Category Archives: social studies

I imposed gender stereotypes on my DLS students and I feel like a jerk

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When I found out I was going to be teaching Psych this
semester I was STOKED. This was my undergrad major, I have a passion for it,
and the sophomore girls that I taught in the past loved the class.
So I assumed that I too I would be teaching sophomore girls.
I imagined a class that explored the latest research on mindfulness, social
emotional learning, and self care on top of all of the great units in the scope
and sequence. Our girls are primed for this stuff since it is embedded in Frosh
Wellness and many of the programs we have on campus.
Before I left for summer I learned that this would NOT be a
class of sophomore girls but rather an elective class for seniors. Of the 28
students in the class 24 were boys. How did this happen??
Some of my assumptions about a class full of senior boys was
right – Yes they are excited to talk about some of the fascinating yet unethical psychological
experiments which traumatized children and animals. Their tolerance for gore is high and sometimes I feel like
what they want my class to be a place for watching and discussing Criminal Minds (which to be honest also sounds pretty okay).
I say all that to say that I started removing a lot of what
I had originally planned including some work with mindfulness and social
emotional learning because I assumed that the boys would not see it as relevant to their lives (which obviously says more about me than it does about them). I really went back and forth on choosing curriculum because I was sure
that they were going to think something like self care or meditation was soft, weak, & lame (this is of
course was made up in my own head and is not based on reality).
While I do feel like I needed to adapt this class as my
target audience had changed,  I had wrongly (but didn’t know it yet) told a story in my
head about who my students were, what they thought, and what we needed. So it
took every ounce of courage (I’m not even kidding, I was really nervous) to
roll out a daily mindfulness practice with them.
Here is how I rolled it out: I told them that we would be
practicing mindfulness daily (using the calm app, thank God for free teacher resources). They were invited but not required to
participate. If they did not want to participate they just had to put their
head on the desk and zone out. They were not allowed to give me their feedback
on it for TWO WEEKS. One because I was not in a place to hear their criticism
yet and two because I wanted them to really give it a chance before they
labeled it. On Friday I surveyed them and this is what I got (see below).  
To my shock not one person thought it was a waste of time and all of them want to continue it at least twice a week. I feel simultaneously super happy and like the biggest jerk for assuming what would and wouldn’t resonate with my students based solely on which side of the street they came from. 
What else am I wrongly assuming as a teacher? What stories do I need to stop making up in my head? What are the other assumptions I make that might be preventing me from opening doors to my students?

Extrinsic Motivation: It Might Be Even Worse Than You Thought

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Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation has been a controversy since before I began teaching some 50 years ago. I have used grades, M&M’s, gold stars, rubber stamps tickets, and smiley faces to reward students for their good work and good behavior. I have done away with all of these except grades. That’s still a work in progress.

According to several studies these methods get results, but not the right results. A recent attendance study I read in Edutopia had unexpected negative results.It concludes that, “It’s a reminder that extrinsic rewards can be demotivating and actually decrease the behaviors we want to encourage.” Another study concludes:
Conversely, intrinsic motivation exists within the individual and can be harnessed and enhanced by environments that support the individual’s autonomy and competence. Intrinsic motivation underlies people’s natural inclinations to seek out novelty and challenge, as well as to learn, develop, and grow. Unlike extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation is associated creativity and vitality (Deci and Ryan 2008).

If we want students to seek out novelty and challenge, if we want them to be truly engaged in understanding the subject matter, we should de-emphasize grades and focus on the joy that can be found in learning the subject by projecting our enthusiasm and by showing the relevance of the subject.


I will conclude by telling you why I am posting this. The extrinsic motivation is minimal. I don’t even know if it will enhance my standing in the evaluation process. I do know that I want students to love learning for the sake of learning and I want teachers to love teaching their students to love learning. This intrinsic motivation is lasting, meaningful, and productive. It is the motivation that will make our students the 21st century lifelong learners we want them to be. I hope this will help other teachers to maintain their focus on ways to enhance intrinsic motivation in their students instead of the self defeating extrinsic motivations. And I hate it when students ask, “What I have to do to get an “A” in this class?”

1 in 5 incoming freshmen hate history…..okay then.

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1 in 5 incoming freshmen
hate history…..okay then.
Recently I went back through the incoming frosh home surveys
to find that out of the nearly 180 incoming freshmen 20% of them stated that
history was their least favorite subject. Ouch. While I wouldn’t say that this
is a crazy high percentage, it is also significant that one in five of the
girls in my class will have said that history is their “LEAST FAVORITE”
subject.  

                       
Here are some of
their responses as to why,
“Boring”
“No clue. Just never liked it”
“Boring”
“The material does not keep my
attention”
“Boring”
And my favorite…….
“My least
favorite subject is Social Studies because I’m not all that interested and
fascinated by wars and big events that went on back in the day. Not to mention
there are a lot of terms that have to be memorized, which can be quite
despicable to study. I respect everything that went down in history, but I
don’t find too much joy in learning about it.”
(“despicable”……..lol who is this kid??)


None of the students who claimed to dislike history said it
was too hard or that they didn’t perform well on tests, they just flat out have
apathy towards it. Yikes.
What this means for the
history team as we start the year:
·      We need to assure and prove
to students that Big History is not on an endless memorization/test cycle.
·      We need to continue to build
projects that engage students who are not naturally inclined to the subject.
·      We need to do a better job
of connecting currents events to past events in order to make the past feel
more relevant. I mean that’s kind of easy given the plethora of crazy current
events.
·      In the end, we need them to
see that it is not a “world history class” that is going to change their lives
but that the skills we are offering them to develop just might!
What I am hoping for these
students in the long term:
·      In my fantasy world – students will become so engaged in
history they will count down the hours of the day until Big History and then can’t
wait to get home to do their homework.
·      In the real world – That these students see history as a
subject through which they can engage in and develop as readers, writers, inquisitors,
researchers, arguers, etc.
The good news is that about 17% of the same pool also said
that history is their favorite subject. Later in the fall they will be surveyed again. I am looking
forward to knowing if our new curriculum is making an impact on girls at both
ends of the spectrum. At the end of the day this data is not a subject by
subject popularity contest but rather a pulse on where are students are, my hope
is not to convert the history haters into history lovers, but to engage them in
a way that it will be impossible for them to say that history is boring.

In Search of Deeper Learning:

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In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake The American High School by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine


It is difficult to find a truly impressive book about education. In Search of Deeper Learning just went to the top of my “truly impressive” list. This book is the culmination of a decade long search for “good” high schools. The investigation was thorough and the conclusions are founded on strong data. What the authors found were a few outstanding teachers and even fewer outstanding high schools. More important, they found a common thread that links together the teaching techniques of seemingly divergent teaching styles and school philosophies. There is a way to identify great teaching and train teachers to be great. The secret is as individual as each teacher and as universal as caring, passion, and understanding. This book is an essential read for anyone who wishes to learn the traits of great teaching.

The foundation of great teaching is based on two essential concepts. The first is student engagement. Students become engaged in the learning process when they see the relevance of the learning.Teachers must make a connection between the lives of the students and the learning that is taking place. Students often will not intuitively see relevance. It is the job of the teacher to show the connections that will engage the students. There are many ways to engage students. Examples were given of math teachers who used games and puzzles, just like video games,  to help students achieve understanding of difficult math problems. English teachers carefully selected books and passages that had meaning for their students. The details vary from teacher to teacher, and subject to subject. However engagement is achieved, engagement through relevancy is essential.

The second essential is rigor. Students must feel they are challenged. They must realize that the path to success is preceded by failure, sometimes much failure. Learning new skills as outlined in Bloom’s Taxonomy is not easy. Rigor is not gained through memorization or by following recipes for success laid out by the teacher. It is gained through research and discovery. It is gained through analysis, contemplation, and discussion. Knowledge hard won is long remembered. 

The role of the teacher cannot be solely a purveyor of content knowledge. The teacher must be a facilitator of discovery. Students must become adept at using the same skills are used by the experts in the discipline. These are the skills of research, experimentation, synthesis, creativity, and whatever else is specific to each discipline. As master craftsmen teach the apprentices and journeymen, the accomplished teacher introduces the students to the skills of the discipline and guides the students in the use of these skills with the goal of moving students from memorization and mimicking to creativity. Teachers must move from being the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side.” I like to tell students that I have done my job when they don’t need me anymore. This is when they know how to use the tools of historians to analyze reliable information that will enable them to create their own understanding of the meaning of historical events. 

This leads to another essential attribute of great teachers. They must be experts in their field. They must have a depth of knowledge and understanding that makes them true academics. Teachers must be heavily engaged and be passionate about their fields of study. They must 
show by example what this looks like and feels like. Teachers must have a passion to share and teach what they know. It is the combination of loving their course of study and having the desire to draw others into this sphere of engagement. 

There are not many teachers in the United States who meet these qualifications. The reason is that most teachers have been taught in the old system of “drill and kill” memorizations, just like their parents and grandparents. The study found that most of the teachers who were able to break out of the old system had atypical learning experiences of their own that allowed them to see the benefits of teaching in new ways. A system of mentoring appears to be the best organized way for apprentice teachers to learn this different way of teaching. 

Many schools have programs that are doing quite well. They are just not “academic” programs. Student centered education is happening in many art departments and physical education departments. Extra curricular programs are also a place to find student centered learning. The authors spend much time discussing how theater programs can be one of the best areas to witness student engagement. These are places where students can be in charge of their own learning. They are places where students create their own products that can be shared with and evaluated by others. It is the academic programs that are lagging behind because they are missing these essentials of choice, creation and sharing. 

There is so much more in this book that must be read with all the examples and data to be fully appreciated. For the remainder of this writing I will become more personal as I evaluate my teaching while reflecting on what new ideas I have gleaned from reading this book.

The book discusses how socializing is a focal point for most teens. It suggests using learning teams to enhance engagement. I begin each year with classes divided into teams. Several days are spent with team building exercises designed to show how teams should work. Students will continue to work in teams with team members helping and learning from each other. This also allows students to evaluate each other’s work and to learn the criteria for good work. Teaming is an essential element of a healthy classroom. Next year I am going to focus more on using teams to collect and evaluate content. I often find myself providing too much guidance when it comes to finding good material. Students need more practice searching out material themselves. 

The course content I teach is fairly easy to relate to students’ lives. It must be explicit. It must be discussed to bring out the relevance, but most students see and appreciate the relevance of what they are learning. I need to find more and better ways to have discussions in larger classes. It was easy with American Studies because we could divide the class in half. I need to experiment with ways to have more small group discussions while the rest of the class is working independently. I am looking forward to the opportunities the new STEM Center will have for dividing the class. It might be more amenable to an in house blended situation. I have some ideas. We will see how they work out. 

The last observation in the book that rang true was that this highly successful way of teaching is much easier when the whole school or most of the school is on the same page. This begins with the administration. It would be good for the administrators to read this book. It discussed blended learning, flipped classrooms, block scheduling, and other variations on time allocation. These may or may not be helpful. It goes back to each teacher, and the relevance and rigor embedded in the curriculum. These factors are much more important than any external changes. Once you read the book you will see that everything comes back to each teacher and the methods each teacher uses to build relationships with and among students, and the way each teacher guides students through the curriculum with the focus on building the skills of each discipline.

Social Justice

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Social justice is a cornerstone of every class I teach. It is so wonderful that Carondelet embraces this belief in social justice. How can any student truly understand the concept of “leadership and service to the dear neighbor without distinction” without first understanding the meaning of social justice? I consider myself so lucky to be in a school where these values are not just tolerated, but truly embraced.


Jeff Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire.

This brings me to the topic at hand. Amazon. I love Amazon. It is so easy, and they have everything under the sun from my weird refrigerator water filters to the latest literature about education. But this convenience comes at a price. There is the environmental impact of packaging and fuel. There is the cost to local businesses, and even other online businesses. But the really big cost, the one that gets me the most is the human cost. The more I read about what Amazon is doing to its employees, and the comparison to the obscene income of Jeff Bezos, the more I realize that Amazon is becoming a giant symbol of social injustice.


Amazon is the leader of the new robber baron companies. The more I read, the more I realize how much I need to find ways to protest Amazon. A recent Atlantic Monthly article brought to my attention just how bad Amazon is for its employees and how bad an example it is of a “successful” company. “Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire. He is worth what the average American family is, nearly two million times over.” Amazon pays below the going average wages for unskilled labor. Amazon works its labor force at a grueling pace. This is not Bangladesh or some other third world country. This is the American mainstream labor force. No wonder we have so many social problems.

Bringing this back to Carondelet, Amazon is only one of real world problems we present to our students. This is the type of problem that has the power to truly engage our students. As I see how our students respond to such problems, as I witness our students’ empathy, I am given hope that these are the students that will go out into the world and make a real difference. Carondelet is preparing students to bring light to an otherwise dark future. How many schools can make that claim?

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This is the 340th blog post. Only 16 of those are mine. Well, 17, if you count this one. Jasmine gave me the idea of recording all my posts. I did not bother to record my comments, but while I was looking through the posts I did notice that there are not many comments.  I have about 25 comments on my posts if you don’t count my comments on the comments. That’s about 1.5 comments per post. No a whole lot. It does not look like others are doing any better.

I was wondering how we might get more action on the site. The 340 posts looks pretty good, but how many people are reading them, and how many are taking the time to comment. As we know from our students’ work, if they do not get responses, their work becomes less and less inspired. The same with me. If I have something to say, it would be nice to get some responses. Even criticism is better than nothing.

So how do we make this better? I have started making myself read other people’s posts and have been adding more comments. I think of it like correcting papers, not always fun, but necessary. The students need to get the feedback or why give them the assignments? Maybe you have some ideas. Leave a comment.

Hot Seat Discussions, Part 2

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Remember my post on hot seat discussions? During my last round I added a new twist. It was such a big hit with my students I have decided to share the process. To recap, students are divided into teams of five. A topic is proposed. In this case we chose to discuss the place of transgender students in sports. This fit our study of 14th Amendment rights to equality.

The essential question we came up with was “Should transgender athletes be allowed to compete against cisgender athletes?” Keying on the essential question the class developed five supporting questions. The supporting questions are:

  1. Are male athletes, as a group, biologically superior to female athletes?
  2. Should there be separate competitions for male and female athletes?
  3. Should some sports be gender neutral?
  4. What defines a person as being transgender?
  5. How do we balance the concepts of competition and fairness in athletic competition?

One student in each team selected a supporting question to research. After completing the research we set up a day (or two in this case) for the discussion.

Beginning with the first supporting question, each student who researched the question took her or his place in the hot seat. Hot seat students then took turns volunteering to speak on their topic. Students were given a maximum of 30 seconds to speak in each round. Rounds continued until all hot seat students were finished adding new information. Other students were then given the an opportunity to ask questions. This process was repeated with new students for each question.

After the supporting questions were discussed the essential question was opened to the entire class for discussion. By this time many in the class were eager to discuss the essential question. Much information from the supporting questions was brought up during the discussion of the essential question.

Grading was rather simple. I gave students a check mark each time each time they spoke and crossed the check mark when they added new information. I added this to their research score for the final grade.

Student comments reflect the success of this assignment. Here are just a few.
” Listening to everyones different research and opinions opened my eyes to different outlooks and thought processes behind the topic.”
“I really enjoyed our discussion on transgender athletes and working to solve a difficult problem.”
“I thought researching and presenting an argument allowed me to be creative and stand up for what I believe in.”
“I thought the sub-questions were an effective way to tackle the question.”


How Do You Know They Know?

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How do you know they know? How do you know when students really understand, not just memorize, but really understand whatever it might be you are teaching? Which assessment tools might a teacher use to really find the answer to these questions?

This question really hit me last week. My students watched a wonderful video, “The Vietnam War: Part 1” by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Better than any other resource, it describes just how the United States became involved in the war in Vietnam, beginning with Woodrow Wilson and ending with the Diem regime. While students were taking prolific notes I paused the video often, explained the history, and answered questions. Looking through the student notes I could see they took all the right notes about all the important points. They had this. They knew exactly how years of turning points inevitably sucked the United States into the war.

Just to make sure the students really knew the sequence and importance of the events I had each student team construct a timeline listing the important events with paragraphs explaining each event. This is where the reality check began. The notes, while clear to me, were not so clear to the students. “If we saved Ho Chi Minh’s life, why did we turn against him.” Why did we sides with the French?” “Why were there no free elections.”

These questions were the beginning of a treasure hunt through our reading material and search engines. Little by little I watched the teams reconstruct the meaning of their notes. It was a tedious process, two class periods, but we got there. Understanding began to emerge as students compared notes, did more research and explained to each other.

It is not enough to take notes, a multiple-choice or short answer quiz. Students must have the opportunity to reconstruct the knowledge for themselves. It can  be a timeline, an essay, a presentation, a discussion or a debate, anything that elicits deep understanding of the subject. This takes time, lots of time. There is no fast way to reach that level of understanding that truly allows students to make it their own.

How Do Students Think About History?

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Once or twice a year the Social Studies Department gets together for some professional development to help us teach our students to think like professional historians.

Background: about three years ago the Social Studies Department shifted the focus to a more skills-based curriculum. Writing and using discipline-specific skills are now emphasized as opposed to old-school rote memorization of names, dates, and events. The cognitive skills we want our students to master include cause and effect, change and continuity over time, etc., and are included in our department writing rubrics. If students effectively practice these historical thinking skills, they will learn all the necessary content in a more meaningful way while becoming coherent thinkers and stronger writers.
What does this sort of thinking actually look like? How do we know our students are demonstrating these cognitive skills in a fluent and meaningful way? How can we hold each other accountable to properly teach these skills?

Here is what we do: once every semester (or two) the Social Studies Department does the following PD:

  1. One teacher is selected in advance to bring 3 previously graded student essays to our department meeting. The teacher pulls one high scored essay, one medium, one low, and then scrambles the order. Each essay was scored by the teacher as per our department writing rubric.
  2. We blind-score the essays.
  3. Each teacher shares out while the rubric is projected on the LCD projector. Here is what the rubric looks like at the end of the process.

The benefits of doing this are:

  1. Our grading is calibrated so our students get a fair grade regardless of which teacher they have.
  2. The process facilitates deep and enriching discussion in our department meeting. Some of us will disagree on one particular category, or we might comment on a passage in one of the essays. The rubric guides our discussion of student work. By the end of the meeting, we have gained more clarity on how we want our students to think about historical events and how to plan future units accordingly.
In general, this is the same methodology used by the College Board to train AP Readers to score AP exams. However, in our department meetings, we take it a step further with in-depth discussions of student work and our subsequent changes in the units we teach. Ask some of our history teachers what they think about this process and the value it brings to their instructional planning. You may want to try this as well…

The Perfect Final?

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“I learned so much by doing this research project, and surprisingly had fun with it.” 
          – student response



I knew this final was a winner when students spent the entire final exam period enthusiastically sharing their research projects. Then the student survey results came in confirming their enthusiasm. Across the board the vast majority of students found this final superior to the traditional multiple-choice and short answer final. Over 80% of the students in my three classes believed they learned more, would remember longer, and used higher order thinking skills more than they would have with a traditional final exam.


The secret ingredient was that this exam was, in actual fact, a multiple-choice final. The multiple choice part was the topics, not the answers. Economics class students were given a choice of 24 general topics. Civics class students were given a choice of over 150 topics. Over and over students told me how great it was to get to study something they really wanted to study. Choice was the key element to the success of this final exam.


Success was also reflected in my ability to assess student skills. The exam was setup so I could assess how much students had learned about applying their subject matter knowledge in a practical application of that knowledge. I could also assess how well students had developed their research, evaluation, analytical, and synthesis skills. These skills went so far beyond memorizing a hundred or so vocabulary words and subject matter questions that would be forgotten before the end of the day.


This research exam was divided into four parts. In the first part students had to select a topic and write a paragraph explaining why they were passionate about that topic. Next each student had to find at least twelve reliable sources and record at least one solid piece of evidence from each source. Then they were required to complete an outline with enough detail so I could write an essay about their topic using only the outline as my resource. Finally students wrote an essay of at least 1200 words supporting their thesis. The essay was graded using a rubric.


There was quite a bit of correcting involved with this four part final, especially since there were a number of overachievers who wrote well beyond the 1200 word minimum. The enthusiasm of the students made it worth all the work. I have never seen students so excited about taking a final exam. I have never been so confident that students will take their new found knowledge and skills with them for quite some time. This exam format was a winner for both teacher and students.


Below are the results of the six most important questions on the student survey. I mirrored each question with one naming the traditional final. The results were also mirrored. The last question on the survey was a neutral, “Please add any comments you might have about the research essay final exam.” The comments were overwhelmingly positive.