Tools for Teaching Social Studies: A How-to Handbook of Useful Ideas and Practical Solutions

By Jim Parsons and Mariah Schroder

Engage your students AND keep your sanity with classroom-tested tools. Tools for Teaching Social Studies delivers a wealth of practical solutions for classroom success — all grounded in solid educational philosophy. A lifeline for new social studies teachers and a source of inspiration and ideas for experienced teachers, this book offers you a boost at every stage of your career. Based on a master teacher’s four decades of experience, this top-notch toolkit is packed with strategies:

• Learn five key teaching principles that put you and your students on the path to success.


• Discover your unique style.


• Connect with your students.


• Set and achieve realistic professional and personal goals.


• Stay organized and manage your time effectively.


• Empower yourself as a teacher.


• Avoid burn-out.


• Facilitate effective group work.


• Create engaging learning plans.


• Make the right use of social media. And much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brush Education
• Release date: Jun 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781550595833

Jim Parsons

Jim Parsons spent his formative years on a wheat farm in northern NSW, Australia. His first book Beetle Creek reflects that rural background. He subsequently obtained a B.A. majoring in English and German Literature, and a Dip. Ed. and worked in Technical and Further Education, where he taught English and Communication to adults, including Creative Writing modules. On his retirement in 2003, Jim developed his own popular novel-writing course and started a writer mentoring service. He lives at the Gold Coast with his wife Julie, enjoys travel and fishing - and, of course, writing.

Book preview

experience.

Section 1

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Being a Teacher

Linking It Together: Thinking about Teaching

Jim stumbled into teaching when he saw a poster on the bulletin board at the University of Kentucky in 1969 that outlined the need for teachers in the racially dynamic city of Louisville, Kentucky. During this time, the United States was desegregating schools in response to Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Although some Canadians may not be aware of this Supreme Court decision, it is considered one of the greatest of the twentieth century because it unanimously ruled that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. It aligned the US Constitution on the side of racial equality and gave legal status to the civil rights movement.

Interestingly, Jim never did an undergraduate degree in education, never did student teaching or a practicum, and didn’t prepare for teaching by taking courses that would allow him to consider his profession before engaging in it. But, perhaps for Jim and his students, that background was a good thing. Jim’s struggle to learn the skills and attitudes that would help him grow to become a teacher became the source of much of the teaching he does in his undergraduate social studies classes. Jim became a storyteller—mostly, as he calls them, stupid Jim stories. These stories often have a similar theme: Jim makes a mistake, learns from it, and reshapes his goals and practices. Still, Jim had inherent gifts that helped him become a good teacher, such as the gift of loving other people’s children.

The point is that we all bring our own gifts to teaching. However, there are things we have not yet learned and goals we must still strive for if we are to be good teachers. In this first section, we explore the concept of thinking of yourself as a teacher. We believe such considerations are seldom learned from reading a book, and praxis—acting and reflecting at the same time—is key. However, making decisions about how and what we focus on is the beginning of a journey.

Tool 1.1

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Finding Your Teaching Identity

How do I discover my own unique style as a teacher? How do I put it to work for me in the classroom?

Our Philosophy: Start with Who You Are

• Mr. W. never cracks a smile, but he’s really fair.

• Mrs. P. lets us do lots of group work.

• Mr. A is always talking about movies he’s seen about wars and politics and stuff. It makes social more interesting.

• It’s weird that Miss H. totally loves biology . . . but at least it makes class more fun.

• Mrs. V. tells us stories about her students all the time.

Students are always making comments like these about their teachers. Their observations—good, bad, or indifferent—reflect all the variances in methods, attitudes, expressions, and emphases that make up each teacher’s own unique style. Over time, you will develop your own identity as a teacher. You may choose to leave this process up to chance (with an equally chancy outcome), or you can work consciously to find a style that is both comfortable for you and successful in the classroom.

True Confessions: I Tried to Be My Cooperating Teacher

I was very fortunate to have Mr. Arnold as my cooperating teacher (practicum supervisor). With 12 years of experience, 8 of them at St. Pat’s, Mr. A. had a great reputation with the students. All the students wanted him for math; he was funny and had a knack for making the subject approachable for everyone. I admired the friendly ease with which he handled our unruly mob of Grade 9 students, and I longed to feel as confident as he did in front of the classroom.

Being a new teacher is like being a teenager again. You try on different teaching roles and attempt to figure out which one is right for you. Mr. A. was a great role model, so I tried being him for a while. Guess what? I didn’t have his sense of humour, and my lame jokes fell flat. At first I felt horrible and self-conscious. But, over the course of my practicum, I slowly began to discover that I had my own unique strengths. Mr. A. tended to leave the weaker students behind; I found out I was great at drawing these students out. Mr. A. relied on (and was very successful at) lectures. I discovered that I loved moving around the classroom and facilitating group work.

I still think that Mr. A. is a great teacher, but I’ve come to realize that I can be a great teacher too—in my own way.

Strategy: Determine Your Identity

When teachers leave university to set up shop in their own classrooms, they are usually equipped with a full toolbox of content area knowledge, methodology, and educational theory. Though all of these are critical to the profession of teaching, they are not enough in and of themselves. Recent research in teacher preparedness and curriculum theory emphasizes the importance of a teacher’s sense of personal identity.

Your identity as a teacher shapes how you teach and, more importantly, has a lot to do with how successful and happy you will be in your chosen career. Yet no textbook (not even this one) can tell you who you are. The journey toward your teacher identity is long, subtle, and ultimately yours alone to take. Teachers—especially new teachers—are busy people. In the rush of lesson planning, marking, and daily mini-emergencies, time to reflect is easily lost in the shuffle. The challenge is to make time for this important process. If you really want to become a teacher—as opposed to being little more than an educational technician—you need to take the time to shape an identity. Your identity includes the confidence, joy, and sense of purpose that comes with bringing your authentic self to the classroom.

The idea that you can, or should, divide your professional self from your personal self will have two consequences, both of which seem tragic. First, your teaching will become soulless and mechanical, and neither your students nor you will gain any excitement or joy from what you are doing. Second, because neither you nor your students are enjoying themselves, it will be astonishingly easy for you to become cynical about education. Over the long term, you will come to care little for what you do, and generations of students will have been done a significant disservice. You will quit being a teacher, whether you leave the classroom or not.

The best teachers are authentic. In other words, they do not draw hard lines between their professional and personal selves. Teaching is not a role, but an identity. It is not a job, but a vocation. Great teachers merge their professional education with a strongly developed sense of beliefs and values, and bring their whole selves to class with them. To bring yourself to the classroom, you must find your identity as a teacher. Yet, finding yourself is a career-long process; it is not a quick snapshot. Who you are, personally and professionally, will change over the years, so you must consciously discover and rediscover yourself through your tenure.

Tips for Using Journals, Diaries, and Scrapbooks

• Use timed writing by setting a timer or checking your watch. Commit as much time as you feel comfortable with (even as little as 5 minutes) to write about your day.

• Use the computer, if this is more comfortable for you (remember to protect this private document).

• Write on your old lesson plans about what worked and didn’t, where you could make changes, or simply how your students reacted.

• Use a full-page-per-day scheduler as a combination time manager and reflective journal. Jot thoughts, feelings, and notes to yourself in point form.

• Focus on a single issue: Is one student or one particular issue bothering you? Make this one topic the focus of your reflection. (You don’t have to engage these questions alone. Talk with an experienced colleague and write about any solutions that might emerge.)

• Collect quotes, pictures, written observations, and other artifacts that are meaningful to you personally and professionally in a scrapbook.

• Keep files at home and in your classroom to collect artifacts for your scrapbook.

• Keep the tools you need (pens, scissors, and glue stick) together in a convenient place.

• Be messy! Content matters more than appearance. Concern for the appearance of your journal or scrapbook can bog you down and rob you of reflective time.

Tool 1.2

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Becoming an Empowered Teacher

I keep hearing horror stories about teacher burnout. Is this going to happen to me? How can I make sure it doesn’t?

Our Philosophy: Plan for Empowerment

We think being a teacher is the best job in the world. However, although we may be sentimental, we are not blind. We also know that teaching can, on some days, be the worst job in the world. When we talk with our undergraduate students, we ask two questions:

• What makes a good teacher?

• What keeps a good teacher going, despite the problems of teaching?

We almost always discover the same thing. There is a difference between being just a teacher and being a great teacher—one who has the power and strength to keep on despite the problems. Recently, much has been written about empowerment, focusing on one of the most practical of all teaching questions: How can you grow to become a stronger teacher?

Strategy: Follow the 10 Characteristics of Empowerment

Although this is not the same type of strategy as others provided in this book—it is not something you can do with your class tomorrow—it is some of the most important advice we can offer you for enjoying a rewarding career. No one should just survive as a teacher; you should thrive.

1. Work from an ethic. It’s not good enough that something works. It’s only good enough if it’s good. There is a big difference between taking a bag of tricks into the classroom and teaching that is founded on principle. Teaching is more than a group of things to do. For real empowerment, a fundamental ethic should ground activity. Answer these questions:

• What beliefs guide my teaching?

• What is my ethical grounding?

2. Think past the written code (the rules). It’s not good enough. Often new student teachers wonder about their legal rights in difficult situations. Should they stop a fight? Should they report a parent or teacher who is harming a child? The written code is the weakest of all guides to structure teaching behaviour. While it is important to know the minimum standards for behaviour, the written code is insufficient in itself to empower the actions of teachers. Answer these questions:

• How can I know when the written code is powerless?

• When is the minimum insufficient for powerful action?

• What do I need to do to sleep well tonight?

3. Re-establish the vision of the first love that led you to teaching. We believe most teachers are visionaries. Holding onto the vision that led you to teaching is a key to retaining your joy. Carrying this vision into classrooms is the key to establishing the kind of powerful relationships humans—especially teachers and students—can build. Therefore, we believe that the most important question any teacher can ask is: Where do I find joy in teaching? Think about how you can get back in touch with the motivating power of your first love for teaching, and how this power can guide your actions as a teacher. Answer these questions:

• Why did I become a teacher in the first place?

• What will keep me teaching in spite of terrific odds, such as a lack of money and respect?

4. Know yourself. Not everyone should be a teacher. Some people hold teaching jobs and have neither the basic talents nor the skills for teaching. Quite simply, they should quit for everyone’s well-being. Fortunately, these people are few in number. Most teachers have distinctive talents that allow them to be quite wonderful teachers—learn about your own talents and embrace them. Answer these questions:

• What are my talents?

• What is there about me that can help me create successful and powerful classroom experiences for students?

• How can I make the most of the talents I have?

5. Make decisions that are possible to implement. Good teaching starts as a dreamer’s dream—a goal, a desire, a yearning. How can you turn your ideas and dreams into active reality? Although it seems almost too simple to say, psychological well-being comes from setting attainable goals and feeling good when they are reached. Such action becomes an activity-celebrating orientation that encourages the growth of power by forcing you to keep trying. Answer these questions:

• What kinds of goals can I reach?

• How can I use my personal skills to reach these goals?

• How can I overcome my own shortcomings?

6. Accept responsibility for what you know. Taking responsibility for what we know makes all education a political activity. What we learn calls us to action. Interestingly, we also learn more (and differently) when we act on what we know (praxis). Answer these questions:

• How does what I know call for me to live and act?

• Is it possible to know too much or too little?

7. Distinguish between the good and the very good. Although it is easy to distinguish between the good and the bad, it is often harder to distinguish between the good enough and the very good (and we are easily seduced by our laziness not to try). The good enough is simply not good enough for teachers. Answer these questions:

• What are the best activities, goals, arrangements, ideas, reactions, or justifications?

• Why are they the best?

• How can I gain the discipline to do the very best?

8. Establish roots in the family tradition. Teachers are a unique culture, with a unique language, a unique understanding, a unique profession, a unique calling, a unique evaluation for success, and a unique reason for working. Answer these questions:

• What things make us teachers a family, distinct from other groups?

• How can we celebrate the experience in the most powerful way?

• What can I do to build up our family?

9. Say nice things to yourself. We all have a little voice inside our head, talking to us. But sometimes this voice is not very friendly. Teachers, especially, have a ruinous tendency to say nasty things to themselves. Plus, our little voices don’t always keep a balanced view. One rotten decision or stupid move seems to outweigh many positive actions. The answer to this problem is simple: When you can, say nice things to yourself. Answer these questions:

• What do I do that is good?

• How can I honestly praise my own actions?

10. If you’re gonna hang your head, look for money. All good teachers have times when they make poor decisions, give in to a momentary anger, or act upon a personal irritation or intolerance. When we do, we deserve to feel bad about our mistakes and disappointed in ourselves for making them. But, our funks shouldn’t last forever. We must start to work and live again. Even in the middle of feeling bad, usually we can find some positive aspects. Once a positive is found, life becomes more powerful again. Answer these questions:

• How can I learn from my mistakes and grow into a richer and wiser person?

• What can I do that will lift me above my mistakes?

Tool 1.3

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Setting Teaching Goals

How can I develop a teaching philosophy that I really believe in?

Our Philosophy: Set and Achieve Professional (and Personal) Goals

Convinced his first time teaching French 10 had been painfully dull for both his students and himself, Craig began his introductory units the next year with a hefty bag of fun activities and lesson plan ideas. As midterms approached, Craig realized that some of the activities had taken on a momentum of their own. Somehow he had veered off the curriculum. As Craig began to make up the midterm exam, he was chagrined to realize that while his students had had fun, they hadn’t learned what they were supposed to learn. Worse yet—in some cases, they hadn’t learned much at all.

Craig’s story illustrates why the bag of tricks approach to teaching doesn’t work. Random activities may amuse students and fill time, but are these really the goals we want for our students and ourselves? Teaching is a reasoned set of activities working toward a particular set of considered goals. Lesson plans not founded on this principle are destined for mediocrity.

This book provides you with some teaching tools you can use, but we don’t want you to confuse teaching with things to do in the classroom. Before any good teaching takes place, it is important to know where you want to go as a teacher. Ultimately, this means much more than just having a well-structured lesson plan that keeps students busy and on task.

Strategy: Set Teaching Goals

Effective goal setting is among the most important tools we can offer in this book. In fact, we will approach this topic more than once. Setting goals is a way to bring your authentic teaching identity to your classroom. Without carefully considered goals, you may find yourself spending time on activities you don’t enjoy, using tricks you are uncomfortable with to manage your class, or otherwise trying to be someone you aren’t. Goals help you be yourself when you teach.

Having clear goals that you believe in can also get you through rough patches in your career. If you are reading this book, you are most likely a beginning teacher. Your goals will help both to centre your work and to spur you on when you need encouragement. When times are tough (and be assured that times will sometimes be tough), cling to your goals. This suggestion sounds sentimental, but you might want to read a biography about Gandhi, Mother Teresa, or another hero to see what we mean. These heroes experienced times of uncertainty and discouragement during which their goals—their conviction of a right course—encouraged them to continue taking action. You probably will not be called on to save a subcontinent, but there are times when you will feel you have been. Remember that teaching is, in its own way, heroic. Inspired teaching takes a perseverance that emerges from solid, thoughtful objectives.

On a more practical note, you will need to set goals to facilitate the ongoing professional growth that is expected of you by your administration and governing bodies. For example, in some Canadian provinces and territories (including Alberta and Ontario) teachers are required to provide written annual Professional Growth Plans. These documents detail teaching goals for the upcoming year.

To a greater or lesser extent, all bodies that govern your profession expect you to reflect upon, develop, and implement goals for your teaching. We believe it is simply good practice to do so.

The Foundations of Teaching Goals

Your teaching goals emerge from a constellation of sources. More importantly, what things to do in the classroom enter the picture only after you have undergone the goal-setting process. Each topic below contributes significantly to your goal setting:

• Student evaluation – when setting goals for future teaching, your students’ performance gives you an indication of how successful your presented methodologies have been in facilitating learning.

• Teacher evaluation – evaluations of your teaching by students are another important source of information.

• Professional development – as a tool for setting goals and in response to the goal-setting process, professional development courses can provide new ideas and insights to guide your teaching. As mentioned, goal setting is also an activity expected of teachers by their governing bodies. Our research found that most teachers believe collaboration with colleagues is their best professional learning: It is a no-brainer, and we encourage all teachers to engage in professional conversations with colleagues.

• Curriculum – the curriculum is your first and most important resource in goal setting. As you will discover later in this book, provincial/territorial curriculum guides and support organizations in your area of specialization can provide a wealth of helpful information.

• Philosophy – having a solid teaching philosophy is a significant contingency in goal setting that is often overlooked. We don’t believe that effective goal setting can take place without a solid philosophical foundation.

The following template for setting goals is grounded in your own personal teaching philosophy. There is, and should be, a central foundation to your teaching. This foundation should be built upon things that you believe about what teaching is, how it should be done, and why you are doing it. Your foundation—your teaching philosophy—includes the things that you stand for that do not change, regardless of the content you are teaching. To be a good teacher, you must act pragmatically at times, but teaching is not a pragmatic vocation. We are talking about the need to build, for yourself, a moral and ethical base that governs your work.

The Five Key Teaching Principles

These principles serve as a model for the kind of work you will need to do to develop your own philosophical foundation.

1. Content knowledge is important. Teaching isn’t good unless it is rich in content; it helps to know things. This isn’t just a sound bite. Research and our own teaching experiences suggest that, as students gain knowledge, they become more confident, powerful, and courageous. In short, they become better learners. In the long run, we believe these same qualities encourage active democratic citizenship as students grow into adulthood. Because content is important, emphasize review activities in your teaching, and make your students accountable for content by giving comprehensive final exams.

2. The task of teaching is to teach. We believe the job of every teacher is to help every student in every class learn all of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes included in the program of studies (the curriculum). While theory and practice differ (meaning that our goals cannot be 100 percent achieved), these goals still are worth aspiring to, and should remain the standards for judging teaching success. Understand and welcome your legal responsibility to teach your jurisdiction’s curriculum, and use all the resources you can muster to teach every student.

3. Review is a universally key teaching technique. If students are going to learn and remember what they learn, going over the content material once is never enough. Aim for creative redundancy. That is, seek ways to repeat important content without being repetitive and boring. High standards and ongoing review develop much more than knowledge of facts; you are also teaching important life skills. Review and practice activities teach students self-discipline and provide opportunities to work hard, succeed, and reap the rewards.

4. Follow a Golden Rule. If there is a choice between not having fun and having fun, choose to have fun. If there is a choice to be active or inactive, choose active. Because students are energetic, active learners, work to create classrooms that use their natural tendencies to an advantage. Instead of fighting or stifling your students’ energies, direct their desire for fun and activity into productive learning. You can make your classes enjoyable for students while still maintaining high standards for work and behaviour. Teaching and learning social studies should be fun and you should avoid making the human activities of history boring to students.

5. Skills matter. Skills and content work together as students learn. As you teach content, you also teach students the skills they need to learn the content: note taking, using charts and graphic organizers, improved reading, and proofreading strategies. Because all students, regardless of the subject at hand, benefit from practising reading and writing skills, seek ways to develop these skills as natural extensions of your classroom activities, rather than as contrived lessons. Keep reading skills and vocabulary development at the forefront of your teaching.

Strategy: Use a Model for Developing Teaching Goals

The following model will help you develop your teaching goals.

Step 1: Develop Your Teaching Philosophy

Developing a teaching philosophy is much like developing your teaching identity: It is a process. You may (in fact, you likely will) need to experiment, refining and changing your ideas as your teaching experience grows. Yet, you also need to start somewhere, and whatever renovations your philosophy undergoes you should still discover, at the core of these changes, some ideas you truly believe in.

Think carefully about what is important to you. Remember what has made a difference—either for better or for worse—in your own life, particularly in your life as a student. Read and consider the perspectives of others. Ask how you will justify—both to yourself and others—the goals that emerge from this process. The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle is perhaps overdone, but it applies nicely to a teaching philosophy. Choose three to five key points, and build your philosophy around them. Allow yourself to struggle with how you express these key ideas. Seeking the right words forces you to think critically about what you believe.

We’d love to tell you more specifically how to develop a philosophy, but it is an intimate undertaking. The process—and the product—will be as unique as you are. You will know you have arrived when you read your own philosophy and feel a sense of pride and certainty that you can truly stand behind what you say.

Step 2: Gather Resources

At this stage, we suggest that you be as creative and prolific as possible. Brainstorm and write down any and all ideas that come to you.

• Refer to the foundations of teaching goals mentioned above.

• Examine student achievement.

• Use student feedback techniques (see Tool 5.10).

• Consider the important ideas you have gathered from your university courses and/or professional development.

• Review the curriculum guidelines in your area of specialization.

• Consider your strengths and weaknesses (both from your own perspective, and perhaps that of a trusted colleague or mentor).

• If you have a Teaching Quality Standard (TQS) applicable to you, look for common threads that suggest a general direction for your teaching goals.

Step 3: Write Your Teaching Goals

With the information gathered, write a set of general goals for your teaching. A common technique is to think about SMART goals:

S – Specific and contextual: Think of specific goals rather than general ones, and make sure they are clear. Limit your goals to a handful (1–5).

M – Meaningful measures: You need concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of the goal. If the goal is not measurable in some way (be creative), it’s not possible to know whether you are progressing toward the goal.

A – Achievable within the resources: Your goals must both be attainable with the resources you have and realistic.

R – Relevant: Choose a goal that matters to you.

T – Time targeted: Your goals need a time frame and a target date for completion. Is your goal going to be completed in one year, one semester or term, or one month?

Once you have written these goals, it’s time to evaluate and predict their effectiveness:

• Check back—Do your goals conform to your teaching philosophy?

• Can you achieve them in the time frame you have established?

• Do you have the resources and support you need?

• How much time will you need to devote toward your goal?

• Are your goals meaningful? Do they matter to you personally, and will they have a positive impact on your development as a teacher?

Sample Teaching Goals

• Re-assess and improve my group project evaluations.

• Spend more time walking around during seatwork activities.

• Teach a different novel this year and develop a new unit plan.

• Develop a reward system for completing math homework.

• Journal for 10 minutes at least three days a week.

• Use lunch hour supervision time to actively visit with students.

• Practise and perfect one new positive classroom management technique this year.

• Improve students’ research skills.

• Coach a house league team this year.

• Find more