Hurray for Sping Break!

I'm sure you are enjoying a well deserved break from school right now. I know I sure noticed that both teachers and students needed a break from each other. The only problem I have with this's year break is how early it is. Part of me says, who cares take the break when you get it but a voice in the back of my head says watch out. The next few months will be hell.

Here's what a High School Teacher in Alberta has to look forward to between April 1 and the Victoria Day longweekend:

1. Registration for next year-We have to help the kids choose their courses for next year. At our school this is done in the Social Studies classes. So there goes at least of couple of classes.
2. Surveys- We have to administer 3 seperate online surveys to our Grade 10's. These come from different government and district levels. Again there goes another class period or two to complete these.
3. Spring Fever- The snow will soon be gone. With the arrival of spring we often see the departure of student interest in school. It becomes increasingly difficult to motivate students to concentrate on their studies.
4. School Trips-Band, France, Italy, Germany... We have student groups travelling all over the place. In some cases you could be missing substantial numbers of students. Just another disruption to deal with.

Well at least it's not -50 below anymore.

Enjoy your break. I know I will. I'm going skiing!

The Best Professional Development for Social Studies Teachers

I just finished having one of those infamous PD days. I'm sure you know the kind of PD I am talking about. A day put on by the school district who have the best intentions of providing their teachers with the professional development they think teachers need. A day were there was a ridiculous keynote speaker who, instead of inspiring us, made us start looking for the exits after 20 minutes. A day where there was very little choice of interesting sessions to go to. So while I was daydreaming in one of my "interesting" sessions, I started to make a list of the best PD sessions a Social Guy could have. This is what I have so far.

• Sharing Sessions: Some of the best advice I have ever been given was from an Assessment for Learning Consultant named Ruth Sutton. She said the best PD for teachers is to have the opportunity to share/speak with other teachers. How many ideas have you come up with while speaking to colleagues? You work with excellent teachers feed off each other's ideas.
• Travel: Whenever I get the opportunity to go to a conference of some sort, I always try to choose a location that has some Social Studies benefit. Going to historic sites, stock exchanges, museums,etc can reinvigorate your outlook on what you teach. Some of the best places in my travels for this have been Washington DC, Chicago, Quebec City and France. Organizing a student trip can also benefit you as much as the kids. This could be a topic for a later post.
• School Visits: How do other Social Studies Departments deal with issues that your department is having? Go and find out. Seeing other schools in action can give you ideas as well as validation. Quite often I find it reassuring when I see the same thing going on in another building
• PD Committees: Get involved in your school's PD Committee. If you don't like what's going on then get active and try to enact positive change. Be a leader. What I have found is that by doing this, new and wonderful PD opportunities occur that the school will pay for, you begin to have professional conversations with your colleagues and you become a bit of an expert on certain topics.
• Volunteer at a high level: Get involved at the provincial level. I am currently on a resource review team for the government. Not only do I get of input on the text that I will get to use but I get paid for being in serviced on curricular changes. What's better than free PD...paid PD. Not only that, I now have another network of Social teachers to bounce ideas off of.

The Idea of having a PD is awesome. I admire those who try to put them on and I understand that the experiences I have just listed are nearly impossible to have during a one day workshop. So I have learned to make the best of these District PD Days and I have learned to seek out different opportunities that will benefit my professional development.

Does more time mean better learning?

I just came across an interesting rant titled Bell to Bell written by a teacher who is obviously frustrated by her school board increasing the number of class hours in an attempt to improve student results. At first glance one might wonder how this could be a frustrating notion. One must look at some of the misconceptions of making kids take more school/classes/whatever.



The likelihood of more minutes creating the desired change is very slim. What one should really look at is some of the other factors involved. So here is a quick list of factors that really do impede student learning.

• Class size: Common sense dictates that the more bodies you have in a class, the less time the teacher has to dedicate to each individual student. The possibility for a child to fall through the cracks increases. On top of that teachers are reluctant to try new and engaging techniques with large groups because things can go south quickly with a larger group.
• Lack of resources: Education itself is chronically underfunded. Quite often government bodies balance the budget at the expense of children's education. Less money not only means less teachers (and therefore bigger classes) but it also means less educational assistants, special programs, educational experiences, etc.
• An archaic reporting system: The system we use to calculate a student's mark does nothing to tell the student how to improve. What is the difference between an assignment that gets a 64 and a 65? Not much. We should be assessing "for" learning and not just "of" learning.
• Standardized testing: Too much effort is put into teaching a test rather than teaching a child. Need I say more.
• Out of date teaching techniques: Students are more in tune to the different types of media that exist. My high school kids are all plugged into their I-pods, etc. What would engage them more, a worksheet or a performance task where they create their own podcast or a text message that proves that they have learned the content.

Making our kids endure these circumstances for longer periods is not a solution for poor results, in fact it may be a cause. Lets change the corp of our system. Lets fix the above mentioned problems (they all are fixable) and help the learners of the 21st century.

The Value of Film Studies-List of Great Movies for Social Studies

"All you do in Social Studies is show movies."

This is a common perception about Social Studies teachers which I will not try to debunk. It's true, Social Studies naturally lends itself to some very valuable film studies. And yes they are valuable.

Imagine trying to teach something from history from only a book. How does that capture the student's imagination? How do they become engaged? A film, can quickly recreate a time period do draw kids into the topic. The benefits don't end with history, documentaries like Sicko or Supersize Me can make sense to contemporary issues in ways that kids will actually listen to. Most importantly films can bring emotion into the classroom. From what I know of Brain research, if there is an emotional attachment (laughter, fear, sadness, etc) to a concept, the student has a much better chance of retaining that information for long periods of time.

I have no problems showing films in class as long as the film has a purpose. In my opinion the teacher must have a desired learner outcome in mind when selecting a film. Nothing bothers me more than when a class is made to watch a movie with no curricular connection.

What are good films to show then? Here is a quick list of some of my favorites:

• Schindler's List- It's hard to believe this film is 14 years old!. It makes an emotional connection to the horrors of the holocaust. I can state that 6 million people were gassed which is shocking but once students watch the film, they will never forget what the holocaust was like. I always get parents to sign a permission slip for this one... Even my grade 12's.
• God Grew Tired of Us- Documentary of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Detailed account of how the Dinka of Southern Sudan were ethnically cleansed and the difficulties they had to overcome after seeking refuge in the US. This will make laugh, cry and everything in between.
• V for Vendetta- It seems to me that this film is a watered down version of 1984 but my kids absolutely love watching it. It does a fairly decent job of showing the characteristics of Authoritarianism.
• All's Quiet on the Western Front(John Boy Version:)- Is there a better film that this can show the horrors of WWI and trench warfare? I don't think so.
• Black Robe- Although a bit violent and it has one racy scene, This film demonstrates the First Contact between Europeans and Natives very well. I really like how it shows how both French and Huron were both ethnocentric.

I could go on and on but the message will stay the same. Use films in your class with a purpose and you will improve student learning. If you use films just to take a break, you are doing your students a disservice.

How can I teach Social Action?

When engaged in a study of globalization, I have always wondered how to get a group of apathetic adolescents to actually do something about the problems we study. Sure they care and they are appalled quite often about what they learn and such but rarely does anyone ask about what can be done. Well this year I'm trying something different. I'm trying to engage my students through a "social action" project.

So far I have had students research problems associated with globalization, such as:

• Poverty
• Disparity
• Environmental Damage
• Human Exploitation and Trafficking

The purpose of the research is to find a problem that they as students will work toward fixing through activism.

Once the reasearch was complete the students had to submit a plan of action which described their "problem"and explained its causes and effects. Furthermore, the students had to outline 3 "actions" that they would enact to make some positive change. There ideas ranged from having a bake sale for poverty to making an awareness ad and posting it on YouTube.

We are currently in the "action" phase of the project and the students have two months to put their plans into action. I am anxious to see how this turns out. Once they have done their 3 activities, they must provide me with proof via a portfolio of evidence. And finally they will be required to turn a reflective paper where they will describe how effective their actions were and what more needs to be done.

Will this create less apathetic kids? I'm not sure but I hope it will show them what needs to be done in order for them to be active citizens in our society.