Is it ever okay for your kids to hate your social studies class?

Can you ever have too much Sam Wineburg? The answer is . . . no, no you can’t. So enjoy this re-mix of a post from a couple of years ago.

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Okay. I don’t want kids to hate social studies. Let’s be clear about that from the get go. But . . . I also think that we sometimes fall off the wagon on the other end by working way too hard trying to find activities that our kids will enjoy or projects that are “engaging.”

It’s been more than just a few years since I first heard Sam Wineburg speak. I had read his book Thinking Historically and Other Unnatural Acts. Read some of his early articles on historical thinking skills and loved his ideas about how we needed to re-think our approach to teaching history. But it wasn’t until a combined Kansas / Missouri Council for History Education conference way back in 2008 that I first heard him speak. He opened the conference with a keynote highlighting the main ideas in his book.

And now, of course, he’s a future social studies Hall of Famer having helped to swing the pendulum of social studies instruction over to something more focused on a balance of both content and process.

But something he said way back in 2008 has stuck with me:

 I don’t think that a history class should be about things such as History Alive or about making cute posters, or about making history “engaging.” It’s about getting students to thinking rigorously about the evidence. Fun is okay, but I would rather have them hate the class and come out having the skills needed to be good citizens than having them enjoy themselves.

Six Awesome Back to School Social Studies Ideas

I was on a quick Zoom call the other night when of the high school teachers casually mentioned that his first day back with students had gone pretty well. Seriously!? Cue the jaw drop. I’m always a little bit shocked when I hear about districts that crank up during the first few days of August but I never get used to it.

Maybe you’re in that same boat, shoving off with kids already or very soon. If you are, this post may be a little too late. But I’m hoping that for most of you, you’ve got at least one or two more weekends before your first few student contact days.

To help energize your first awesome week with kids, here are some great ways to kick off the school year. Use what you can. Adapt what you can’t. Ignore the rest.

Throwback Thursday: “Can the Chronicling America primary source newspaper site get any better? Yes. Yes, it can.”

I’m spending a few days with some of the amazing staff at the Library of Congress (I’m looking at you, Cheryl), learning more about their super cool primary sources and more ways to use them. Yesterday I had a bit of chit-chat with the people in the LOC Newspaper Division that included some tips about using their awesome Chronicling America digital newspaper site.

It was exactly one year ago, I posted some details about one of the site’s best new features. It seems appropriate to give that post another look-see. So . . . today? A Throwback Thursday History Tech edition.

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Seriously. Other than somehow delivering their results with a large iced tea and delicious side order of hand-cut fries, is there any way that the Library of Congress Chronicling America site could get any better?

I mean, you’ve got almost 200 years worth of digitized primary source newspapers available for scanning, analyzing, printing, and perfect for use for all sorts of learning activities in your classroom. OCT text versions of articles. Searchable by keyword. By language. By state. And it’s free. What’s not to like?

So is there really any way that it could get better? Yes. Yes, it can.

News flash. Treasured summer reading list tradition in danger

Yeah. I’m a little behind schedule. Let’s just say that my May and June did not go as planned and leave it at that.

And one consequence of the altered agenda is that my summer reading list, a treasured tradition dating back to the summer following my first year of teaching middle school, is now in serious danger. Along with the March Madness basketball tournament, the annual May collapse of the Kansas City Royals baseball team, the NCSS national conference, and watching A Christmas Story multiple times in December (“you’ll shoot your eye out, kid”), my self-assigned summer reading program is something that’s been part of my yearly schedule for almost as long as I can remember.

An early mentor from my Derby Middle School teaching days, Mike Ortmann, was fairly adamant about the whole thing. “This is not a part-time job,” he said. Don’t get lazy over the summer, he said. Read some books. Expand your mind. Hone your craft. Be sure to stay current, he said.

So . . . who was I to argue? The guy was a serious social studies rock star. And ever since, I’ve created a list of books that I plan to read during the summer months. It’s a great idea. Read some stuff. Take some notes. Get smarter. (Over the years, I’ve added some podcasts. Made sure to hang out with social media buddies. Watched a variety of video clips. But my heart still belongs to books.)

Of course, it’s common knowledge that I’ve never actually finished one of these things. Not going to happen this year either. The 2023 shortened list is a mix of work-related and just fun-to-read books. In no particular order:

247 candles!? Way to go, America!

On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress listened as Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution declaring the United States independent from Great Britain:

“Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

It was a bold move. Several states including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were not yet ready to support this potentially fatal step. Failure to approve the resolution could lead to the collapse of the shaky alliance between the 13 colonies. An earlier proposal by John Adams on May 15 declaring that “it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed” barely passed. Four colonies voted against it and the delegation from Maryland stormed out of the room in protest.

Congress agreed to delay the vote on Lee’s Resolution until July 1. During that time, Congress appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence to accompany the resolution. Consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson, the committee selected Jefferson to be the primary author of the document. A rough draft of the document was presented to Congress for review on June 28.

What if knowledge isn’t the main idea?

I’ve been spending some time over the last few weeks doing some research on a writing project and happened to run across on old post of mine from several years ago. The post is based on some comments made by the late Grant Wiggins. Wiggins spent much of his time working with Jay McTIghe to develop and share their ideas around what they called Understanding by Design.

UbD focuses on making intentional decisions in the instructional planning process – being clear about what they called “the end in mind.” You then work back from there to ensure that everything that you’re asking kids to do is aligned to those goals. It makes a ton of sense.

In the article titled “Everything You Know About Curriculum May Be Wrong,” Wiggins spends some time sharing thoughts about the balance between teaching foundational knowledge and historical thinking process. And I know it’s summer but it’s always a good time to think about ways to do our jobs better.

So . . . a History Tech flashback post: