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.
No comments:
Post a Comment