A good lesson in a rushed unit

The past two weeks I have covered exploration and encounters. I was very unsatisfied with this unit simply because I knew there would not be enough time to explore deeply. Last week we did a map exercise where the students had to identify where explorers came from and the lands they claimed. This week we moved on to examine the first encounters between Native American’s and Europeans and looked at the middle passage. Despite my grievances with the unit overall, I enjoyed teaching and planning a one day lesson on the middle passage. We began by reviewing the motives for exploration, the territories European explorers claimed, historical bias and primary and secondary sources. Then I drew a visual of the triangular trade routes and had the students create their own in their notes. I emphasized that we would be discussing the part of the route that slaves were traded then transported along. I then displayed a clip from the film Amistad that very graphically represents the conditions of the middle passage. Finally, we closed by reading a primary source by Oladouh Equiano and a secondary source about the middle passage. Students were then asked to answer questions about these documents. I feel that this lesson went well because I was able to draw upon content that was very interesting to them to teach skills. If allowed more time I would have loved to spend more time discussing their responses to the film and their thoughts about exploration in general.

The importance of modeling activities for students and trial of half days

Last week we had three half day schedules for parent conferences making it extremely difficult to get through anything. I intended to use this week to introduce my students to exploration and colonization. I would use the first  day to explain the reasons for European exploration, a day to locate where Europeans explored on maps and the remainder of the week to practice analyzing primary and secondary sources. In looking back these goals were far too ambitious and we were only able to get through the map activity. After my powerpoint presentation on the motives of exploration, I distributed a map activity for the students to complete. The activity asked them to identify  Spain, England and Portugal, then identify which countries they claimed in the Americas. The final part of the activity asked them to make predictions about why certain countries had more territory then others and judge whether or not their actions were fair. I found that most of my students struggled to identify different countries on their map. They found it difficult to match the larger projections in the book with their smaller map.  Perhaps I could have circumvented this with some guided practice and modeling. As opposed to,  handing them a map activity, with the assumption they would move through it quickly, I should have projected a large map on the board and engaged them in some collective geography practice. In the end almost every student ended up calling me to their desk individually and expressed frustration when I helped their peers and could not get to them quick enough. Based on this experience, I found that independent practice is easier for the teacher and students when students are scaffolded appropriately through practices like modeling and guided practice. I also found that I need to spend more time working on my students geographic literacy skills.

Planning with the PST

So as I mentioned in my last post the infamous clip board people, aka the walkthrough team, payed my school a visit. Well we received their evaluation back and they had quite a bit to say. One critique they had was that teachers lesson's did not reflect the Philadelphia planning and scheduling timeline. So since their feedback, there has been a large push to get us( core content teachers) in line with with state standards and PST. In my world history class we just left the renaissance and have now ventured into exploration, yet of course, the PST notes that I should be wrapping up industrialism and imperialism by the end of next week. This seems even more impossible considering that we had three half days this week for parent conferences. The next walk through will be on February 27th. So chronologically this would mean skipping over the Enlightenment and the American, French and Latin American revolution's in order to be on track with the PST. I literally cringe at the idea of skipping topics like the enlightenment or even haitian revolution; and my stomach turns to the thought of covering things like the trans-atlantic slave trade and colonization in a 2-3days. Nonetheless, for now this is the way things are. So what do I do? Right now I do not feel as though I have the social and political capital and experience to resist, so I am faced with pushing myself to find creative ways to make it work. These management policies that are supposed to be set in place to support children are not doing right by them. I do not understand how the people who devise these timelines feel that we can adequately teach and asses revolutions in a week. It would almost be better to abstain from covering so many topics  then delivering an inaccurate surface level presentation of a whole lot. I see history a way to understand our current world and as a source of empowerment, a philosophy that the creators of the planning and scheduling timeline obviously do not share.

Pressures from the top down

In the past week I have watched teachers and students  encounter what I am going to call evaluation anxiety. I am currently doing my student teaching at a school that has been deemed low performing. Under the last superintendent the school was labeled a promise academy. The promise academy model required longer hours, new policies and in some cases new teachers. This also meant consistent observations/walk throughs from the promise academy office to ensure the school was making progress. Recently, the promise academy office was dissolved and our school was moved into a new division. Thus, there is a new walk through team. Last week we had our first walk through with officials from the new division and I watched teachers scramble to put up student work, ensure objectives were boldly posted and make sure there lesson would hit the 7 step lesson plan that is prescribed. Conversations about the walk through buzzed in the academy offices, main offices and in the halls amongst teachers. So I was not surprised when my mentor asked me to sit in on the department meeting as they would be reviewing feedback from the walk through.  There evaluation was extremely detailed and they highlighted that teachers were not on track with the PST (state planning and scheduling timeline) and that school policies were not being enforced. In the meeting my mentor announced that we would have to move forward and get on track with the time line even if that meant completely skipping material. On the one hand I can understand their concern with making sure teachers are following some type of timeline and hitting essential topics, but on the other hand, it is beyond agitating. To have someone step into your classroom for five mins and go down a checklist with out any contextual knowledge then prescribe these quick fixes and ambiguous recommendations is a slap in the face. Who gets to decide which content is essential? and why? is it because they have a title in front of their name. So what if our kids are behaving and we are in the correct time period, if they are not getting the skills they need to be successful in the real world and situate the material conceptually it is all meaningless. This experience helped me understand how and why teachers give in to conventional ways of teaching, but what I cannot understand is why they do not stand up. Is it the culture of fear that spreads and paralyzes a person from saying what everyone is feeling? Those exerting pressure from the top down have seem to have lost the reason we do all of this (or at least I) and that is the children.