Steve's thoughts on teaching U.S. history in a standards-driven environment, as posted on the This Week in Education blog today:
When I think about successful content area teaching, I think about three things: (1) The teacher’s passion for and knowledge of the subject; (2) Making things relevant to kids and their lives today; and (3) Giving kids choices to pursue their own unique interests.
Standards, of course, take a bite out of all three – especially in an area like US History.
Most history classes these days are taught via textbook. I have observed this many times and been victim to it myself on several occasions. Personally, I can’t teach from a book at all; spoils my concentration and gets in the way of my rapport with students. But sometimes that’s all they give me to work with. So what do I do? Close the book, put it down, and try to start with whatever might be rattling around in my brain. And if there’s nothing in there on the day’s topic? I resort to inquiry method techniques and we start making lists of meaningful questions. At least then, we may be able to get something out of the textbook by using it as a reference. (Most of the time, however, most textbooks can’t answer the questions kids most want to know.)
The thing I’m most conscious of as I teach history is my own knowledge of and passion for the topic. Without these, my teaching suffers. I hope not too much; and I do have a nice bag of technical tricks up my sleeve to get around my deficiencies. But nothing beats actually knowing the material and having a personal connection to it that you can sell to your kids.
Again, standards can really take the air out of a teacher’s enthusiasm for their favorite topics.
As for relevance, I will try to teach history backwards. I like to start with the present day and whatever kids seem to know about it. Then I will work my brain to relate it back to what we’re supposed to be covering. History is a set of repeating patterns so it’s usually not that difficult to find present day analogs to past events, even cross-culturally. This approach also plays to my strengths regarding knowledge and passion. I consume a lot of news and this way I get to share what I care about with kids.
Do I cover the standards? Probably not as well as the state would like. But I notice that kids get energized about their world and some even get energized about the past that we’re supposed to be studying. I see this as a big win for everyone.
Finally, I know that giving kids choices is the key to motivating them. Rather than just studying history, I would like kids to do history. This means I teach some of the techniques historians use. My favorite is interviewing. Kids can start as a group by interviewing me about my own history. Then they can begin to think of others they would like to interview from their own lives. Some even come up with topics which may require several interviews. Interviews start with questions and almost always lead to more questions. So we’ll hit library. Librarians love helping kids who come in with good questions already written out on a sheet of paper. Sometimes we’ll use the Internet, too, but I have found this to be a tad inefficient at times given the sheer mass of information available and the ability of kids to sort it out in a timely way. Ultimately, each kid does their own project. Some are related to the curriculum but most are not. They are, however, all related to the kids. And that’s what I care about most.
Have I neglected the standards in this case? Almost certainly. But I’ve also given kids their first taste of real history and what it means to be a real historian.
So what happens to the standards when I teach? They take a back seat to the students. In my world view, we teach students not standards. And therefore, the needs of kids come first. I don’t mind using standards documents as a guide. And occasionally, a standard will give me a good idea or at least clarify something I was already planning to teach. But I will not let a document drawn up by a committee of people who don’t know me or the kids I’m working with determine what I teach. Following standards to the detriment of my teaching and kids’ learning doesn’t make any sense to me.
I want to give interesting lessons to motivated kids on a consistent basis. Standards simply don’t allow for this basic requirement of good teaching.
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