I recently came across my old filmstrip collection, which I believe has now officially passed from audio-visual aid to historic artifact.  Most of the filmstrips are accompanied by a cassette tape that beeps as a signal to move to the next slide. Others require human narration.  For the record, I am not old enough to have actually taught using filmstrips. I am, however, old enough to have watched them as a student. 

As I looked through my collection, a question came to mind: has pedagogy changed in thirty years, or are PowerPoint presentations just the new filmstrips?  While filmstrips could provide a helpful visual supplement to a lecture, they were largely a passive experience for students.  Students might be required to take notes or answer some questions, but the content was largely pre-determined unless the teacher ad-libbed. 

By the turn of the 21st century, filmstrips, slide projectors, and overhead transparencies were being replaced by PowerPoint presentations.  Today, PowerPoint is often viewed a symbol of stand-and-deliver direction instruction (lecturing), which has fallen out of favor for more constructivist pedagogy.  As the Grant Wiggins recently noted, history teachers appear to be the most likely to spend a large percentage of time lecturing, at the expense of other student-centered approaches. 

It is important to remember that PowerPoint is only software with a blank canvas (and some fancy themes). It is neither inherently good nor bad--it all depends on how it is used. A PowerPoint presentation need not be a canned lecture or scripted narration. When used effectively with interactive features, PowerPoint has far greater potential than a prefab film strip.  Here are four suggestions for creating  interactive PowerPoint presentations. 

Vocabulary Games
Vocabulary instruction is a critical component of students' academic success, and 55 percent of students' academic vocabulary comes from social studies disciplines. In Robert Marzano's Six-Step Process for Building Academic Vocabulary, step 6 requires involving students in games that enable them to play with terms.  Games for vocabulary development should include student-to-student interaction. Tech savvy educators have created PowerPoint game templates that can be customized to meet specific course vocabulary. These include games like Password, Pyramid, and Taboo. For more PowerPoint game templates, see the links from  FMI Teaching Resources and UNCW EdGames.  Teachers can also create their own templates, using hyperlinks within the presentation. (See the directions in the Contingency and Decision-Making section below.)

Visual Discovery and Spiral Questions
Teachers' Curriculum Institute, publisher of the popular History Alive! materials, uses visual discovery to increase engagement.  Students view and interpret a few powerful images on a historical topic.  As slides are presented, teachers pose a series of spiral questions on three levels.  Students can assume the role of detective as they answer the questions and record notes in a graphic organizer.  

In Level 1 questions, student detectives gather evidence by identifying the people, places and things. (What do you see in the image?) In Level 2, student detectives begin to interpret the evidence and make inferences about time period, place, or people in the scene.  Students should begin to defend their answers with  “because” statements. Questions focus on what, when, where, and who. In Level 3, student detectives must use the evidence and their own critical thinking skills to make hypotheses about what is happening and why. Questions at this level emphasize why and how questions and require justifying, synthesizing, predicting, and evaluating. 

Checking for Understanding - Clickers and Poll Everywhere
Student response systems (clickers) provide an easy and quick way for teachers to check for understanding.  TurningPoint is an add-in to PowerPoint. Teachers can create new presentations in TurningPoint or use existing PowerPoint presentations and add in new slides. These new slides include multiple choice items in which students can respond to questions with remote response cards. Results are tallied and displayed in a chart in real-time within the PowerPoint presentation. Teachers can save the session to track individual and group progress over time.   (Note:  Plickers is a free alternative that allows teachers to collect real-time data through a web browser and teacher smart phone or tablet, without the need for student devices.)

Poll Everywhere is an app that allows teachers to ask multiple choice or open-ended questions. Teachers create questions using the online app. Once the poll is activated, it can be downloaded as a PowerPoint slide and inserted to another presentation.  Students can respond to questions via the web, text message or Twitter. As the students respond, results appear instantly on the slide. Graphs change and move and open ended answers roll in for everyone to see.  Poll Everywhere now includes a PollEv Presenter Add-in option for PowerPoint. Teachers can download the add-in to create new polls directly in PowerPoint, and navigate between poll slides. In addition to checking for understanding, Poll Everywhere questions work well as brainstorming warm-up questions, such as a K-W-L activity.

Choose Your Own Adventure - Contingency and Decision-Making
PowerPoint presentations, like textbooks, often present history as a linear narrative of what happened in the past, without much consideration to contingency and decision-making.  In their article, What Does it Mean to Think Historically?, Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke write, "To argue that history is contingent is to claim that every historical outcome depends upon a number of prior conditions; that each of these prior conditions depends, in turn, upon still other conditions; and so on. . . Contingency demands that students think deeply about past, present, and future. It offers a powerful corrective to teleology, the fallacy that events pursue a straight-arrow course to a pre-determined outcome, since people in the past had no way of anticipating our present world. Contingency also reminds us that individuals shape the course of human events. . ."

PowerPoint presentations do not have to flow in sequential order.  Instead, slides can be hyperlinked in a such a way that students choose from a set of decision-points and view possible consequences of their choices, allowing students to better understand the underlying and immediate causes of historical events. The Smart Art graphics in PowerPoint provide a variety of options to generate list, process, hierarchy, or relationship graphic organizers.  To hyperlink an element of the organizer,  click on the element and select Hyperlink from the Insert tab.  Next, click on Place in This Document and link to another slide. 

Above all, simply avoid death by PowerPoint by using the tool to promote interactive and engaging strategies, instead of rote lectures.  

Echoes and Reflections, a leader in Holocaust education,  provided a free, full-day workshop for teachers (English and Social Studies) in our district this week.  Our presenter was Alexis Storch, Director of Education at the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She was joined by powerful testimony from John Koenigsberg, a Holocaust survivor.  Here are some of the key takeaways for me. 

The Humanity of All

• Go beyond statistics to show the humanity of the 6,000,000-11,000,000 victims. How would the families of victims want them to be remembered?  As bodies in piles or living humans?  The destruction of human life cannot be adequately illustrated by numbers or objects (paper clips).
• Nazis were not monsters, but human beings who committed monstrous acts. Dehumanizing the perpetrators allows us to distance ourselves from the actions that result from human prejudices.  
• Show photographs of perpetrators, onlookers, and victims with their families.  Can you tell the difference among them from the photographs?  

 Agency and Choice

• “Bystander" is a misnomer.  Bystanders didn’t do “nothing.”  They made a choice to be onlookers.
• The Holocaust didn’t result from the actions of a single man (Hitler), but perpetrators and onlookers who made choices to participate. 
• Rescuers made choices to protect targeted people.  In addition to hiding them, doctors and nurses protected potential victims by feigning illness and surgeries. 

 Propaganda and Prejudice

• Prejudice is learned behavior.  Some of the early efforts to boycott Jewish business failed because many Germans saw no reason to turn against their Jewish neighbors. 
• Propaganda and education (indoctrination), not just force, are necessary to maintain totalitarian regimes.  
• Propaganda takes different forms.  Some Germans were turned off by the dehumanizing images in posters.  Hitler’s writings and speeches were another form of propaganda that appealed more to some Germans. 
• Victims were targets for different reasons.  While there was a long history of antisemitism in Europe, Nazi hatred of Jews wasn’t the same as religious antisemitism. Jews were defined by their bloodline.  Both the “Semitic” and “Aryan” labels were social constructions.  Jehovah’s Witnesses were targeted because they refused to swear an oath of loyalty.  Homosexual victims were often those perceived as gay, not necessarily those who identified as such. 

Telling the Stories

• Survivors had different experiences. Some survived the camps; others were hidden by rescuers until liberation.  Experiences varied by age, gender, etc. 
• Strive for complexity, not simple answers. 
• If you use historical fiction, such as the Boy in the Striped Pajamas (not recommended), be sure to do so with a critical eye and point out the differences between the story and reality. 

I had been planning to post this article this week when I learned of the unexpected passing of Grant Wiggins on May 26, 2015.  Wiggins was the co-author of Understanding by Design.  His work on backward design and inquiry learning has been a powerful influence on my curriculum and professional development work over the years.  The article below is written in his memory.  For Wiggins' take on UbD and C3, see the blog article,  Questions about Questions: NCSS and UbD. 

Developing Compelling Questions

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, developed by the National Council for the Social Studies, helps guide the development of unit-specific compelling and supporting questions.  C3 uses an Inquiry Arc based on four dimensions of social studies inquiry: 1) Developing questions and planning inquiries; 2) Applying disciplinary concepts and tools; 3) Evaluating sources and using evidence; and 4) Communicating conclusions and taking informed action.

 Dimension 1 guides the planning of inquiry-based units.  The C3 framework states:

• Questioning is key to student learning. The C3 Framework encourages the use of compelling and supporting questions, both teacher- and student-generated, as a central element of the teaching and learning process. For example, a compelling question like “Was the American Revolution revolutionary?” is both intriguing to students and intellectually honest. Such a question can be vigorously explored through the disciplines of civics, economics, geography, and history. It is also sensitive to the idea that students are interested in how and why events are characterized as they are. Supporting questions assist students in addressing their compelling questions. For example, questions like “What were the regulations imposed on the colonists under the Townshend Acts?” will help students understand the many dimensions of the war as they form their conclusions about the magnitude of change associated with those Acts. (p. 17)
  

• Central to a rich social studies experience is the capability for developing questions that can frame and advance an inquiry. Those questions come in two forms: compelling and supporting questions. Compelling questions focus on enduring issues and concerns. They deal with curiosities about how things work; interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts; and unresolved issues that require students to construct arguments in response. In contrast, supporting questions focus on descriptions, definitions, and processes on which there is general agreement within the social studies disciplines, and require students to construct explanations that advance claims of understanding in response. (p. 23)
  

In the video below, Kathy Swan, lead writer of the C3 framework, explains two important criteria for compelling questions.  Compelling questions must be intellectually meaty and student-friendly. 

Graphic Organizer 1B. Planning Compelling and Supporting Questions

Adapted from the Inquiry Design (IDM) Blueprint: http://www.c3teachers.org/idem/    

Publications
Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005

McTighe, Jay, and Grant P. Wiggins. Understanding by Design: Professional Development Workbook. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2004.

National Council for the Social Studies. College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History.  Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013. http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/c3/C3-Framework-for-Social-Studies.pdf 

Swan, Kathy and John Lee, ed.  Teaching the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework: A Guide to Inquiry-Based Instruction in Social Studies. Silver Spring, MD, NCSS, 2014

Lesh, Bruce A. "Why Won't You Just Tell Us the Answer?": Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers, 2011.

Wineburg, Sam, Daisy Martin and Chauncey Monte-Sano. Reading Like a Historian: Teaching Literacy in Middle and High School History Classrooms. Columbia: Teachers College Press, 2012.

 
Websites
Stanford History Education Group. Reading Like a Historian. https://sheg.stanford.edu/rlh 

University of Maryland Baltimore County. History Labs: A Guided Approach to Historical Inquiry in the K-12 Classroom. http://www.umbc.edu/che/historylabs/ 

 National Council for the Social Studies. C3 Teachers: College, Career & Civic Life. http://www.c3teachers.org/

For the past ten years, I have been developing district micro-curriculum--course-specific unit plans and model lessons. This summer I am tackling a project that will yield a broader view of secondary social studies.  The Social Studies Instructional Framework will be a macro-curriculum outlining the elements of successful social studies units, applicable to all courses and grade levels, 6-12. 

This macro-curriculum will extrapolate the underpinning pedagogy from the course-specific lessons and synthesize the parallel work I have been generating for professional development workshops.  Through a combination of narrative, samples, and blank organizers, the Social Studies Instructional Framework will help guide teachers in the preparation of units and lessons (or the adaptation of existing ones).   The end product will essentially be a condensed version of a social studies methods textbook. 

As I work through the Social Studies Instructional Framework this summer, I will post drafts on this blog to invite feedback from teachers and scholars. Today, I have included the draft outline of the chapters and sections.  Your comments are welcome.  What would you include, or not include? 

Elements of Successful Social Studies Units

1. Inquiry Questions

• UbD and Overarching Essential Questions                                                                                  
  
• The C3 Framework Inquiry Arc and Compelling Questions                                                                  
  
• Sample Questions and Organizers
  

 2. Performance-Based Assessment

• Authentic Tasks
  
• Rubrics
  

 3. Vocabulary Development

• Marzano’s Six-Step Process
  
• Vocabulary Organizers
  

4. Graphically-Organized Notes

• Gathering and Recording Information
  
•  Processing Information
  
•  Sample Organizers
  

5. Social Studies Skills

• Vertical Alignment
  
• Skill Builder Exercises
  

6.  Reading Like a Historian

• History as an Account of the Past
  
• Sourcing, Contextualizing, Close Reading, Corroborating
  
• Sample Organizers and Analysis Sheets
  

7. Evidence-Based Writing

• Argumentation: Claim – Evidence – Reasoning 
  
• Document-Based Questions
  
• Research Writing
  

 8. Discussion and Debate

• Socratic Seminar
  
• Scored Discussion
  
• Structured Academic Controversy
  
• Four Corners
  
• Continuum
  

 9.  Role-Play and Simulation

• Act-it-Out
• Simulation

10.  Relevance, Real World Connections and Civic Engagement

• Personal and Local Connections
  
• Current Events
• Civic Engagement Opportunities

By Matt Doran

Skills: What do we want students (citizens) to able to do? Critically analyze perspectives in secondary sources, situating these sources in their social and political context to determine factors that shape historians’ perspectives on the past.

"Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time."  - Frederick Jackson Turner


Thomas Jefferson: apostle of agrarian democracy? Champion of the rights of the common people? Enlightenment skeptic? Liberal capitalist? Southern aristocrat? Racist? Suppressor of civil liberties? These were among the historiographical questions that shaped an undergraduate course I took called Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy. I had been introduced to historiography a year earlier, in “Introduction to Historical Thought,” a gateway course to the history major. Historiography is the study of historical writing—examining the history of historical perspectives with attention to the social and political context of each generation (or school) of historians. Historiography considers why and how history changes over time.  

I learned about historiography in other courses as well, but in Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy we did historiography.  We looked at Jefferson and Jackson through a critical analysis of secondary sources, using a three-pronged heuristic adapted from Robert Berkhofer’s “Demystifying Historical Authority” 1. What is the surface meaning?  2. What could have been said, but wasn’t?  3. What intellectual underpinnings shape the historian’s perspective?

But, that was college…and an upper-level undergraduate class…for history majors. Can secondary social studies teachers employ a similar approach? In Teaching What Really Happened, James Loewen’s answer is a definitive “yes.”  In fact, Loewen has introduced historiography to students as young as fourth grade, noting that “if they can learn supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, they can handle historiography.”

As a high school teacher, I incorporated some elements of historiography into instruction. We looked at various textbook titles and covers from American history textbooks of different eras. What does the title Two Centuries of Progress (1978) imply? Is there a difference between Rise of the American Nation (1977) and Out of Many: A History of the American People (2001)? What change in front material do you notice in textbooks published shortly after 2001? (inclusion of patriotic inserts such as the Pledge of Allegiance) How did changing social and political concerns influence these titles? 

We also looked at various interpretations of the American Revolution, the Early Republic and the Civil War and Reconstruction—mostly with me explaining those views. What I did not establish, however, was a comprehensive approach that required students to do historiography consistently throughout the year. Since leaving the classroom for full-time curriculum and professional development work, I have gathered a set of resources and developed strategies and tools fordoing historiography in the secondary classroom.

A Conceptual Framework of History

Before students dig into historiography, they need to be grounded in an understanding of the nature of history. Bob Bain’s conceptual model from “Into the Breach” is one method for introducing the discipline of history.  The adaptation below shows the relationship between past events, evidence, historians, and historical accounts. 

Getting Started with Historiography

As with other challenging social studies concepts, the best starting point is to access students’ prior knowledge and build on what they already know. Rather than starting with Jefferson and Jackson, look first at popular examples that relate to students lives more directly.  For example, how did sportswriters in Cleveland interpret LeBron James in 2003?  in 2011? in 2014? Was he viewed as a hero or villain?  How did the changing context (the changing teams) shape their interpretation of James? (See the video link here for Kyle Ward’s Brett Favre analogy).  Just as our perspectives on the present are shaped by our worldview (and personal loyalties),  historians’ view the past through the lens of contemporary concerns and ideologies. 

As a transition from popular examples to historical perspectives, have students work in groups to summarize and evaluate some of the following quotes that illustrate the concept of historiography: 

• "God alone knows the future, but only a historian can alter the past." – Ambrose Pierce.

• "History is like a story in a way; it depends on who is telling it." – Dorothy Salisbury

• "Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time." – Frederick Jackson Turner

• "The past does not influence me; I influence it." – William De Kooning

• "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." – George Orwell

• "Until the lion has a historian of his own, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." – African Proverb

 
Unpacking Secondary Sources

Historians do not limit their investigation of evidence to primary sources. They also read what other historians have written and how those historians used their evidence.  Students should do this as well. As Joe Sangillo, Social Studies Curriculum Specialist with Montgomery County Schools, tweets:

If you need a rationale for incorporating historiography and secondary source analysis, note the following Common Core Literacy in History/Social Studies Standards:

• Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.

• Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.

• Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

• Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

James Loewen suggests ten questions that can be applied to a variety of secondary sources (historic site, documentary film, textbook, etc.)

1. When was it created?
2. Who created it?
3. Why was it created? What were their ideological needs and social purposes?
4. What was/is the intended audience?
5. Did the intended audience include powerful people and institutions?
6. Who is left out? What points of view go largely unheard? How could the story differ if a different group had told it?
7. Are there problematic words or symbols that would not have been used today or by an author from another social group?
8. How is received? Is it largely forgotten? Remembered?
9. What does it leave out about the people it treats as heroes?
10. Is the presentation accurate? What do other sources—primary as well as secondary— say?

See James Loewen, Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History


Again, starting with relevant and accessible examples will help students learn the work of historiography before ultimately moving on to more complex historical monographs. Consider some of the strategies below.

Retrospective Sitcoms

View episodes of retrospective sitcoms such as Happy Days, Wonder Years, or The Goldbergs. These shows are set in an earlier historical period. Happy Days, (1974-1984), presents an interpretation of life in the 1950s.  What interpretation of the 1950s is portrayed? (hint: consider the show’s title) What aspects of the 1950s are left out?  (hint: see Michael Harrington’s The Other America.) What social and political conditions in the late 1970s might have caused the producers and the American public to long for a happier era? The Wonder Years (1988-1993) portrays life in the late 1960s and early 1970s—tackling issues like the Vietnam War, counterculture movement, and the cultural divide between generations.  Who might have been the target audience for this show? What cultural and economic trends in the 1990s may have influenced the writers’ decision to point out some of the turbulent aspects of the 1960s and 1970s? 

Historic Markers

Choose an historic marker in the neighborhood and analyze the narrative presented on the marker. Loewen argues that every historic marker is “a tale of two eras: what it’s about and when it went up.” In other words, the historical narrative presented reflects the social and political context in which the marker was created, and the beliefs and values of the sponsoring organization. Loewen documents examples of these markers in Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. Loewen’s suggested questions above are helpful for analyzing marker texts.

Textbooks

Instead of abandoning textbooks altogether, we should consider new ways of using them. Textbooks can be artifacts for analysis. Rather than looking at the text as an authority from which to glean truth, an historiographical approach requires students to ask questions about what is and is not included in a text, how various events and individuals are portrayed, what visuals are chosen to supplement the narrative, etc. Bob Bain offers a step-by-step approach for questioning textbook authority: 

1. Students build detailed knowledge (through primary sources) before ever opening the textbook.
2. Now experts, students critique the textbook. …”Write a letter to the authors of the text, assessing their [authors’] representations of _____. Do you think it is an effective representation? Why or why not?”
3. Students question other classroom authorities (e.g., the teacher’s selection of sources.)  

Kyle Ward’s book, History in the Making presents textbook excerpts from 200 years of American history, looking at how interpretations of familiar historical events have changed over time. Not Written in Stone offers an abridged and annotated version History in the Making designed for classroom use. In each section, Ward provides an overview and questions for discussions for each set of excerpts. Students can use the graphic organizer linked here to analyze these excerpts and other secondary accounts. 


Assessments and Additional Resources

The Stanford History Education Group’s Beyond the Bubble: History Assessments of Thinking work well for assessing students’ skills in historiography. The John Brown’s Legacy assessment asks students to examine a poster for a play written in 1936 that celebrates the abolitionist John Brown. Students must situate the playbill in time, understanding how the anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s and the rise of fascism in Germany may have motivated the authors to write a play as a commentary on racism. A similar assessment on Creating Columbus Day (during the Gilded Age) asks why President Harrison declared Columbus Day a national holiday in 1892. Students should explain that Harrison’s decision might have been a calculated move to court Catholic voters in the upcoming election.  

Russel Tarr’s Active History website offers a collection of resources on historiography designed for use in IB History, but adaptable for other secondary history classrooms. The resources include lectures on various theories of historical causation, student activities, and a historiographical terms handout. 

See the video clips and book titles below for additional resources on historiography.


Teaching students to do historiography in the secondary classroom is not an easy task. However, with the right resources, tools, and scaffolds it is an achievable task. As Loewen notes, “historiography is one of the great gifts that history teachers can bestow upon their students.” I welcome your thoughts on how we can work to bestow this gift to students. 

By Matt Doran

Skills: What do we want students (citizens) to able to do? Analyze perspectives in primary and secondary sources, and evaluate the credibility of information in historical and contemporary sources. 

Today I am sharing three short videos that can help teachers sharpen students' skills in source analysis: 
1. Primary vs. Secondary Sources
2. The Guardian Commercial: Points of View
3. How to Choose Your News

By Matt Doran

Dispositions: 3) What do we want students (citizens) to value? Appreciate the importance of literacy and civic education in the success of the American republic. 

It’s back to school week for many teachers and students—a good time to remind ourselves of the purpose of public education. In recent years, many schools have adopted STEM-focused programs and career pathways mission statements. To be sure, these are good and necessary aspects of a well-rounded education. We should not, however, allow these emphases to distract us from the fundamental civic mission of education in the United States – a mission deeply rooted in the history of the American republic.

Thomas Jefferson believed that education and civic virtue must go hand in hand-in-hand in a successful republic. By teaching citizens of their right to self-government, education serves as the guardian of democracy. Noting the historical propensity for governments to be “perverted into tyranny,” Jefferson argued that knowledge of this history was the best safeguard against it. Moreover, liberal education was necessary for leaders who would “guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens….” In his  “Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Fix the Site of the University of Virginia, 1818” Jefferson further outlined the civic purposes of education—improving morals through reading, understanding duties and rights, and exercising of sound judgment. To accomplish these ends, citizen students should learn reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, the principles of government, and perhaps most importantly, “a sound spirit of legislation, which…shall leave us free to do whatever does not violate the equal rights of another…”

Fast forward to the second half of the 20th century. The U.S. and Soviet Union were engaged in a Cold War “space race” that stimulated an increased emphasis (and funding) on science and math education in the United States.  At the height of the Cold War in 1962, producer John Ford reminded his viewers of the civic mission of education in his Western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The film’s main character, Ransom Stoddard (played by Jimmy Stewart), established a school in the “uncivilized” town of Shinbone to teach literacy and Enlightenment principles of American self-government. 

The classroom chalkboard revealed Stoddard’s Jeffersonian vision of education and citizenship: “Education is the basis of law and order”—emphasizing both the instrumental purpose of education and the order of operations. Education must come first, for it teaches citizens that they are rational people, entitled to have liberty and self-government, capable of maintaining it, and willing to do so for the good of the community.  Education emerged in response to the need for a virtuous citizenry that could create a civilized society by establishing law and order and removing the obstacles to it. Stoddard’s pupils learned that they have a republic, which one immigrant woman defined as “the people are the boss… If the people in Washington don’t do what we want, we vote them out.” Governing power rests with the electorate who exercise their power through the vote, Stoddard explained. 

To help his pupils apply their understanding of self-government and the power of the vote, Stoddard used a newspaper article that outlined the potential impact of the cattle ranchers’ efforts to fight statehood. The consequences would be the loss of local control and small shops, and a way of life for these small communities. This effort could only be stopped by the power of the electorate.  In doing so, they would also stop Liberty Valance who worked as the ranchers’ lead ruffian.  While Valance terrorized the town, Shinbone’s duty constituted law and order, Marshal Appleyard, was paralyzed by fear.  He showed no interest in education and, consequently, did nothing to guard the safety of the community.  He had no intrinsic understanding of self-government—its historical and philosophical basis— and why this is worth preserving.  In short, he was uneducated.  Once armed with education, Shinbone’s citizens could select delegates to the legislature, resist the efforts of the big ranchers to block statehood, and render Liberty Valance obsolete.
​

In this present world of 21st century learning, we should not lose sight of the historical centrality of civic education in America.  According to one story, Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Indeed, successful republics—both then and now—demand not only the consent of the people, but also the education and active engagement of its citizens. 

By Matt Doran

Dispositions: 3) What do we want students (citizens) to value? A deep and broad understanding of the human experience—to become better citizens, and better human beings, who make the world a better place.

If 21st century learning is about inquiry, problem-solving and real-world application of academic content, then interdisciplinary teaching and learning are essential.  Rarely are the significant issues in our world addressed through a single disciplinary lens. The field of social studies is inherently interdisciplinary—combining the lenses of history, geography, political science, sociology, economics, and the arts.  Adding the richness of language, literature, and composition through English classes can further enhance the interdisciplinary humanities learning experience.

Traditionally, interdisciplinary social studies/English classes have utilized one of two approaches. The chronological approach largely follows the history curriculum and ties in literature from the historical period.  This typically results in greater disruption for the English curriculum, as new readings are added, old ones subtracted, and others shifted to different times of the year.  Alternatively, the thematic approach moves away from chronology and pulls together various literature selections and historical episodes organized around a set of themes.  In this approach, both social studies and English curricula require an overhaul.

Is there an alternative approach? How can schools use an interdisciplinary approach without immediately revamping the entire English or social studies curricula and writing something from scratch? Are there themes that can be used to link the courses together, again without radically revamping either? What small steps can teachers take to make both courses more related, and ultimately more meaningful?

Following the principles of backward design can help teachers plan interdisciplinary English and social studies.  In backward design, teacher-planners focus first on the macro-curriculum, then begin filling in the weekly details (micro-curriculum) from the big ideas, enduring understandings, and essential questions of the course. 

10,000-Foot View: The Purpose of Humanities

To start macro-planning, begin with the most fundamental question of the disciplines.  What is the purpose of this course?  In Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, Sam Wineburg presents a succinct view of the purpose of the humanities: “What is history good for? Why even teach it in schools? My claim in a nutshell is that history holds the potential, only partly realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum. … Each generation must ask itself anew why studying the past is important, and remind itself why history can bring us together rather than—as we have seen most recently—tear us apart.” 

Wineburg’s quote reminds us why we teach social studies and English: to deepen and broaden students’ understanding of the human experience. We teach humanities to help students become better citizens, and better human beings, who make the world a better place.  Students come to recognize the unity of humanity, but respect diversity and value different points-of-view.  They learn to empathize with people, past and present, near and far.  They learn critical analysis, reasoned judgment, argumentation and deliberation, and how to apply the lessons of the past to contemporary issues. The humanities disciplines remind us the STEM education is necessary, but not sufficient.  Solving the world’s grand problems is not only a matter of engineering design or scientific discovery, but must also take into consideration aesthetics, culture, history, and ethics.    

1,000-Foot View: Establishing Themes – Big Ideas, Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions

The major themes of the course (the big ideas) should flow from the purpose of the course.  What themes will help deepen students’ understanding of the human experience?   Look for themes that are broad enough to cut across multiple historical eras and wide array of literature. Some existing frameworks may be helpful guides for establishing course themes. 

Colonial Williamsburg’s The Idea of America, frames American studies through the lens of four value tensions: 

• law vs. ethics;
• freedom vs. equality;
• unity vs. diversity; and
• common wealth vs. private wealth. 

For more of a social justice approach, consider the four domains of the Teaching Tolerance anti-bias framework:

• identity;
• diversity;
• justice; and
• action.  

Another approach is to create themes that reflect the various disciplinary lenses of the course, such as:

• power (political science);
• culture (anthropology);
• change (history); and
• perspective/expression (literature/arts).    

The themes of the course will drive the enduring understandings and essential questions. Think of an enduring understanding as the “moral of the story.” These are statements that not only summarize the key ideas of the discipline, but are transferrable to other disciplines and to the real world—having long-term value beyond the classroom.  For example, using the value tension of law vs. ethics, an enduring understanding might be framed as: 

• Although the United States is a nation of laws, some of our greatest national heroes have practiced civil disobedience.  

For the theme of identity, an enduring understanding could read: 

• Individuals are members of multiple identity groups that interact to shape complex individuals.

An enduring understanding using the theme of power could be:

• Written constitutions establish the terms and limits of a government’s power. 

Essential questions are critical to creating an inquiry-based environment. Essential questions should be provocative, open ended and arguable. These should not be questions with a simple or straightforward correct answer.  Rather, they are designed to provoke further inquiry, debate, and deliberation.   Here are a few examples that follow from the enduring understandings above:

• Should individuals break unethical laws, work to change those laws, or both?
• What role do cultures, institutions, and values play in shaping individual identity?
• How should governments balance majority rule with minority rights?

100-Foot View:  Selecting Resources and Tracking the Themes

Once the course purpose, themes, enduring understandings and essential questions have been established, the micro-planning may begin. This is the phase that involves the selection and order of readings, projects, and assignments.  With broad and meaningful course themes, teachers may find that many of the resources in their current portfolio simply need some tweaking or re-organization to work into the interdisciplinary macro-plan. It many cases, pairing course materials with course themes may be more a matter of the emphasis within particular resources, rather than the selection of all new ones. 

It is important to keep in mind that course themes can be utilized in a chronological, thematic, or hybrid framework. It is not necessary to cover the themes individually as separate units, though this is one possible means of organization. If a chronological or hybrid approach is preferred, the course themes, enduring understandings, and essential questions can be introduced early on and reinforced throughout the year. Consider creating large posters on the classroom walls for each theme and adding to those posters throughout the course. Students could also track the themes in a journal or develop a set of theme-based notecards throughout the course. 

Interdisciplinary writing tasks can also be an effective tool for linking both English and social studies courses to the broader course themes. Here are some prompt possibilities:

• Compare the conflict in x historical episode with the conflict in y literature selection. What were the long-term causes and consequences of each conflict?
• How did the quest for power shape the actions of individuals in x historical episode and y literature selection?
• What cultural influences were evident in x historical episode and y literature selection?
• In what ways was z “value tension” reflected in x historical episode and y literature selection?

Interdisciplinary teaching is not an easy task, but it is an achievable task that can be greatly enhanced by a focus on backward design and macro-planning.  Here is another piece of good news. The National Humanities Center has already created an excellent set of lessons and primary source collections using this approach, all of which are available for free online at: http://americainclass.org/primary-sources/  and http://americainclass.org/lessons/. 

Finally, here are some thoughts gathered from my Facebook friends, all veteran humanities teachers of social studies and English. 

By Matt Doran

Skills: What do we want students (citizens) to be able to do?  Make informed decisions about current issues that are grounded in a deep understanding of historical causation

For many years, “Current Events Fridays” have been a popular way for social studies teachers to incorporate the news into their curriculum.  Through resources like Channel One, CNN Student News, Scholastic Magazine, and local newspapers, students have engaged in class discussions, summarized articles, and developed weekly portfolios using the news. When our state moved to standardized social studies testing for 10th graders in 2005, some teachers asked me whether they should abandon this practice. Testing occurs less than 3/4 of the way through the year, leaving little time to cover a large swath of history.  I recall giving a quite political answer: “You have to evaluate what is best for your students, and find a balance between test preparation and meaningful content,” or something like that.

Since that time, my views on current events in the classroom have evolved. During the 2008 election, I looked for ways to make connections between election news and state standards in world and U.S. history. I concluded that the most promising way to keep current events in the curriculum was to connect everything to the skills and methods state standards (bias, credibility of sources, thesis statements and evidence). About 20 percent of the state exam assesses these skills, and many of the test items in this strand do not require background knowledge of a specific historical period. (E.g. A mayor believes that an increase in the city bus fee has led to fewer riders. This thesis could be supported or refuted by which type of data?)

One helpful article in my journey was “Conversations Between Past and Present: Thoughts on Teaching Current Events in a World History Classroom” by Tom Laichas in Teaching World History in the Twenty-First Century. I encountered this piece in preparing to teach a graduate course for teachers called “Experiencing World History: Connecting Past and Present.”  The main thrust of my course was to help 7th grade teachers (who teach ancient and medieval world history) see the contemporary relevance of their content, and to help 10th grade history teachers (who teach modern world history) to see the ancient origins of contemporary issues.

More recently, I have come to the conclusion that not only can we keep current events in the curriculum; we can actually make current events a central driving force in social studies.  Indeed, every day can be a current events day. In a recent TED talk, “The Content-Free Classroom” James Kendra suggests that current events are the most meaningful and relevant way for teaching social studies disciplines like geography, economics, and government.  I would go even one step further to argue that current events can also be a powerful lens for teaching world and U.S. history.  Using a “ripped from the headlines” approach, this methodology starts with current events and traces back through history to see how we got where we are. When tensions flare up in the Middle East or the Ukraine, we need to go back through the centuries (not just the 20th century) to analyze layers of causation. When the Supreme Court decides a case, we are driven back to a study of the Constitution and its evolution, placing the decision in comparative context to earlier rulings.

One of the challenges of this approach is that our study of our history becomes non-linear and quite disjointed chronologically. A broad chronological overview in the first quarter of the year will be likely necessary for most classes. Additionally, a large and regularly-updated wall map and time line can also help pull things together weekly, monthly and quarterly.

There are several resources available in print and on the web that support teaching history through current events.  I have divided them into two categories, scholarly/academic (mostly for teacher reference) and instructional (lessons and student handouts).

Scholarly/Academic Resources

• Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is a monthly online magazine produced by the Ohio State University Department of History. The main articles feature experts who analyze current issues in a broader, deeper context, and focus on long-term trends and patterns as the foundations of current events.
• Not Even Past, developed by the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, reflects an understanding of history as a public conversation about the importance of the past for our actions, values, and beliefs in the present and for the decisions we make today that will affect our lives tomorrow. Their 15 Minute History podcast series is addressed to secondary school teachers and students.
• BackStory is a public radio program and podcast sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.  Each show brings historical perspective to the events happening around us today. Historians Peter Onuf (18th century guy), Ed Ayers (19th century guy), and Brian Balogh (20th century guy) take a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths, revealing the connections (and disconnections) between past and present.

Instructional Resources

• Choices: Teaching with the News provides online lessons, students handouts, and scholar videos to connect the content of the classroom to the headlines in the news. Topics cover a range of timely foreign policy and international issues.  All of the lessons are free to download.
• CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program designed for middle and high school classes. Teacher materials include daily transcripts for each show, daily curriculum and additional support materials to help students understand the news.
• NY Times Upfront is the only newsmagazine for students in grades 8-12. Each edition includes national and international news, history, debates on major issues facing the U.S. and world, and political cartoons.  A Teacher’s Edition with each issue provides lesson plans, skill-building activities, quizzes, extension ideas, and standards connections.
• The Idea of America: Virtual Republic allows students to discuss current policy issues and suggest solutions to improve their community and world. It can be used as a companion to Colonial Williamsburg’s The Idea of America curriculum, or as a stand-alone resource.

Teaching history through current events is not just about finding a way to make history interesting. It is also an act of civic engagement.  If we want to fulfill the mission of social studies (creating effective citizens), our students need to be able to make informed decisions about current issues that are grounded in a deep understanding of historical causation.  Instead of dismissing current events, relegating it to Fridays, or using the news only to teach skills, we should approach history through current events, a whole new lens for students to think about the news for the rest of their lives.