Teaching HS w/ ECP

Teaching high school in today’s public schools has to be the most critical component of compulsory education in the environment our kids face today. Thus teaching history in a revisionist mindset being all the rage across the nation has to have a counter claim to what really happened. Working with the Educated Citizen Project (ECP) and being a teacher of US History has broadened my horizon to what using primary resources does for instruction as well as providing real “history” for today’s youth.

In my time working with the group at ECP and brainstorming with highly qualified individuals has shown me that making sources available to our kids from their real timeframe and context to use as a primer, a lesson, and a part of today’s curriculum a must. My Goal with this blog is to show this process through a weekly to a bi-weekly glimpse into the world that we are creating by working with the Educated Citizen Project.

Example 1: “As we began the last unit of the 2022 Fall semester in my class I began to see how working with these documents actually brought learning to life. We were starting the unit on the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century and that of food safety. I found a excerpt from the book “The Jungle” in which the author, Upton Sinclair, showcases the conditions of the stockyards and processing plant that eventually lead to today’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This document and contextual evidence was given to the kids as an entry event and the abject horror and disgust that came from their reading analysis allowed conversation in all my classes as to why intervention in our food supply was necessary through the muckrakers of the day. This small example in my class is what has lead me to the importance of these documents have on our history, but more importantly to our kids and their ability to critically think and analyze the information presented to them in any context. As we look at our current muckraker, Elon Musk, the need for thinking beyond what is written is truly in our hands to help our students…”.

Stay tuned for more as the Spring Semester concludes my full year of utilizing and prioritizing this method…

2/21/23

Coming back from Christmas break, the concerted application of putting more primary sources into lessons has been realized. The past two units have been implemented and I can rightfully state that having seen this firsthand has been astonishing.

The first unit we dove into was that of American Imperialism and “The Great War” (aka: WWI) and level of authenticity was such that students understood the concepts I want to impart, namely the connections of Yellow Journalism as well as the Zimmerman Telegram. What was done during class was a comparison of today’s newspaper and that of the late 19th century journalistic approaches. The ability to show a “bias” in history and contemporary styles of journalism was the Ah Ha moment that all teachers, as well as parents, should relish in.

The Zimmerman telegraph was empowering and seeing the comparison and contrast to war was definitely present when Socratic discussions were taking place throughout the day. Seeing an on-level class come to life by referencing the document from a factual standpoint was teacher inspiration. As I pushed further with other classes I got to see more connections beyond superficial references.

The second unit focused on The Roaring Twenties. This particular unit is known to be the unit where students start to see the world they currently reside in and how it came to be. This whole unit was completely taught with primary source documents and the kids ate it up. A side note needs to be given- I really sell this to the kids and every unit I have a chart that they fill out along with a multitude perspectives of the time period, known as the P.E.R.S.I.A. Chart. The aspect of looking at the Political, Economic, Religious, Intellectual (technology), and Arts is what this is meant to do. Some of the highlights that come to pass during this unit comes in the form of modern American life with concepts of the automobile making a substantial mark on the landscape as well as the advent of sports becoming a mainstay within the media. The primary documents that the students dove into was the actual newspapers covering Babe Ruth and his rise to fame and most notably - who he was.

Overall the impact that the inclusion of Primary sources has had on the class has been significant. The students don’t accept the textbook as the end of the material- they actually want to know what made the book possible and they have asked in class for me to show them what the book is referencing- which is great.

The Great Depression and the Second World War are next in line and I hope to see more depth in conversations to come.