Facing History: The Long Road to Freedom

By Mary Groesch

Progressive educator Mary Groesch reflects upon her thirty years of teaching through sharing Facing History: The Long Road to Freedom, one of the many curriculum units she wrote during her tenure as a teacher. The main elements of progressive practice are evidenced throughout the unit: integrated subjects, allowing students to pursue interests, to work in cooperative groups, to belong to a classroom community, to share their learning, and to have the arts as part of the larger unit of study. Readers will learn how to create progressive units of their own. Faced with more traditional expectations, readers will learn how to facilitate projects to allow their students to experience progressive practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645360186

Mary Groesch

Celebrated educator, Mary Groesch has written about her journey of becoming a progressive teacher through modeling and experience. She spent a year with Wanda Lincoln, a master teacher, who taught Language Arts Methods at National College of Education and was a fifth/sixth multi-age grades teacher at the Baker Demonstration School. She also traveled to England to observe the British Open School. Following her training, she taught in international schools in South America and was given extensive opportunities for teaching adults and multi-age classes. Returning to the United States, she was fortunate to get a job in Winnetka, Illinois, a truly progressive district, where she taught for over two decades.

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About the Author

Celebrated educator, Mary Groesch has written about her journey of becoming a progressive teacher through modeling and experience. She spent a year with Wanda Lincoln, a master teacher, who taught Language Arts Methods at National College of Education and was a fifth/sixth multi-age grades teacher at the Baker Demonstration School. She also traveled to England to observe the British Open School. Following her training, she taught in international schools in South America and was given extensive opportunities for teaching adults and multi-age classes. Returning to the United States, she was fortunate to get a job in Winnetka, Illinois, a truly progressive district, where she taught for over two decades.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Dr. Becky van der Bogert, my school superintendent for 14 years, who actively supported all aspects of progressive education within our school system.

Dr. Becky van der Bogert

Copyright Information

Copyright © Mary Groesch (2019)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Groesch, Mary

Facing History: The Long Road to Freedom

ISBN 9781641821605 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781641821599 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645360186 (E-Book)

The main category of the book — Biography & Autobiography / Educators

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

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Acknowledgments

My colleagues, who generously gave of their time and expertise, making many activities possible: Sanae and Laura (art), Mary Jo (music), Alice C. and Joyce (research and computers), Alice O. (modified materials and participated in simulation), Curt (KW), and Stacey (organized additional activities and camp for the fourth graders). Also, I want to thank my parents, who encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Introduction

Teachers help children learn about themselves and the world around them. What does it mean to be an American? What are the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? Ideally, children would learn about all the cultures from different world regions that have blended together to form the United States. Students could learn to embrace and celebrate the unique qualities of each group or individuals. One of the key jobs for a teacher is to create a classroom community where each member belongs, is valued and adheres to the Class Constitution, which they helped to create and/or ratify. In my classroom, we each have a weekly room job. When everyone does their job, the class runs smoothly. When students recognize their needs and their places within a large group, they can more easily comprehend someone else’s needs and desires. As a teacher, I realized that every child needs to be heard and his or her suggestions and ideas should be considered. Every child needs to recognize that we have more common threads that bind us as citizens and human beings, than we have differences that divide us.

Rather than having a detailed set of curriculum standards, progressive classrooms have units designed to flow from one to another. The teacher designs lessons around specific objectives geared for her students’ needs and strengths. Characteristics of progressive classrooms are: authentic learning activities, parent involvement where a sense of community in individual classrooms as well as a school-wide community is felt, where students are highly motivated and excited about their learning, they are given choices in selecting activities, they share their learning and experiences with others, the arts are an integral part of the curriculum, and students learn through all subject areas in their studies. During the year, they experience one unit that is an expedition or journey like the Westward Movement, the Pioneers, the Native Americans, or Immigration. Finally, students are taught a process approach so that they may apply the skills that they have learned, like writing a book review or a story, to future assignments. Their growth or progress is observed over time. Examples of specific art and written work, including photography and student reflections are collected in a portfolio (binder, folders etc.) so that they may be shared with parents. Students’ reflection of their own growth is linked to their own feelings of accomplishment and success.

This integrated unit was developed by an individual teacher who saw a need. When I returned from a geography meeting in Santo Domingo, in the fall of 1992, I shared the artifacts I had collected with my fourth and fifth graders. When I held up two masks made out of gourds and painted black, depicting an African male and female, I asked the class to speculate why the faces had a dark complexion. Immediately, a fifth-grade girl raised her hand. Her answer disturbed me. She replied that the island I visited is located in the Caribbean Sea where it is very warm. She thought that the weather got so hot that the peoples’ skin darkened. No one else within my fourth/fifth multi-age classroom offered other opinions.

It wasn’t their fault because they lived in a wealthy suburb where everyone looked alike and came from similar backgrounds. Five small towns send their students to the same high school where African American students are seldom seen. I looked at the curriculum and realized that African American history was not taught in our district at that time. I proposed to create an integrated social studies unit that taught students about slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, Jim Crow and Civil Rights. In true progressive fashion, my school superintendent trusted me to research and write an age-appropriate unit and supported my decision by enabling me to travel to West Africa to learn about African culture. I knew I would share my unit, but did not expect it to become a fixture within the fourth-grade social studies curriculum.

This book provides educators with activities to teach their Intermediate and Middle School aged students about the five themes of geography. It will also provide educators with a way to create a social studies unit that combines geography, history, and ways to excite children to learn about their world and the people in it. Key parts of the unit will be shared