Teacher's Utility Belt: Design Thinking

As a teacher of social studies it's certain that you will be wearing a lot of different hats.  A really good idea of this was how I used to explain my undergraduate degree.  My major was social sciences and a lot of people had no idea what that meant.  What's involved in it?  For me it was a mix of geography, political science, history and a tiny bit of sociology.  So in other words social sciences is essentially the big huge umbrella under which every social studies discipline rests.

Behold, the Design Thinking cycle!

I bring this up because a variety of content areas within social studies can benefit from a variety of lesson styles.  My development as a teaching candidate has exposed me to a lot of different  ideas - discovery, gradual release and interactive lecture.  Depending on what the goal for a given day is, one or another will be more useful for the teacher.  Something I'm excited about trying out at some point is a design thinking unit, which is something I've more recently learned about.

The idea of students creating a product and marketing it could teach both useful skills for work in a professional context as well as the application of creative learning is pretty exciting.  What better way for students to do hands-on learning than to work on something meaningful and relevant?  I worry that the process would maybe not be as applicable depending on the content.  An example of design thinking planning I really liked was students creating soldier documentaries of World War 2 veterans.  It helped preserve soldiers' stories, added to the historical record, exposed kids to the stories behind history and let the kids have something tangible they created which was meaningful for their community.

Other historic eras wouldn't be as applicable in that kind of context - how many veterans of World War 1 are left, let alone from the Revolution?  Of course there are other products for students to create, but the farther back in history a class' topic goes it gets harder to have content be as relevant in this context.  This is where the creative teacher should take the reins and differentiate their unit plan styles just like the lesson planning styles.  It's all in the differentiation and applying things where they'll be most effective and useful.

Social Studies Teacher Interview

Mrs. K is a social studies teacher in the McMinnville School District who graciously allowed me to ask a few questions about the experience of teaching.

M: What made you decide to become a social studies teacher?

K: When I was in school, I had some teachers who really inspired me.. so yeah, it's because of them that I'm here.

M: What is it about social studies that inspires you?

K: The stories of history.  It's wondering about real people's experience in history.  What is it like living in the 1700s or the Renaissance?  Our freshman class is studying forms of government, so what's it like to live in a dictatorship?  

M: What teaching strategies do you use in the classroom?  For example, we've learned theoretical ideas like Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and Bloom's Taxonomy?

K: One thing that as a district we've actually gone a little ways away from actually is that Bloom's Taxonomy, and what we've replaced it with is like what I showed you, those language functions.  They really play into the different parts of the Taxonomy, but I think it works really well to be really specific with the kids.  Instead of something like 'analyze' or like, you know whatever part of Bloom's, we use something like 'propose and support' or 'compare and contrast' or whatever.  And the way that we hit on the Bloom's is our assessment piece we do with it.  So it is a little bit clearer, I think, to students.  Because it used to be 'write an objective that has Bloom's in it, but now in the district we're using more of those language functions.  In fact I think up there in that blue thing are a bunch of Bloom's words that I used years ago that would help kids figure out 'ok, am I supposed to apply, am I supposed to analyze, am I supposed to emphasize?'  But it's kind of in a different package, it's kind of the same stuff.

M: Is there one part of history that you particularly enjoy teaching more than others?

K: I mean, I love my AP Euro class.  I would tell the kids that to, I'd say, "Don't tell my other students, but this is my favorite class."  I really like that and  in the freshman class I really like doing World War I and the Great Depression.  Probably because what I said before: the like, stories behind the history.  We can get into that so much with 'what was it like for people in the trenches in World War I', you know there's so many first hand accounts of that.  And then the Great Depression stuff, what was it like to try to live through that.  That sort of stuff.

M: Were there any units that were particularly engaging for students?

K: They always remember.. I guess it kind of matches with what I just said, but they always remember the trenches in World War I.  Because.. just thinking about living through that with trench foot and that kind of stuff.. and the rats, and the lice and getting shot at.  They always seem to grasp that.  I would say any time that I can do a simulation with my kids, they actually really understand that well.  Even if I'm doing like I told you: we're gonna do the Russian Revolution and economic system stuff.  Economics can be so hard for especially a freshman to get.  And to just understand that I usually do a simulation of a store and show them 'this is what it's like in capitalism', they can buy little pieces of candy from me and the price goes up and down based on what they want and I have a wide variety of things to choose from.  And then 'here's kind of socialism and communism' that I've got three pieces of the same candy and here's how much it is.  So any time they can do something hands on, they usually remember.  Any time there's a personal story attached to it, they really grab onto it.