Unit 2: Teaching History

After reading about history in the classroom and the impact of students’ ideas on history, I found I had many conflicting ideas in my mind about how we teach our students history.  Even after reading these articles it does not give us a clear answer about what is right and what is wrong about teaching kids history. 

One thing that stuck out to me was how interconnected the ideas of citizenship of students are to how we teach history.  It appears to me that how much of the country currently teaches history further conditions students in the path of personally responsible citizens, whereas it could stretch them to be social justice citizens.  As Greenwalt says, “The goal of teaching American history has long been the creation of citizens who are loyal to this narrative and are willing to take action to support it.”  This makes me think as teachers we are continuing to permeate the idea of the personally responsible citizen.  This does not give students a chance to think or question on their own. 

Again, this brings up the ideas and concerns about how to teach and confront young students with more “radical” ideas.  How do we teach young students to be social justice citizens?  How do we teach students history outside of a neatly packaged box?  As addressed in History-It Can be Elementary, not much history is explicitly taught in younger grades but often we still have the experience of discussing historical events with young students.  For example, when discussing President’s Day or Martin Luther King Jr. Day we are confronted with the task of explaining why these men are important to U.S. History.  This very often leads to me glossing over the facts to present a simple and soft version of their history. 

One reason, even when I taught fifth grade, that I often felt unequipped to discuss and extend students in history was my own lack of knowledge in addition to the common constraint of time.  Having minored in math and ESL in undergraduate, my history knowledge is reduced to anything I can remember from my own schooling, which was sensationalized as many other students experienced.  As much as I was educated about many things in undergraduate education, a deep dive in the issues and topics I may be teaching was not one of them and I find myself in the same boat as many other elementary education teachers. Anderson reminds readers,  “Students training to be teachers, especially those being educated to teach in elementary schools, know little about the history of slavery, he stated, noting that “much curriculum and teaching around racially and ethnically diverse [people] features a fun—foods and festival—approach to learning.”” How can we change our approach to teaching teachers to teach social issues?  This will continue to be a source of problem as we continue to write a difficult historical narrative. 

As we watch and reflect on the news today, history and difficult topics are not going away.  Students in the future will continue to be asked to learn about and understand issues that are not always pretty and can be simplified into a cute picture with fun type font.  As I said after reading, I still do not have a clear black and white answer about what and how to teach my students as I would a math or science concept but I do feel a renewed sense of responsibility to ensure facts like these, “among 12th-graders, only 8 percent could identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War.” from Anderson do not continue to be  a reality for our students.

Unit 1: Citizenship in Young Students

       As I read about civic education and citizenship in our schools I found myself constantly coming back to the age of my students.  As a first-grade teacher, many of the ideas presented in the readings seemed out of reach for myself and my students to address. 

      While reading, What Kind of Citizen? about the three kinds of citizens, personally responsible citizen; the participatory citizen; and the justice oriented citizen (Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J.

2004), I found that most of my time teaching is spent teaching my students to be personally responsible citizens.  They often learn about how to put things away themselves, take care of their own needs, and follow the rules (laws) of the classroom.  As teachers, we encourage and organize ways for students to give back to the school and community through fundraisers and recycling programs but all of these are adult created and adult coordinated.  As the article says, there is a current push toward teaching students to be not just participatory citizens but also justice oriented citizens.  As I read about the studies they completed I still found myself envisioning the success of this with six year olds. 

       Once I moved to Young Children's Everyday Civics I found that I was not alone in teaching young students just to be personally responsible citizens and often for many of the same reasons that I had already encountered.  There were challenges to teaching civics and citizenship to young students, first, the field of social studies uses frames of analyzing citizenship education based on studies of older students and second, predetermined adult ideas (and ideals) of what it means to act civically dominate our conceptions of civic education for young children (Payne, 2018). So, I wondered what needed to change about practices already in place to ensure advancement in teaching young students to move beyond personally responsible citizens. 

       As I thought about my own teaching and what could be changed I found that many of the lessons and expectations for students to be personally responsible citizens do not need to change.  I would argue as well that for young students it is imperative to spend a large amount of time teaching students the expectations of being personally responsible citizens.  Without the foundations, just as anything else in learning, we cannot move onto the other steps.  Participatory citizens are personally responsible citizens with an added layer.  Without the groundwork in early years, students will not be able to successfully navigate other types of citizenship. 

       This being said, once students have a strong hold on the basics, as the article discussed we can move beyond, but not from an adult perspective.  Students are already in many ways participating as responsible citizens in a community in some form during lunch, recess, and other interactions.  Payne states, while we know that young children can and do deal with issues that face the larger public (e.g., questions about race and racism) (Doucet & Adair, 2013), we also observed how their everyday relationships and interactions highlighted a different vision of being civic and more caring and relational idea of the common good (Payne, 2018).  This tells me that we can use the systems already in place and amend them to fulfill the needs of citizenship education in some cases.  Young students must be given the opportunity to learn to be personally responsible citizens but adults can grow their understanding of citizenship by capitalizing on the systems and ideals the students already have in place. 

Introductory Post

1. Professional Work: I came to teaching through a a life long love of helping others. I have always loved working with and helping the people I am around.  I have been teaching for three years now.  I taught in Colorado Springs the last three years teaching fifth and first grade general education.  Recently, I was hired to teach in Mid-Michigan after moving back with my husband after his years of service in the Army.  I will be teaching second grade general education.  I am currently enrolled int he special education with Autism endorsement master's program.  I hope to continue to work in general education with the masters giving me a better understanding of how to serve the needs of all students.  

2.  Outside of work I am working hard on becoming reestablished in Mid-Michigan, moving is a long process!  Hanging out with our dogs are how much of my free time is spent.  We have two rescue dogs who keep us busy with lots of energy.  In addition to this I enjoy watching food tv shows and trying to recreate some of the recipes in my own kitchen.  

3. My motivations and beliefs as a citizen stem from the same motivations and beliefs that I hold in the classroom.  That is creating and supporting equity, kindness, and open mindedness.  It is important to me to support equity, kindness and open mindedness because of the impact that have on everyone I interact with.  I live out these beliefs by helping my students to understand how they can show this to others.  As I work with young students I have a chance to show them how to show these characteristics to peers and others in their community.  I am inspired and motivated by the quote by Haim Ginott, “I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”