Category Archives: social studies

How many words…

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About 6 million words

What could be more exciting than learning about the causes of the Great Depression? This is a question our best historians and economists are still pondering. It is an important question because today’s economy is edging closer to several of the tipping points that caused the Great Depression.

After giving my marvelous introduction to this research project I asked for questions. The first question was, “How many words does it have to be?” Before I could answer, another student replied, “Word count doesn’t matter. You need a robust answer.” This was my answer to another word count question a few weeks ago. Students loved the word “robust” and repeated it around the room. We discussed things like fully answering the question, impressing peer reviewers, and making the writer feel proud. Students actually remembered the discussion and repeated back these parameters.

The original questioner then asked, “So does that mean about 500 words?” There were groans from many classmates. My response was, “If you are doing a good job, you will not be able to stop at 500 words.”

The word count person is one of my students who has learned to believe that meeting a minimum word count should result in an “A” paper. It is the same student that can’t understand how a hundred or so extra words will not automatically result in an “A” paper, especially when a neighboring student got an “A” for a shorter essay. This is one of my students who has difficulty distinguishing quality from quantity. This same student thinks all paragraphs must be five sentences long and that a two page response to a question does not require paragraphs so long as it is answering the question with however many claims are included.

I must admit that I still often provide minimum word counts. I would like to get away from it, but, when I do, students like the one above want me to explain why I believe their 150 words did not fully answer a question like, “What were the causes of the Great Depression?” This is something I really do not have time to debate. It does make me ask, however, why so many students are focused on quantity rather than quality.

Is this a problem for anyone else? Have you found solutions? Have you found ways, like using the word “robust,” to make the quality v quantity differentiation stick?

Ethnic Studies

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Among the many new laws that Gavin Newsom has signed into law over the the past couple of weeks none have touched closer to a social studies teacher than the requirement for all public schools to begin teaching ethnic studies by 2025. Check out the New York Times article if you want more context. 

While this requirement does not mandate us as a private school to fulfill this requirement we have, as a department and with admin, been talking about this as a potentially very viable class at Carondelet. As we continue to expand our DEI initiatives as a school and within our department’s curriculum, as we recognize the ways that Catholics have been responsible for being exclusionary, an Ethnic Studies class (be it an elective or mandatory) feels right for the times. 


That being said I have many questions and feelings about the class:


  • Do we need Ethnic Studies to be its own class or should we just integrate the content into our normal history scope and sequences (World History, US History, etc)? Im some ways It is sad ethnic studies even has to be a class. If history texts were written more inclusively ethnic studies would simply be part of the scope and sequence of any history class. 
  • How much parent push back are we potentially looking at? I enjoy a salty conservative parent email from time to time but how many are we talking about here?
  • Who should teach this class? We have a very competent but very white department. We have to recognize that in an honest way and seek out new colleagues or mentors outside of our school and/or department in order to do this class the justice that it deserves AND to make sure all of our students feel as seen as possible.
  • What groups should be covered? This is a really heated topic right now even among supporters of Ethnic Studies curriculum. 
    • Should we only focus on those groups indigenous to the Americas?
    • How can “Asian-American” given the VASTNESS of the continent culturally, religiously, and linguistically be covered in a single unit?? How do you pick and choose groups within a group?
    • If we follow the norm of highlighting the African American, Asian American, Latin American, and Indigenous American experience who are we leaving out? What about Middle-Easterners, Jews, etc.?

Any way these are my wonderings for now…..do you have any insights, wonderings, or answers about this class? I would love to hear them! 

Back in the classroom

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When DLS lost a teacher last semester and threatened to close two sections of the very popular elective, Criminal Justice, Jen and I saw this as an opportunity to jump back in the classroom.  “We will team-teach it,” we said; “coming back from a pandemic won’t be that hard,” we said; “it is a subject we are interested in and have a grain of knowledge about,” we declared…

Nevermind that many trusted colleagues said we were on drugs to take this on right now…

Flashback to this summer and our frantic realization that a “grain of knowledge” does not a teacher make… this led to the purchase of textbooks and content material to provide us with foundation support that would keep us — we hoped — a few steps ahead of the students.

So we are a quarter in, and I find myself channeling the first lines of the Dickens classic…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

That probably sums up our first quarter — and teaching as a profession.

My takeaways so far:

  • My biggest sense of conflict is fearing that I am doing either the Admin piece or the Teaching piece injustice.  They both take time and they require different brains — even if some skills transfer
  • You get attached to your students.  I love the connection a classroom provides.  They frustrate me, they make me laugh, I find myself cheering for them on the sidelines
  • I think about the class ALL THE TIME…
  • Sometimes the stuff that worked best with my middle schoolers is not “too childlike”
  • Picking a subject I have never taught as a step back into the classroom was hella stupid
  • Teaching takes a bunch of time… it’s good time but there is no escaping that it takes ALOT of time if you want to do it right
  • I love the high you get when everything lands and the classroom energy is humming.  It almost makes up for the pit of despair when everything flops
  • I can’t let go of my forever defaults.  I have always believed that students need constant feedback and a lot of formative assessments… that their grade can not depend on just a couple summative assessments
  • I am conscious that I am much more conscious of the SEL piece than I was back in the day.  I always tried to put myself in their shoes to try and anticipate how lessons would go and what they needed… but I did that as a collective.  I find myself scanning the room and feeling how things land differently for different groups. I am very aware of the body language of our students of color and their absolutely not taking the bait about engaging in difficult conversations about racist policing
  • I have a lot of boys — 26 students of my 31 are DLS.  They are lovely.  They require many middle school strategies.  I would have preferred having a class with many more girls, only because I wanted to have a bigger sample size of what a Senior Student of Carondelet at the end of 4 years of the innovative curriculum can do
  • I like team teaching.  I have a great partner.  This may not make sense, but when I raised my boys I was a single parent and what I felt was the hardest thing about single parenting was about the horrific loneliness of not being able to talk to someone about “your project” — someone who gets it and would not get bored of the topic.  I have never team-taught but I enjoy the process.  The conversations, the compromises, the debriefs  
Maybe the most humbling takeaway came from our end-of-unit evals.  The feedback Jen got from her period 1 was pretty much identical to my period 4.  The team-teacher thinks “wow that is great, we are building something that allows students in each group to get a similar experience.”  My personal ego would love to feel that who delivers the content makes a difference :-).
I have no regrets about having jumped back into the classroom.  Jen and I are still measuring the sustainability of keeping this up — you will get a different answer from us on different days.  

Racism Revealed

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My U.S. History class just finished our unit on civil rights. I began the unit with a wonderful two period long lecture enhanced with a slide show and  punctuated with stimulating questions to be discussed and written about in team breakout rooms. We covered everything from the first American slave to Black Lives Matter. Thought-provoking ideas abounded. The discussion breaks evoked many questions from the students. So much information was delivered with such great success. I was so proud of how well I pulled off this “sage on the stage” extravaganza. 

Our second assignment was about racism today. Each student from each team was required to select a topic from a list including such topics as de facto segregation and racism in education. No teammate could select the same subject. Each teammate would then, jigsaw fashion, create a Flipgrid video about their subject and present it to their team. The best video, as chosen by the teammates, for each team was shared with the whole class. My only role in this assignment was to be a “guide on the side,” answering questions and providing encouragement. 

After completing the unit I assigned my standard feedback questions.

  • What did you like or find most interesting? Be specific. Select one thing.
  • What did you least like or understand? Be specific. Select one thing.
  • What questions or random thoughts came to mind while you were studying this unit?

Overwhelmingly students liked the student created videos. They told about all the interesting things they learned and how surprised they were by information they did not know. There were many questions about the content of the videos. A few students even mentioned my lecture, but it was a far second to the comments about the student-created videos. That’s where the learning took place; not my slideshow extravaganza.

This experience confirms once again that even my best direct instruction does not equal student driven learning. Finding information for themselves is so much more powerful and memorable than my telling them. Student research is foundational for a successful lesson. The product can be an essay, a video, a discussion or a presentation. These help students cement their learning, but student centered research is the key. I now see my main job as teaching students how to conduct their own research on topics that converge their interests with the topics I am teaching. The reporting is essential but the research is foundational. Even though this is not a new theory, it continues to amaze me with its success in building skills and as a vehicle for long term learning. Students will not soon forget what they and their classmates discovered about racism as it exists today. And how about that first slave, John Punch? A month from now, students will have no clue.

Teaming and Grades

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 One of my second semester Economics students just asked me to put her on a different team because two of her teammates were on her team last semester in another class. She said the students were lazy and she had to do all the work in order to get a good grade. When I began using teams several years ago this was a familiar refrain. Since I began using teams I have grappled with the question, “How can students receive all the benefits of teaming without being dependent on their teammates for a good grade?” 

The benefits of teaming are great, especially in this blended learning environment. Students get to spend time together. The research, the discussions, the debates, and the problem solving are great vehicles for students to interact with each other. Students also learn much from each other, especially when they see the benefits of working together. What once were freeloaders often become facilitators in the learning process. Everyone benefits when team members decide to work together. One key is the way grading is handled.

Giving team grades does not solve the grading problem. The grading problem is solved by jigsawing and making each student responsible for her own grade. Each student gets a piece of the puzzle to solve. Each student is graded on her piece of the puzzle. This breaks ties of interdependent grading and allows students to sink or swim on their own. Here are a few examples to show how this works.

My Economics students were given the assignment of defining the meaning of the word “economy.” The teammates got together and decided which part of the definition each teammate would take. For example, one member might choose supply and demand. Another might choose opportunity cost. Once every team member had her topic, she wrote a definition and provided an example. With four to six members in each team, we got some pretty robust definitions. With five to six teams, there was some repetition, but that just reinforced the overall definition. To keep everyone listening, each student had to record at least one fact that was not in her team’s definition and one fact the presenting team missed. I graded all the presentations as they were being given and the fact sheets after class. No student was dependent on any other student for a grade. And no student wanted to be embarrassed by not being able to present her part of the presentation.

Projects in my U.S. History class always begin with research. A current research project essential question asks how Japan went from being our friend in 1912, when it gifted the United States over 3000 cherry trees, to being our enemy in 1941, when it bombed Pearl Harbor. Each team was given a piece of the puzzle, events that led to the schism. Each team member had to provide three unique annotated sources to help explain her team’s piece of the puzzle. This gave each team twelve to eighteen shared sources. We then had a full class socratic (Hot Seat) discussion to determine the relative value of each puzzle piece. Students then individually wrote about a puzzle piece presented by another  team explaining where and why that piece found its place in the ranking.

My students love working in teams. Jigsaw lessons both solve the grading problem and give students choice, which they also love. Teaming gives students an opportunity to work together. I am also able to cover more material in less time. With some planning, teaming is awesome.


Saving The World

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 “So many climate and health calamities are colliding at once. It’s not just the pandemic that keeps people inside. It’s poor air quality,” Biden said of one of the many effects of climate change. “Folks, we’re in a crisis. Just like we need a unified national response to covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change.” (Washington Post)

Now that our government is on board, what better time to begin a school wide capstone project focused on saving the world?

For the past several years my capstone project in Economics has been “Saving The World.” Economics, specifically consumer capitalism, has been destroying the world since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Humans have the ability to make endless amounts of stuff. For example, last year humans made 23 billion pairs of shoes. That’s three pairs of shoes for every living human on earth. Who needs three new pairs of shoes every year? This is just one example of how our insatiable desire for stuff is gobbling up all the resources our earth has to offer.

Another example of how rich a saving the world topic can be; a group of my students decided that moving to electric cars would greatly reduce the amount of air pollution. But then they began looking into how much energy it takes to make batteries, and the environmental cost of making batteries. It also takes quite a bit of energy and raw materials to make any car. Are electric cars really that much better? Maybe people should use fewer cars. Mass transportation is a possible solution. So is working at home instead of going to the office. Students were spinning off with ideas in all directions. One student even presented a report on the possibility of piezoelectric cars. Where did that come from? It’s real. Experiments are being done. Look it up.

More and more my students tell me they are studying similar topics in science classes, in religion classes in HPERD classes and in English classes. I don’t know about math class, but there are plenty of numbers to crunch in finding ways to save the world. So, why don’t we all get together and make saving the world our CHS capstone project?

Every department at CHS can find a way to get students seriously involved in saving the world projects. Students are really into it. They have been for years. To quote one student, “It’s totally drip.” And saving the world is a real thing. Our president elect said it is real. We know that presidents always tell us the truth. So it must be a real thing. Maybe we should save that last idea about truthful presidents for a different blog. But, about saving the world, what do you think? It’s going to be a problem of survival for future generations. What could be more important than the survival of future generations?


What Do We Teach?

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 I just read this article, Does America’s Math Curriculum Add Up? It says we should teach more “data analysis and problem solving; and linear equations.” This made me think of my freshman year in high school in 1961. The teacher told us we were only taking algebra to get into college. Most of us would never put algebra to any practical use, but all of us would benefit from going to college. I obviously remembered that conversation from nearly 60 years ago. Sounds like it is still true today. The article goes on to tell how difficult it is to get the public and many colleges to accept this new math reality. They want algebra and geometry, just like they had in high school.

This made me think about other subjects, like history. There are so many historical names, places, and dates that every students should know. Would any U.S. History course be complete without a unit on the great Wobblies movement, founded in 1905, or the Battle of Bunker Hill, Korean War, 1952. How embarrassing to not know these names and dates. 

There is so much historical information available now that it is mind boggling. Robert Caro spent ten years researching for his 3000 page magnum opus The Years of Lyndon Johnson. If students need to learn data analysis in math, they certainly need to learn research skills in their history classes. This boils down to data analysis. Math deals mostly with numbers. History deals mostly with events. But, when it comes down to it, both are trying to make sense of data. In both cases it is not the data that needs to be learned, it is the crunching of the data. 

I am no math expert, but I do know that it is impossible to cover the California history content standards in the time allotted, especially if we take seriously the need for research and analysis. We have only so much time available. This year, it seems like so much less time. How do we spend this time? How do we divide the covering of information with the deep dives that involve real research and analysis. How much time do we spend remembering, and how much time do we spend understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating? This is such a basic question. Why is it so far from being resolved?


Chunking

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The word “chunking” makes me think of what might follow a night of hard partying. This thought reminds me of a favorite Princess Bride quote, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” When I first heard the word chunking I truly did not grasp the meaning of it. After reading Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, I have a definition that works for me. 

Initially chunking made me think of a bunch of small independent lessons. Currently we are teaching about the 1920’s in U.S. History. An example of chunking with this definition would mean teaching a lesson on prohibition, another on consumerism, then women’s rights, and maybe one on religious fundamentalism. At the end of these lessons students will know what happened during the 1920’s, but have no idea about why it happened or the relationship between these chunks. Even so, the ground was covered and it will be time to move on to the 1930’s. 
 

Before we leave the 1920’s, let’s try chunking again, but after we apply some backwards design. We open the lesson this time with an essential question. For example, “How did various socioeconomic groups react to the prosperity of the 1920’s?” This raises more questions, like who were these groups and why did they react so differently? Soon we have a list of the above-mentioned groups. But who has time to research all these groups? 


This is where we do some jigsaw chunking. Every team takes a topic and researches the topic while always focusing on the essential question. Before beginning the activities the teacher tells the class that each team will convey what they have learned to the rest of the class. When that part is completed, each person will write a reflection that explains why each of the socioeconomic groups reacted so differently. Each team will become an expert in one piece of the puzzle. When the pieces are revealed, the whole puzzle, the essential question, will be revealed to everyone. 


More chunking comes with the research and delivery. Each teammate will find one or more pieces of unique evidence for the team’s topic. This will be put on a Google doc shared with teammates. Included will be a MLA citation, a quote or paraphrase, and a reflection of the meaning and usefulness of the information, pretty much like evidence for a DBQ. Teammates will then decide how they will turn the information into a presentation, a video, a website, or whatever delivery method works best. Each teammate will be responsible for a chunk of the delivery, and will put their name on their chunk. One benefit of this chunking with names is that it allows the teacher to see the contribution of each student. It makes formative and summative assessments so much easier. 


Finally, when all the pieces of the puzzle have been assembled and delivered, it is time for the summative assessment. The essential question will be answered by each student using examples from each piece of the puzzle. For this assignment, if the teacher has done his or her job, students will realize the Roaring 1920’s had more to it besides partying and throwing chunks. 

Eat a Peach – and other writing about food

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If I am not reading about teaching, I am reading about food. I find an incredible amount of overlap between people who care about food and people who care about education.  The food world and the teaching world both require an unreasonable amount of care for ingredients/content, a constant need to try new things, and sometimes require great efforts of convincing people (patrons/students) that what they are doing, though maybe foreign, is valuable. I recently finished 3 books about food

Eat a Peach –  David Chang
Brief synopsis – Chang is an unlikely chef and restaurateur. He was groomed to be a professional golfer and his parents, Korean Immigrants, did their best to talk him out of this profession. He is the owner of the Momofuku Restaurant Company and has been featured in Mind of a Chef on PBS & has his own show Ugly Delicious on Netflix. 

Takeaways/Thinking about teaching

  • Culture/Thoughts on being an outsider – David Chang calls himself a Twinkie “yellow on the outside, white on the inside” and talks about what it is like being an Asian American, not embraced as “white,” but also shunned by many of his more traditional Korean family members. On top of that cooking is inherently a Eurocentric career field as most chefs are trained in a French focused way. Though very much owning up to being a part of the “boys club” in the food world David Chang spent a lot of his career feeling like an outsider because of his ethnicity. 
  • This summer I spent a lot of time scrolling through Twitter and reading about what former students said were missing in their education at Carondelet. Many of their sentiments echoed Chang’s experience in the food world. In history we have a lot of control in how we curate a unit and I am reminded of the times that I have focused on content that was easy to create because it is part of the “cannon of world history” that is to say mostly white and European. I know a lot of us are thinking about these issues right now and I found his take on things really thought provoking. 
  • Access – When David Chang opened his first restaurant he did not want a wait staff or anything remotely formal. He admired Chipotle (recently opened as he was getting into the business himself) more than he admired the French Laundry because while both organizations had a goal of serving quality food, Chipotle was able to do this in a way that reached far more people than the exclusiveness of the French Laundry.  His goal was to create Michiliean Star worthy food in a fast food environment.
  • Sometimes in education I think people are “too inside” meaning that they forget what it is like to feel like an outsider because they are so steeped in the language of education. Working with our freshmen this year I am reminded of this on a daily basis. The things I just think everyone should be able to do and understand is not working. All of our students were impacted by school closures, many of them are dealing with the social-emotional issues of starting high school online, some of them are not at grade level and are dealing with heavy things at home, I few I just worry will not make it up to speed this year. Reimagining what quality teaching looks like right now is really important and something that I do not always feel like I am doing on a day to day basis which feels daunting.
  • Mental Health/Work Life Balance – David Chang is a workaholic who spent a majority of his time in the kitchen to avoid his own thoughts and demons (relatable). When opening Noodle Bar he signed a short lease because he so often thought about ending his life that he didn’t see himself being around in 5 years to run the restaurant. He attributes a lot of his early success to his poor mental health, until finally needing to confront those feelings in order to become a more whole person. 
  • I think work life balance (though most of us are not this extreme) is a really challenging thing right now being that since March the line between our homes and our classrooms are really blurred. This has been personally hard for me and I am sure many other people. I think just talking to other people about it and reading about how other people experience it has been really helpful in not feeling so alone in it. 

Two others I recommend:

  • Always Home – Fanny Singer 

    • Singer is the daughter of Alice Waters (foundress of Chez Panisse) and Stehpen Singer (well known wine maker on the Sonoma Coast). This memoir covers her childhood through young adulthood, her travels in Europe with her mother, and the legacy of Chez Panisse.


  • Burn the Place – Iliana Regan 

Regan grew up on a farm in rural Indiana. She came to cooking in a roundabout way and never went to culinary school. Her restaurant, Elizabeth (Chicago), earned a Michelin star for the past 6 years straight, she recently left the restaurant and opened the Milkweed Inn. The inn is actually  a rural plot of land where people stay in tents for the weekend and eat food foraged and harvested from the land. This memoir covers her childhood and her break out into the food world and is free if you have an Audible account!

Formative Assessment Tools

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How do I know my students know what I want them to know? It can’t be because I taught them. That’s only the beginning. Students actually knowing and synthesizing what I taught them is an entirely different thing. There are  plenty of quick tests for recall, but these do not test for understanding or the other higher level thinking skills.  For example, I could make a multiple choice test to determine which facts students might know about Thomas Jefferson’s treatment of his slaves, but what if I want to discover how well my students really understand the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson’s words about slavery? I can learn more in a few moments of conversation with each student than I can with even the best multiple choice or short answer quiz.
To find the answer to the question in the example I would present a Thomas Jefferson quote on slavery like this one: “This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.” Then I would ask each student to explain the hypocrisy of the quote using several examples of Jefferson’s treatment of his slaves. It would take me about one minute per student to find how well each student both remembers the content and can synthesize the information. But might there be a even better, more efficient and more evidentiary way to accomplish my goal?
There is. And more than one. The fastest and easiest is Voice Memos. Every student has a voice recorder and knows how to use it. The typical Voice Memos lesson for evaluating student understanding of my Thomas Jefferson question might include these steps:
1.     Ask the question. “How do Thomas Jefferson’s actions show the hypocrisy in his words, “This abomination must have…””
2.     Give the students 10 to 15 minutes to write a brief outline of what they will say.
3.     Give the students 5 minutes to record their answer which must be between one and two minutes long.
4.     Tell students if they cannot complete the answer in the allotted time, they don’t know it well enough and need to do some more studying.
5.     Everyone who finishes turns in her voice memo to Schoology.
6.     After class I listen to the recordings and take notes.
7.     When I am done I know who understands the concept and who needs help.
This method is efficient because all the students are completing the assignment at the same time. It is more evidentiary because I have a record that can be saved and used for remediation or for determining progress. It also provides a record of each student’s ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the content of the lesson.
I also use Voice Memos for determining the level of empathy students have for others. One such lesson begins with a video of an actual firefight in Vietnam. Students must take the persona of one of the soldiers and create a voice recording of what happened and what thoughts might have been going through his or her head during the firefight. Some pretty intense recordings have been created from this assignment.
Even more information can be ascertained by using a video recording program such as Flipgrid. Seeing student faces adds another dimension. Facial expressions provide a wealth of additional information for assessing student understanding. One formative assessment I created using Flipgrid was based on this introduction, “You have just lost your home in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. You followed all the rules. Who is to blame? Explain every level.” Once again, this tool demonstrates each student’s ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the content of the lesson. It also allows the teacher to “see” the ease level of confidence with which each student gives her answer.
Both of these tools work well for distance learning. Just set the due date time on Schoology to the requisite due date and time. Students don’t have time to look up answers or message their friends. These assignments can only be completed well if the student already knows the answers. It is close to impossible to cheat on a test like this one. Even if you have multiple sections, you can just change the question a bit for each section.
Aside from using time more efficiently, another great advantage these tools have over live conversations is they provide a permanent record of progress. These records can be a valuable addition to portfolios of student work. Students can see how much better they do in subsequent recordings.
I use VoiceMemos for shorter formative assessments. I use Flipgrid for longer, more involved formative assessments. Both of these tools are readily accessible, easy to learn, and more fun for the students, than formal written assignments. They are great tools both for formative assessment and for providing an interesting alternative to writing.