Boring stories, missing voices, and 7 tools for Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Several days ago, a group of us got together to do some Inquiry Design Model creation. And one of our conversations focused on the interactions between indigenous people and European colonists during the early years of the United States. That led to further discussions around Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

As part of that conversation, I asked teachers to read a couple of different articles focusing on primary sources and thinking about the voices that may be missing from the stories those sources are telling. The first article, Teaching Hard History With Primary Sources, is from Teaching Tolerance and provides resources for including voices of enslaved persons in American history.

The second was published just a few weeks ago at Education Week. Titled How Do We Teach With Primary Sources When So Many Voices Are Missing?, the article highlights the difficulty in telling a complete story when Native American voices can be hard to find. Bottom line? We need to train both ourselves and our students to look beyond what the easy to find sources are telling us. It’s what Sam Wineburg called “reading the silences.”

Finding these missing voices is important for a lot of reasons. But one particular quote in the EdWeek article stood out for me:

Yup. You’re gonna have to talk about it. 22 impeachment resources that can help

We’ve chatted before about ways to introduce, talk about, and integrate controversial topics on our classrooms. Today I’m flashing back to a conversation I had with Charles Vaughan, a high school teacher from South Carolina. Ten months ago, he shared some of his experiences and thoughts on incorporating political topics into his instruction.

Some of what he referenced seems relevant this week as the congressional impeachment inquiry continues to ramp up. Quoting from an article in an Atlantic titled The Case for Contentious Classrooms, Charles highlighted the importance of what he calls a political classroom:

“Schools teach many things. For the most part, though, they have not not taught students how to engage in reasoned, informed debates across society’s myriad differences.”

He also shared some thoughts based on a book titled The Political Classroom by Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy. During an interview titled Politics in the Classroom. How Much is Too Much? on NPR, McAvoy asks:

Fake news: 3 things we can learn from Finland (And 3 cool tools from right here in the US of A)

We all get smarter when we all get smarter.

Pretty simple concept. It’s the whole idea behind PLCs, #sschat, and, well . . . school in general. Learning together makes a lot of sense.

I recently ran across an article highlighting how the entire country of Finland is working together to combat fake news. I got smarter. And when I followed the article with a quick conversation with some SHEG folks about their Civic Online Reasoning Assessments, it was like I took a genius pill.

Way back in 2014, before we knew Russia was messing around in American elections, Finland began noticing intentional misinformation campaigns focused around issues like immigration, the European Union, or whether Finland should become a full member of NATO. These campaigns ramped up in 2015 and a year later, the Finnish government rolled out a multi-pronged, cross-sector approach designed to give its citizens the tools they needed to be effective digital info users.

As the US continues to experience intentional attempts by both international and internal groups to manipulate the digital world we live in, can Finland’s experience help us we get smarter?

The humanities are “useless.” (Unless you want a job. Or to change the world.).

As my two kids weaved their way through middle and high school, they experienced the first waves of STEM, Career Pathways, and the focus by school districts on specific technical skills. As students who were also interested in art, music, and journalism, it became difficult for them to find room in their schedules for these “non-essential” courses.

The reasoning? We need to get kids ready for high paying jobs after graduation. Get them ready for engineering majors in college. For careers in computer science or coding cause that’s where the money is.

Not that STEAM and tech and career tracks and coding for 8th graders is necessarily a bad thing. I truly believe that we need to provide all types of learning experiences and opportunities for our students. But it seemed at times as if all of those things were added at the expense of things like art, history, and music.

It’s gotten better as

The world is complex. Our kids need to understand that. World Savvy can help

Need a brain break? Ready for some current event / world culture / global literacy questions to test your knowledge?

Of course, you do.

Six basic questions covering events of the day and an awareness of the world around you. (Be sure to check your work at the bottom of the post.)

1. In which of these countries is a majority of the population Muslim?
a. South Africa
b. Armenia
c. India
d. Indonesia

2. Which language is spoken by the most people in the world as their primary language?
a. Russian
b. Mandarin Chinese
c. English
d. Arabic

The Week. It’s the 2019 version of our favorite Weekly Reader that your kids need

I spent the majority of my grade school years at Alta Brown Elementary School in Garden City, America, working on my three Rs. It was pretty traditional stuff – snacks every afternoon, keeping the metal slipper slide super slick with our waxed milk cartons, lots of math drills, straight rows of desks, and, of course, the very awesome Weekly Reader that showed up every Thursday.

Surely you haven’t forgotten the Weekly Reader.

For those of you who didn’t have that particular grade school experience, the Weekly Reader showed up, well . . . every week. Designed for elementary kids, it highlighted current events and always included interesting feature stories. And it was glorious. At least for a budding social studies nerd like me.

My memories were jogged a week or so ago when I ran across the