and Skills
In order to think about our units and lessons, we therefore have to have a process for drawing upon diverse standards across multiple areas of the document. In general, we want to integrate:
a) Global patterns, inter-regional interactions, and regional case examples
b) Essential research and literacy skills in the discipline
c) Concepts and connections from other social studies disciplines
What are ways that we can do this?
1) Plan units that are focused on an era, but that that have an essential question that links to another discipline.
Examples:
§ Did the agricultural revolution solve or invent food scarcity? (history integrated with economics)
§ Did the agricultural revolution promote equality or inequality? (history integrated with government)
2) Make sure to integrate projects and activities into every unit that emphasize aspects of the inquiry arc (where students examine primary and secondary sources, make claims, and write narratives that evaluate agency, motive, and cause/effect).
3) Use regional case examples to illustrate global trends.
4) Look for moments of inter-regional “historical convergence”: trade, migration, war, empire, and cultural and technological diffusion.
1) Disciplinary Skills and Processes
2) Study of Specific Eras
o WHG Era 1 – The Beginnings of Human Society
o WHG Era 2 – Early Civilizations and Cultures and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples
o WHG Era 3 – Classical Traditions, World Religions, and Major Empires
o WHG Era 4 – Expanding and Intensified Hemispheric Interactions
3) Final Project
4) Integration of Other Disciplines
High School World History Standards
1) Study of Specific Eras x Lens/Frames
o WHG Era 5 – The Emergence of the First Global Age, 15th to 18th Centuries
o WHG Era 6 – An Age of Global Revolutions, 18th Century-1914
o WHG Era 7 – Global Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
o WHG Era 8 – The Cold War and Its Aftermath: The 20th Century Since 1945
2) Final Project on Contemporary Issues
3) Social Studies Processes and Skills
In order to think about our units and lessons, we therefore have to have a process for drawing upon diverse standards across multiple areas of the document. In general, we want to integrate:
a) Global patterns, inter-regional interactions, and regional case examples
b) Essential research and literacy skills in the discipline
c) Concepts and connections from other social studies disciplines
What are ways that we can do this?
1) Plan units that are focused on an era, but that that have an essential question that links to another discipline.
Examples:
§ Did the agricultural revolution solve or invent food scarcity? (history integrated with economics)
§ Did the agricultural revolution promote equality or inequality? (history integrated with government)
2) Make sure to integrate projects and activities into every unit that emphasize aspects of the inquiry arc (where students examine primary and secondary sources, make claims, and write narratives that evaluate agency, motive, and cause/effect).
3) Use regional case examples to illustrate global trends.
4) Look for moments of inter-regional “historical convergence”: trade, migration, war, empire, and cultural and technological diffusion.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Writing Learning Objectives in the Social Studies Classroom
As I noted in class, the art of writing clear learning objectives is probably not essential to the work of teaching. As long as we are thoughtful about our purpose, concise formulations of how cognitive operations interact with specific subject-matter content are probably not going to make or break us as teachers.
On other hand, what Andrew and I noticed in class today was that by asking you to specify your cognitive operation, we tended to push you beyond simply asking students to “recall” or “know” the facts and theories of the social science disciplines.
This is a good thing.
It’s helpful to know about Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”—but it’s even more useful to debate whether or not that thesis really explains anything about the American character. That is, we must always recall there are many ways to interact with content—that true knowledge requires us to turn it about in our heads, and to ultimately decide on its significance and power.
It’s also really helpful, especially in world history, to get specific about content. Viewed in one way, all the material in a social studies courses are case examples about how humans act in certain situations. We should thoughtfully choose our case examples in order to broaden our students’ view of the world and to help them best understand the big ideas we are attempting to explore.
Teaching is not purely linear. In a good Socratic discussion, for example, we don’t always know where we will end up. We don’t know what the students will have learned. In this case, writing a learning objective is not even possible.
But the reality is that the current policies and trends require that we be able to formulate what we want students to do ahead of time. And that we be able to express these students performances in concise and technical language. Hence, the need for us to practice writing these learner outcomes and to include them on all of our public documents.
On other hand, what Andrew and I noticed in class today was that by asking you to specify your cognitive operation, we tended to push you beyond simply asking students to “recall” or “know” the facts and theories of the social science disciplines.
This is a good thing.
It’s helpful to know about Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”—but it’s even more useful to debate whether or not that thesis really explains anything about the American character. That is, we must always recall there are many ways to interact with content—that true knowledge requires us to turn it about in our heads, and to ultimately decide on its significance and power.
It’s also really helpful, especially in world history, to get specific about content. Viewed in one way, all the material in a social studies courses are case examples about how humans act in certain situations. We should thoughtfully choose our case examples in order to broaden our students’ view of the world and to help them best understand the big ideas we are attempting to explore.
Teaching is not purely linear. In a good Socratic discussion, for example, we don’t always know where we will end up. We don’t know what the students will have learned. In this case, writing a learning objective is not even possible.
But the reality is that the current policies and trends require that we be able to formulate what we want students to do ahead of time. And that we be able to express these students performances in concise and technical language. Hence, the need for us to practice writing these learner outcomes and to include them on all of our public documents.
TE 408 Assignments
Here are links to our TE 408 assignments for the spring 2017 semester:
Objective Exam assignment
Formative Assessment assignment
Formal Lesson Plan assignment
Objective Exam assignment
Formative Assessment assignment
Formal Lesson Plan assignment
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