Blog Post #1

What do you remember about social studies in your elementary school years? 

I can’t say that I remember too much about my social studies experience or that anything stands out to me. I can remember doing a lot of the really cliché themed projects that corresponded with changing seasons. I can also remember learning about prominent historical figures like George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson among others. I do remember studying ancient peoples and civilizations but I can’t really recall it being super impactful. Much of what I learned ended up having to be relearned or even unlearned as I grew older and came to find that what I was taught was either grossly simplified or altogether false. Its really caused me to question how I want to approach teaching my students Social Studies.

Person 1: “Wait so George Washington didn’t cut down a cherry tree?”
Person 2: “Nope, that’s just a story an early biographer named Mason Locke Weems invented in order to fulfill people’s desire to hear more stories about Washington.”

Person 1: “Christopher Columbus didn’t actually land on the east coast of modern-day United States?”
Person 2: “Nope! He landed on Caribbean islands and eventually did explore Central and Southern America, but he never came to North America.”

Person 1: “WHY WAS I TAUGHT MISTRUTHS AS FACT?! It makes me distrust everything else my teachers ever taught me. I mean.. is two plus two even four?”
Person 2: “I’m really not sure. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there is so much burden placed on teachers for math and reading they just don’t have the energy to think outside of the traditional boxed curriculum, but don’t get me started on how math is mis-taught here in the U.S. – we’re focusing on Social Studies okay?”

What do you think is important for PreK and early elementary social studies classes to be engaging and meaningful?

I think that students need to make real world connections with what they learn and I think that its important to emphasize their personal cultural identity to those historical connections meaningful. I think that being sensitive to current world issues or student driven topics are also helpful in creating meaning from social studies learning. As a teacher I want to try and listen to what it is that my students are curious about and try to integrate that into my lesson planning.

How would you define (without Googling ideas) social studies inquiry?

I think that social studies inquiry involves more action than just reading a textbook and filling out worksheets or summarizing what was taught in some form of presentation or report. I think that there is a deeper level of questioning that goes into a good social studies inquiry curriculum. Get students to ask questions so they can understand our world and people in it and see how they relate to what they are learning about. 


 

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