NCAA basketball? Meh. History Movie Madness? Heck yeah!

Just so you know. I’m not impressed with the NCAA basketball tournament. March madness? March boring maybe. Too few upsets. Lots of blowouts. And not enough interesting story lines. I could have just picked all the tops seeds to win and I’d be at the top of my bracket pool.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna watch. Just not a ton of excitement so far.

So when I ran across the American Battlefield Trust’s History Movie Madness Bracket Contest my weekend was saved. You’ve probably heard of the Trust back when it was called the Civil War Trust. It started as a group dedicated to preserving Civil War battlefield sites. It’s now also working to do the same for Revolutionary War and War of 1812 sites. So . . . they’re good people.

And now I love the Trust if even more because we get to apply our bracketology skills to history movies. I’ve written about my favorite history movies before (and am planning an update soon) so having the chance to break down 32 movies to find the all time best is right up my alley.

The Trust starts off with by claiming somehow that Gods and Generals is the best movie ever:

Race to Ratify is latest awesome iCivics game that you should be playing right now.

I got the chance over the last few days to spend time with tons of social studies gurus and learn tons of new stuff at the National Council for History Education conference in Washington DC. Thanks to Dr. Richard Satchwell and Judy Bee at Illinois State University and all the folks at the @TeachingLC Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources project for making the trip possible.

Part of our TPS time together was spent with developers of the five Library of Congress interactive civic education apps they’ve created. Very cool stuff that you can find at the LOC. All five are super handy for helping kids make sense of primary sources and for training students to engage as informed citizens. It was great sitting with the developers and learning more about how to use the apps with kids.

But I am just as excited about something Emma Humphries, Chief Education Officer at iCivics, threw out at the end of her formal presentation about their DBQuest app:

We’re releasing a new iCivics game tomorrow called Race to Ratify.

She couldn’t really share a ton about it but we got the chance to get a quick taste of the game. And when she said “tomorrow,” she meant last Friday. So it’s been officially out in the wild for a few days. I’ve played with it a bit since then and it’s pretty much like all iCivics content.

Awesome.

Women’s History Month resources. (That you should use all year.)

As a founding member of the National Women’s History Project, Mary Ruthsdotter knows the importance of teaching kids about the accomplishments of women.

“As a youngster, I thought I had drawn the short straw being born female. None of the stories I was told of adults actively and effectively engaged in the world had to do with women. How startling it was to learn (after college!) that women have played important roles in every aspect of American life – establishing homes for family life, fighting and spying during every war, establishing social service networks, and dramatically influencing laws and attitudes.”

Students who don’t learn the facts can develop the wrong idea about what women have accomplished. Ruthsdotter continued:

“If women’s contributions and accomplishments are not mentioned, the omission is not even noticed, but a subtle lesson is learned just as certainly: Women haven’t done anything important. Knowing that teachers cannot pass along what they themselves have not been taught, the NWHP aims to make excellent, user-friendly materials readily available for all areas of the K-12 curriculum. Language arts, social studies, creative arts, the sciences – women have been active in all these areas, and the stories of their accomplishments are fascinating.”

Couldn’t agree more.

But I’m conflicted about the whole Women’s History Month thing – a lot like my hesitation around the idea of a separate Black History Month. Too many of us still use February and March to have kids memorize random black history and women’s history facts and call it good. (We also seem to have a habit of doing the same thing with Latino history and Asian American history and Native American history and . . . well, you get the idea.)

I’m conflicted because I know many of you may be looking for great Women’s History month resources. And I have a list. But part of me is afraid that it will only get used between now and the end of the month.

So here’s the deal. You can have the list. But

Tip of the Week: 75+ professional learning opportunities that will make you smarter

We all love our summers. After a couple hundred days of facilitation, lesson design, students, parents, exciting projects, new ideas, administrators, and assessments, the chance to catch your breath a bit during the months of June and July is hard to beat.

But summers are also perfect for catching up on your own professional growth and for having conversations with other social studies teachers. If you’re planning to take advantage of the many different summer PD options, now is the time for finishing up your applications.

And do I have a Google spreadsheet for you.

Tip of the Week: Forget the gym. These 5 New Year’s resolutions are what you really need

You’re right. Most New Year’s resolutions are made closer to the actual New Year. But it’s still January . . . so I’m good, right?

And it’s never too late to make a few 2019 social studies resolutions. Best place to start? Asking questions about our current practice, especially during this middle of the year period: What’s working? What’s not? What do my students need? What resource needs to be phased out? How can I get better?

The middle of the school year is a perfect time to think about these sorts of questions. In that spirit, here are five New Year’s resolutions every social studies teacher should make:

7 things our kids should be learning in history class. Or not.

In a couple weeks, me and 18 other social studies teachers, district level curriculum coordinators, state education consultants, and other assorted interested individuals will get together to rewrite the state’s social studies standards.

Rewrite is perhaps the wrong word. Revise might work better. Maybe just tweaks. Because the number of changes we make to the document really depends on the decisions we make during our time together. Do we think the current document is flawed enough for massive changes or are we looking at just some simple re-wording?

If you’ve been following History Tech for a few years, you know the story of our current standards. If you haven’t, a quick review.

Several years ago, per Department of Education regulations, a group of us was asked to come together for a scheduled review of the state social studies standards. Long story short . . . we changed them. We went from a document that encouraged the memorization of content to one that supported a balance between the gathering of information with the effective use of that information. We wanted kids to do social studies rather than simply memorize it. Along with the standards document came a performance-based assessment measuring historical and critical thinking skills that replaced the previous test of 60 multiple choice questions.

The goal was simple – change the way social studies is taught is the state. Focus on process and content. Measure thinking, not memorizing. Develop engaged, informed, and knowledgeable citizens. And while there’s been a few bumps along the way, the message that we need to go beyond traditional instruction has made its way through the system.

And now in 2018, we’re back – per Department of Education regulations – to look again at whether the document needs adjustments. It’s been an interesting conversation so far. Everyone is onboard with historical and critical thinking skills remaining a focus.

But the questions we’re really wrestling with are more complex: what should a state level, public document look like that encourages learning about a country and world as diverse, as complex, and as interesting as ours? How does it support the telling of multiple stories and themes and people and ideas without getting bogged down in the minutiae? What do we emphasize and what can we ignore?

As part of the process, I’ve been reading and looking at what other states are doing and what other current curriculum documents look like. During my search, I ran across a recent article in the Washington Post that asked seven historians a simple question: