What would you tell pre-service history teachers?

Starting in early February, I’ll begin working with another pre-service history methods class. It’s been a year or so since I’ve worked college kids and I’m a bit curious.

Besides the obvious:

• show up on time
• know your content
• care for kids
• don’t get arrested

what do you think pre-service social studies teachers need to know and be able to do?

Teaching history and best practices

Teaching has always seemed to be an individual activity, forcing teachers to figure things out on their own. Using trial and error isn’t necessarily a bad thing when conducting a science experiment but probably not something that works that well when trying to corral 30 8th graders.

And in the pre-internet days, it was difficult for teachers looking for help with instructional practice, resources and strategies to find it.

But with the web, PLNs and digital content, teachers don’t have to sink or swim on their own anymore. There are tons of great lesson plans and ideas out there, conversations that we can have and sites we need to use.

The problem?

Time to find them.

And . . . while I can put links and sites and handy gadgets here at History Tech, it doesn’t really feel like the most suitable place to share in-depth lessons and strategies. So I have created a specific page over at Social Studies Central to share useful things I run across.

The Best Practices page highlights a variety of detailed professional development resources goodies from such sites as the National History Education Clearing House, Edutopia and History Matters. Every few weeks, I grab a few more.

So . . . take off that life preserver, head on over to Best Practices and discover what others have to offer!

Tip of the Week – Red Light, Green Light!

Create a classroom set of laminated green, yellow and red cards. The set could be as small as traditional playing cards or as large as you want. (Personally, I would probably make them monster size just for fun!)

How to use them?

• Hand them out to students before a large group discussion and periodically call for a vote on an issue by asking for a simultaneous show of cards. Red = disagree, green = agree, yellow = not sure or need more information. Use this information to create groups for debates and research.
• You could use them during group activities to help monitor progress – green means “we’re finished and ready to move on,” yellow means “we need one more minute” and red would mean “we need some more time.”
• Try using the cards as a simple form of the much more expensive clicker system. Develop a short list of questions – these could be true/false, yes/no, three answer multiple choice – and have kids respond with their cards.
• I’ve talked about Exit Cards as a great feedback strategy. Use the green/yellow/red cards as quick check of a wide variety of things at the end of class. Homework done? Understand the lesson? Ready for the test tomorrow?
• Monitor understanding with the cards as you progress through a lecture, lab or demonstration.
• Train your kids (especially your special ed kids) to use the cards to indicate that they are having trouble with independent practice activities during class. A red card could be used to quietly ask for help and a green card might indicate that the student is ready to help others.

Play with the strategy for a bit and I’m sure you’ll come up with some of your own great ideas for the cards. Have fun!

Your rules for teaching history? Part III

Quick review of last week’s rules from Lee Formwalt’s 2002 list?

• Passion
• Relying less on textbooks
• Well written secondary sources
• Looking at things that matter today

Today?

Rule Five: Use generous amounts of local history to teach American and World History

Formwalt is a firm believer in integrating local history with national and world events. This has some connection back to his suggestion that we have to teach things that matter today but it’s a bit different than that.

For example, teaching the three phases of Reconstruction — Presidential, Radical, and Redemption — could really bore students if not done well. If you happen to be teaching in the South, try handing out a copy of a contract signed by a local planter and his former slaves the summer after emancipation. This exercise does several things: it demonstrates a primary source; it shows what Reconstruction meant to ordinary people–a planter and freed persons on his plantation; and it gets the students to interact with the past. These historical figures are real flesh and blood folks right there in the county in which you teach. I guarantee students will remember Reconstruction a lot better than if they had just read about it in the textbook.

He suggests that you can even use local history when teaching world history.

Use local newspapers in a variety of ways. How did local people deal with World War II on the homefront? How did the war affect advertising? What values were important in the 1940s compared to the 1920s? You might have them locate the issue of the local paper for the day they were born–or the day their mother or father was born. What was the important news of that day? What were merchants advertising? What were the values visible in the ads?

Rule Six: Use music and film to appeal to those senses not necessarily stimulated by reading

Music can touch the emotions in a unique way. Suggestions:

• Starting a discussion with a song can break the ice
• Use music as background to a slide show of 4-6 images depicting a topic such as civil rights or the Holocaust. Ask students to make a list of what they see and what they feel during the slide show
• Help students develop their listening skills by printing out the lyrics of the songs
• Have students try to figure out the where and when a song was written
• Play different versions of a song to illustrate how people can take a song from one context and reshape it for another purpose

Film, too, can be a powerful way to get your students’ attention.

• Use document analysis worksheets
• Tell your students what to look for in the film. Stop the film at critical points and get feedback from them.
• Do not feel the need to show the film in its entirety. Use the film as you would any other source – some primary documents, for example, are just too much for your kids
• Use digital storytelling software to help your students create their own movies
• Find movies that act as primary sources themselves

Next? Becoming more computer literate

Your rules for teaching history? Part I

Several years ago, Lee Formwalt put together a short list of what he called “Seven Rules for Effective History Teaching or Bringing Life to the History Class.” I printed the article out when it was published and tucked it away, planning to pull it out someday when I could actually use it.

Of course, it got buried under all of the other articles I printed out for later use and was lost in the pile.

It emerged from the layers of my desk yesterday during a massive cleaning project undertaken here in the ESSDACK office.

While re-reading it, I was reminded of a brief post I wrote last fall that listed a few of the requirements for a good history teacher. And while there are some similarities, last fall’s post focused on the teacher, not so much on the strategies and techniques used as part of instruction.

Formwalt’s list is a bit different in that it shares:

the various ways that I had stimulated the interests of my students.

In other words, those techniques that are the most effective in engaging kids and ensuring transfer of content. And rather than sharing all seven in one long post, it might work better in smaller chunks.

Rule One: Enthusiasm & Passion

Everything else flows out from this. The first and most important technique to getting kids excited about history is to be excited yourself. Formwalt says that the Greek origins of the word enthusiasm related to “the spirit in you” or something inspiring “zeal and fervor.” You have to love history, you have to constantly work to learn more about it and you have to be willing to share this with students.

If you do it right, it should look something like this!

Rule Two: Rely less on textbooks

I couldn’t agree more. I know that it’s difficult moving away from the text but there are so many others things out there. Nothing wrong with letting the text guide the structure and planning of your course but be willing to use other, more emotionally charged resources guide the learning:

For example, when you study American slavery, have your students read Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and/or Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folks shed much light on post-Civil War America while Melba Patillo Beal’s Warriors Don’t Cry provides a very moving account of an African American high school student’s experience of integrating Little Rock’s Central High School.

You can find lots of resources for locating fiction and non-fiction over at Social Studies Central. But whatever you use, make sure that it’s something that you enjoy as well. When you enjoy it, the kids will notice!

Tomorrow? Rule Three and Four.

Your right to boredom management

Apparently some of us in the office have accumulated too much stuff over the last few years. This morning the boss ordered everyone to go through book shelves and file cabinets in an effort to spruce up the place. We’re to throw out anything not up-to-date or being used.

As part of the process, I ran across an article titled Boredom and Its Opposite.

Authors Richard Strong, Harvey Silver, Matthew Perini and Greg Tuculescu use Adam Phillips 1993 definition of boredom

A form of depression—a kind of anger turned inward; and
A longing for that which will transform the self, making life and learning meaningful.

to help us understand how we can do our jobs more effectively.

The authors challenge us:

Instead of asking, Am I boring?, we can ask, When are students most likely to be interested enough to overcome the boredom that occasionally haunts almost any sustained act of learning? In other words, When and under what conditions do students care enough to work hard? This question shifts attention away from an obsession with boredom and toward a more productive fascination with ordinary human interest.

My notes in the margin talk about the authors mentioning the similarity between boredom and pain. And based on a document handed to me several weeks ago during kidney stone adventure,  a Boredom Management document comes to mind.

Patient’s Students’ Rights and Responsibilities for Pain Boredom Management

Patients Students are involved in all aspects of their care, including managing pain boredom effectively. Patients Students have the right to the appropriate assessment and management of pain boredom including, but not limited to:

1. Information about pain boredom and pain boredom relief measures.
2. Treatment by concerned staff educators who are committed to pain boredom prevention and management.
3. Health Education professionals who respond to reports of pain boredom.
4. Staff Educators who demonstrate belief and acknowledgment of reports of pain boredom.
5. Staff Educators trained in pain boredom management.

The Patient’s Student’s Responsibilities:

1. Asking what to expect regarding pain boredom and pain boredom management.
2. Discussing pain boredom relief options with the health care educational team.
3. Working with the health care educational team to develop a pain boredom management program.
4. Asking for pain boredom relief or management when pain boredom first begins.
5. Helping the health care educational team assess the pain boredom.
6. Telling the health care educational team when the pain boredom is not relieved or managed.

It’s a different way to think about my responsibilities as a teacher as well as what students need to do. The article is incredibly interesting and as you prep for returning back to the classroom, something that is worth your time!