Social Studies is My Jam

You know those moments when you or your Facebook friends record the phrases your children utter? People used to record such phrases in baby books (maybe they still do), but I definitely see parents posting exchanges they've had with their children on Facebook where they become more public; we like the posts and chuckle along with our parent friends. Now that my children are in middle and high school, I'm less compelled to share most of our exchanges publicly because I want my sons to own their online presence and create their own digital footprints. That being said, I couldn't resist a particular phrase I overheard my twelve year old proclaim this weekend (I asked his permission to blog about this, by the way).

Friday night while playing Minecraft and simultaneously talking via FaceTime with his friend Isaac emphatically said  "man, social studies is my jam."

Later during the weekend while passing the time between an archery tournament and an indoor soccer game, I asked Isaac to share his ideas about why social studies is so important for us to learn, and he shared the four following reasons we should learn social studies.

We learn from the past--When we study history we learn how and why people lived and we gain a deeper understanding of the world.

We learn about other cultures--When we learn about other cultures we begin to understand other people and reduce our judgement of others.

We learn how and why we participate in our own society and government

"I just like it"--What better reason? I'm a huge proponent in students having choice in their learning and tailoring their experiences to their interests because that's motivation enough to keep learning and exploring the world.

photos from various family trips/historical sites

A few of my favorite online social studies resources

Stanford History Group
At this website, you'll find curriculum, assessment, and project advice and examples for your classroom. One of my favorite aspects of this work is the emphasis on moving beyond multiple-choice standardized tests because studying history is much more than memorization of facts, details, and dates. The resources emphasize literacy in history with students reading, analyzing, and writing about primary and secondary sources. In my work over the past three years, I've had the privilege to work with Daisy Martin, one of the founders of the Stanford History Group. The passion, knowledge, and expertise she presents have made our work exciting, thoughtful, and productive.

The National Museum of American History
By far one of my favorite Smithsonian museums is the Museum of American History. I've visited at least a half-dozen times and each time I see more ideas and think about ways the resources the museum provides can be beneficial to teachers. This was also Isaac's favorite museum when we visited Washington DC as a family a few years ago.

Teaching Tolerance
For several years I've followed the work coming out of the Southern Poverty Law Center, including their online resources for teachers. The resources here don't have to be limited to social studies teachers because all teachers need to think about how we teach tolerance and promote diversity, equity, and justice.

The Library of Congress
I've been using the resources at Loc.gov since my first year of teaching when my teaching mentor, Beverly Reavis Payne, attended a workshop and brought back ideas to share with our whole English department. Over the years, their resources for teachers have continued to evolve, and teachers like Beverly contributed to that evaluation. My favorites have always been the images because there are many thoughtful uses for historical images in any subject/grade area classroom.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Not a year of my 12 years in the classroom passed without me teaching students about the Holocaust. The resources at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum just keep getting better. Often I was amazed when teenagers told me they had never heard of the Holocaust before entering my high school classroom.

Most Likely to Succeed Film and Book

More than a half-dozen times now I have watched Brian's eyes light up with an I did it--I created something that works expression, and I have watched Samantha's confidence shine as the all female play she directs garners applause from an audience of family and community members. I have also watched Scout's father, film director Greg Whiteley, acknowledge his daughter's feelings that "this whole thing called school is B.S."

The compelling storyline in the film Most Likely to Succeed speaks to me as a parent, educator, and community member. I've sat in parent/teacher conferences not unlike the one Whiteley's daughter and wife endured and even once was told by an administrator that I should have my son read boring books at home so he would be better prepared to read the boring texts on the state standardized tests. More positively though, I have also observed the I created something and it works look in my son's eyes when he built a computer.

As pointed out in the beginning of Most Likely to Succeed, our education system was designed in 1893 by a Committee of Ten men who wanted more efficient, compliant, and educated factory workers for the industrial age. A standardized education system with a teacher who dispensed knowledge provided what the economy needed at the time and guaranteed workers "a perfectly average job, with a perfectly average family, a perfectly average home, and a perfectly average life, and a perfectly average funeral."

We no longer need as many factory workers because more and more jobs have become automated. We have knowledge at our finger tips as we consider access to the Internet a basic right in our developed country. We need students who can think critically, communicate effectively, solve problems creatively, and collaborate productively to make our world a better place. Most Likely to Succeed does not offer a panacea for the issues in public education, but it does open eyes and convey a sense of urgency needed if we are going to make sure kids receive the education they need in our ever changing world.

In addition to seeing the film multiple times, I have now also read Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith. I am encouraged, empowered, and more ready than ever to continue my personal and professional mission of
 re-imagining public education.

As Dintersmith and Wagner acknowledge in their book, we could have completely redesigned our education system, the position advocated by Ted Sizer founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, as we headed into the twenty-first century. Instead, our country chose to "push for incremental improvements and rely on policies calling for curriculum homogeneity, more pervasive standardized testing, and teacher accountability tied to student test score performance (26)."

Unfortunately, we are paying a price for this choice as "student and teacher engagement levels have plummeted in the face of a steady diet of test prep (27)." We've turned public education into a series of hoops to jump and games to play (just ask my 9th grader). The book is not all depressing though; the authors offer examples of how we can re-imagine school. Think about their suggestion of what we might consider as the purpose of education.

"The purpose of education is to engage students with their passions and growing sense of purpose, teach them critical skills needed for career and citizenship, and inspire them to do their very best to make their world better (44)."

If we decide this is our purpose, then we must respond as such and we must offer students--
choice, opportunities to learn from failure, lessons that require critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. We must also teach students to communicate effectively both in writing and in speaking. I've written on this topic previously.

Dintersmith and Wagner don't stop their conversations with K-12. In fact, one entire section of the book is devoted to ideas about college degrees. They say they "don't subscribe to the view that a college needs to revolve around practical courses (169.)" Rather, they give college faculty, administration, students, and parents plenty to think about. As a liberal arts graduate, I was pleased with this perspective--

"Today, employers look for graduates who exhibit critical skills, ask great questions, and demonstrate perseverance and grit. These critical skills can be taught in traditional liberal arts pursuits as well or better than in business courses (170)."

Re-imagining public education has been on my mind for nearly as long as I've been out of college. It started in graduate school when I read works by Ted Sizer, John Dewey, Deborah Meier, John Goodlad, and Maxine Greene. I began teaching in a high needs school in North Carolina and committed myself to teaching with intentionality, even writing "purpose in instruction" at various places around the classroom as a reminder to myself to keep our studies, projects, and lessons meaningful.

Read about how I helped arrange Ted Dintersmith's visit to KY

I'm not alone either because I know dozens of committed teachers throughout the United States who work diligently inside our flawed system to provide students the deeper learning experiences they need. I also know parents who advocate for change and who work together on re-imagining the system. I'm optimistic about what we can do when we work together.

In the past nearly four years, I've used this blog as a place to share my voice about how we need to re-imagine curriculum, instruction, assessment, and the overall system. Blogging has connected me to others and taught me more about what we can do if we speak up and work together. We need to remember that all of our voices can have impact. We can, together, make a difference to bring the change we need in public education. We no longer live in 1893. We need a bottom-up approach led by teachers, students, and parents demanding change to the system.

I urge you to see the film and read the book Most Likely to Succeed because once you do I guarantee you'll be ready to join me.

My Journey into a Career in Education

I didn't set out to be a teacher.

As a high school junior, new to yet another school (my tenth in 13 years), a high school counselor told me I would never make it to college. Maybe he said this because my parents did not graduate from college. Maybe he said this because my family worked hard but received assistance. Maybe it was because I had moved so many times and barely had the right credits to graduate in a new state. Most likely he said this because I took the most basic courses, not college preparatory courses. 

Determined, driven, and intent on being the first college graduate in our family, I set out for college and majored in political science/international relations because of a long time interest in worldwide Human Rights. I didn't stay at the first college I attended. No. I continued the familiar pattern of moving. It was only when I finally landed at Piedmont that I began to settle and make peace with my former transient life style. At Piedmont I selected psychology as my major with hopes of working with disadvantaged youth. During an internship where I taught relationship courses at a learning center for teens, I discovered my true interest in not just working with teens but in teaching. After graduation, I got married and began a two year Masters program which also led to a Georgia teaching certificate.


Foxfire & Rabun County High School, Rabun County, GA.
My experiences in the classroom began during my year-long internship at the rural Rabun County High School in Tiger, Georgia. Two full semesters of teaching and observations under Foxfire facilitator, Angela Cheek, provided me a solid foundation for establishing my own classroom in 1998.  If you don’t know much about the Foxfire approach to teaching and learning, you should check it out. The heart of Foxfire’s success is student choice.  The approach to teaching and learning is experiential based and student-centered. 

Following my student teaching experience in Georgia and the completion of my Master’s degree, my husband and I moved to Sylva, North Carolina so he could work on a Master’s degree. I certainly was not prepared for the shift to a small community of public schools interested only in hiring local folks. I spent that first semester in the fall of 1998 teaching English and science at a small private school and teaching adjunct English courses at a local community college.

Cherokee Indian Reservation, Cherokee, NC.
An outsider like me was welcome though at Cherokee High School on the Indian Reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. When they offered me a position teaching high school English in January of 1999 I jumped at the chance and launched head first into an amazing experience for my first five years of teaching. Grounded in the idea that students should have choice in learning, I ran my classroom as a facilitator of learning and became a master at differentiation. 99% of my students were Cherokee, and they all had different learning needs. Again, I equate any success experienced at Cherokee to student choice in learning. They appreciated it, and I fine-tuned how to provide student choice and meet the state required objectives and curriculum through Project-Based Learning experiences.

The highlight of our project-based learning experiences together was no doubt the Renaissance Festival the students selected to create as a way to learn the required British literature curriculum.  Student centered and community involved, we even had the Asheville television station run a segment on our event as part of their Never Stop Learning series in October of 2002. Leaving Cherokee after five years of teaching was tough for me because I felt successful as a teacher and had even earned an award for 2002-2003 Cherokee High School Teacher of the Year.

Fayette County Public Schools,   Lexington, KY.

Alas, we had to move again because it was time for my husband to pursue a PhD at the University of Kentucky. So, two weeks after giving birth to my second child, we moved to Kentucky where I obtained a teaching position at the county’s most inner city school. 

This brought new challenges in part because I thought I had figured out how to teach and was comfortable in the profession. Maybe a shake up was exactly what I needed to become an even stronger teacher. In Lexington, the school where I taught had a very diverse student population. The experience of dealing with diversity brought new challenges and caused me to question what I thought I knew about being a teacher. But I was determined to meet my students' needs. New state. New school. New colleagues. New parents. New community. New students. New standards which were skill based. New content area, too, because in addition to teaching English, I taught arts and humanities. It was at this new school when I decided to pursue National Board certification. Earning my NBCT status was a highlight in my career because the process brought professional learning. Analyzing student work, writing and reflecting on my teaching practices, and producing evidence of my practice and my students' work were fantastic ways to help me improve as a teacher which ultimately led to me being recognized in the district teacher spotlight segment in 2008-2009.

The NBCT process also taught me more about being a leader because it required me to show evidence of how I was a teacher leader, not something I had given much thought previously. When you take the time to think intentionally about what you are doing, it improves your outcome. The year after earning NBCT status, I became department chair for our 13 member English department of young teachers. My leadership experience and demonstration of effective teaching were important and relevant factors for my position, which still required me to teach a full 6 courses. I taught everything from arts and humanities to AP Language, AP Literature to elective courses such as Shakespeare and Women's Studies to general 10th grade English. There was no release time for building capacity of other teachers. We really caught our groove though and created a cross disciplinary literacy team and started on a literacy plan based on meeting the needs of students in our school. Two years after achieving NBCT status, I decided I needed a change of pace.  Leaving the classroom was not an easy decision as you might have noticed if you've been following my blog. If you haven't been following, you can read more about that decision here, here, and here. 

State Department of Education In the winter of 2009, I accepted a position as literacy consultant at our state's education agency. Three months into this new position, a key piece of legislation (commonly known as Senate Bill 1) was passed into law. This sent our entire state into an era of new reform. I went to this position very naive about politics in education. I paid close attention and spent time learning, reading, researching, and listening.  Needless to say, it was a very interesting experience. 

It's About Kids Support Services (District Office). After weeks of soul searching and even conversations about returning to the classroom full time, I accepted a position in late August 2012 in my home district in Lexington, Kentucky. Returning to Fayette County Public Schools was a rewarding learning experience. I served as Secondary English Language Arts Specialist for the district and spent my time working with teachers. I visited classrooms, facilitated professional development sessions, provided Literacy Design Collaborative Training to English, Social Studies, and Science teachers in collaboration with teachers in those disciplines, planned for Response to Intervention work in the district, planned for literacy teams and writing program reviews, started a new blog, and contributed to the district Innovation Team. 

A Nonprofit Organization.  In the spring of 2013 I was recruited for a new position with a brand new organization designed to promote change and innovation in Kentucky's schools.  After more soul searching and a realization that I should walk the talk about taking leaps, I accepted a position leading an initiative for a curriculum project and research study with schools in Kentucky and Colorado collaborating to create units of study to meet the needs of their students and the demands of the Common Core State Standards.  Because we are a brand new organization with only a few employees, I also contribute the blog and initially helped run some of the social media accounts.  (I love this!)  I remain steadfastly committed to raising the voice of teachers and students in public education in my new position.  We need changes in our system, and my new position is offering me additional opportunities to promote changes and to encourage teachers along the way.
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NOTE: This post used to appear on my About page, but when I decided to update that page today, I wanted to preserve my longer bio, so I updated this a bit and added information about my decision to get into education in the first place.

~~~Please tell me about your journey in the comments area below~~~

My Son's Last Year of Elementary School Was His Best Year

My ten-year-old son finished elementary school on Friday, and I can say without a doubt this was his best year ever.  He would agree that it was his best year because he loved his teacher.  She was inspiring and effective. She believed in him, and she helped him hone his natural leadership skills. She had high expectations and considered herself a co-learner in the classroom.

I think it's true that different children bond differently with different teachers, and for Isaac, Mrs. White was a perfect match.  As a parent who has struggled to understand many elementary teachers' points of view and rigid approaches over the years, I will say that this teacher was a good fit for me as well.  I didn't feel like I needed to ask a million questions because she communicated well in advance and was flexible and understanding of parents with busy schedules. For example, she didn't punish my son if I forgot to initial his planner one night, and she gladly sent home an additional field trip permission slip when I inadvertently lost the first one.  More importantly, she also assigned meaningful work (not word search worksheets) and met the individual learning needs of her students. The thing I most appreciated about her though was that she emobdied the traits of a life-long learner and was eager to learn alongside her students.

When I asked Isaac what he liked best about Mrs. White he said that she didn't make him sit still for long periods of time, and she designed active learning opportunities. He also said she was nice and frequently asked him about his interests. Since Isaac has strong interests in history, he always loved it and felt special when he shared his Abraham Lincoln movie and books with her, and she borrowed them to learn more.

Isaac leaves a note for Mrs. White

As we conclude our days as parents of an elementary school aged child, I am mourning the end of young childhood years when my children needed me more. I am grateful to the amazing Mrs. White for helping us end these elementary years on a positive note.

Isaac with his favorite teacher, Mrs. White

The day of 5th grade graduation (technically called a promotion ceremony), we waited behind multiple other students and their parents for students to have their picture made with Mrs. White. She clearly cared for each of her students and made a positive mark on their young lives.