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Lia's avatar

Wow! So interesting. Also, when I type "Phisto," my phone changes it to History, which is perfect 😆 You and coldsummer1816 teach History, Holly teaches English -- when I was in 9th grade, Social Studies class was where we discussed current events! Those kids are lucky to have you as their teachers.

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coldsummer1816's avatar

I really appreciate and look forward to your posts. I teach sixth, seventh, and eighth grade social studies. I started last year after spending several years teaching elementary and I much prefer the middle grades - they are developmentally at a stage where they are instinctively oppositional, which suits my own personality.

It’s amazing how much you can accomplish and how much you can wake kids up by being enthusiastic about the subject matter. Like your ninth graders, my sixth graders arrive to me as complete novices - because of the standardized test obsession, most of them come to me having never had social studies instruction (!), and so 80% or more are unable even to locate our state on a map when they get to me. I try to strike a balance between “knowing the facts” and deeper thinking, especially since my students come to me without any historical, economic, or geographic knowledge or historical thinking skills. I am required to teach American history but pepper in lessons on other major historical or current events with similar themes or that are necessary to explaining causes of events in the U.S. (ex: we study the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars with the Louisiana Purchase and study the Enlightenment before learning about the Declaration of Independence). We study differences between modern American regions and their landscapes and economies, and I give quizzes which require students to memorize the names and locations of the fifty states, as well as the continents and oceans, etc. It’s out of vogue to require memorization but I find it to be valuable in helping kids understand how to remember information and we talk through explicit strategies for creating schemas to make the information more easily retrievable. Knowing also helps them to feel powerful, especially when they can apply the basic geographic facts to understanding a historical event we are studying.

My favorite activity I have started doing to wrap up a lesson is called “ten second takes.” I pose a question based on the day’s lesson and a random student begins, and gets ten seconds to articulate their opinion about the topic. Anyone in the class can raise their hand to rebut or elaborate on their point, also in ten seconds (I use a loud timer to add urgency and drama). For example, this past week my eighth graders studied the Mexican-American War, and I asked if they believed James K. Polk had a good idea in starting the war. I like the activity because it forces them to think on their feet; one kid said that “getting California and New Mexico was a good idea and good for the US but the country should not have gone to war to steal it from Mexico” and a couple of kids immediately pointed out that he offered to pay for it, and that he was positing an option that did not exist in reality: the US could either fight and win the land, or not fight and go on without it. It was a proud teacher moment for me. Like you, I am now at a point where kids ask me about what we are going to learn that day when I see them in the hallway. They come to me with questions about current events. I think they like me because I really try hard to avoid dumbing down or moralizing situations.

Really great to hear from someone else in a similar position who is making it work and enjoying their job despite the amount of nonsense going on in the education system at large. Hope your year continues to be great - your students are lucky to have you. And please keep posting about teaching - there are so few voices of happy and intelligent teachers out there.

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