Lessons Learned

I started this blog six weeks ago as a requirement for my Social Studies class. Although this is the last official blog posting that I have to do, I hope it won’t be my last. I was asked to reflect on if using this blog has enhanced or hindered my learning. At first I didn’t think it had either affect on me, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided I’ve learned from blogging. At the beginning of the semester when I heard that I had to post a blog each week, I was not thrilled. I was nervous about the fact that what I wrote, anyone could read. However, the more I posted, the less frightening it became. This is a valuable lesson. I will have my students peer editing and publishing their work, so reflecting on a blog puts me in their shoes and reminds me how they may feel. I can now share my experience and empathize with them, but also stress the growth that I saw through the process.

I was also asked to think how my view of teaching social studies has changed since the beginning of this course. Man, has it ever! Thinking back to my high school years of social studies, I don’t remember much except for reading chapters from textbooks and answering questions at the end. My social studies classroom will be much different. I recently read a chapter about integrating social studies in the classroom (Chapter 1 in Lindquist’s book Seeing the Whole Through Social Studies) and it is amazing how this teacher has made social studies “the core of the day—the essential integrator”. For example, for reading, she will have students read different types of stories (legends, folktales, etc); in social studies, she will teach geography and what part of the world these folktales are from; in science, she may talk about environmental aspects of these parts of the world; in language arts, she will have students create a book of their own folktale; and in art, the students will illustrate their books. This, to me, is a fun social studies class! I look forward to these days.

Point-of-View in History

As a student growing up, I took for granted the point-of-view in which I learned about history. When I read my textbook about historical events, I thought all information was exactly the way the event happened. However, I now know from living in another country, meeting people from other countries and reading about issues in another country's perspective, that there are several viewpoints about historical events and they are not all the same.

Exposing students to several viewpoints is something that I am going to be consciously aware of and implement. It is especially important to do this with a class that includes ELL students. ELL students may have already learned about the topic in the country where they lived prior to the US. Therefore, it is important that we discuss that country's point-of-view, the United States' point-of-view and other country's point-of-view. By studying each of these viewpoints, students will be more educated and will be able to make their own informed opinion about the topic. Students may also want to perform further research on the topic. Therefore, as a teacher, it is important that I provide resources that portray events from different points-of-view.

One thing I will keep in mind is that different viewpoints and perspectives do not only need to be about historical facts. I will encourage my students to think from other perspectives or points-of-view in other areas as well, including literature. One project I am looking forward to implementing in my class is having students write letters or stories from another point-of-view other than the main characters. To give the students an example, I will share with them Jon Scieszka’s book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, which is written from the wolf's perspective. Reading this book will help students realize that the story may be different depending on the perspective or point-of-view of who is telling the story or talking about an event.