Start with a Question

During the school year of 2013-2014 I had a goal of helping my students understand the power of their mobile devices when it comes to learning.  I achieved this, in part, by going paperless in my classroom and asking students to demonstrate learning through multimedia products instead of tests.  Inspired by Sylvia Tolisano's session at BLC14 in Boston , one of my personal and professional goals during the 2014-2015 school year is to show students that the best learning happens when we leverage all of the resources available to us.  While I might be their history teacher, I'm usually not the person with the most expertise available. In fact, the world is available to my students.  They just have to tap into it. This week my students will be meeting and talking with Jamie, an Explainer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England. Jamie from MOSI Manchester. My sophomores have worked hard to learn the proper terminology and the social and econom...

Here are my favorite YouTube resources for the history classroom. They've been sorted into two categories: METHODOLOGY and CONTENT. Methodology The Teaching Channel I recently started watching videos on the Teaching Channel website thanks to a recommendation from an assistant principal. I've found a few inspiring lesson ideas there that I've been able to adjust for my students and my classroom.  My favorite so far suggests teaching the Declaration of Independence as a break-up letter: If you find something on The Teaching Channel YouTube channel you can go to their website to find more resources and discussions related to that lesson.  My favorite videos lately on the YouTube channel are the interviews of teachers and students surrounding Teacher Appreciation Week and the National Teacher of the Year. They are inspiring and can really recharge an over-taxed educator near the end of a long school year. Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) The SHEG website ...

Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century ...

It starts with an idea. This was the idea I had last week: I don't want to be another in a long line of teachers who lets Columbus Day come and go silently.  I don't want to horrify my students, but they deserve to know the truth. So I start researching. First, I looked for something that Columbus said in his own words. An obvious choice was his report to the the King and Queen of Spain upon his triumphant return from his first voyage in 1493. For this and all images throughout the post, click the screenshot to go directly to the resource. Columbus speaks of the natives of Hispaniola in favorable terms.  They were welcoming, friendly, and unarmed.  Columbus seemed pleased.  Well, as I confirmed through further research, he should have been pleased.  He stood to receive a substantial reward if he discovered something that could be profitable for the Spanish Empire during his voyage.  The Library of Congress showed through primary sources that he g...

OK, so the title is a little bit of a misnomer.  I have been a part of several backchannel experiences at professional conferences.  However, I've never invited my students to backchannel during my class. What is Backchannel? According to the TodaysMeet website. I've enjoyed contributing to and learning from these audience insights in the past.  However, I've never invited my own students to backchannel while we were in the midst of a class activity or discussion.  After looking at a few backchannel platforms, I decided on TodaysMeet .  I was especially inspired by Richard Byrne's post on his blog Free Tech 4 Teachers .  So, here is a reflection on my first forays into backchanneling in my own classroom with my own students.  Both attempts involved documentaries. Attempt #1: Honors Sophomores and the Industrial Revolution Students at this particular age and level tend to be eager to participate and prove to their teacher that they are workin...

Sure, you could find some of these primary sources by Googling them.  Sure, you could come up with a few of these lesson activities on your own.  Your bright, experienced, and you know what's good for kids. But this stuff is reeeeeally good.  Like, it's a veteran history teacher's dream.  Go ahead. Give them a try.  Just a peek.  You'll be hooked too. Reading Like a Historian  is published by Stanford University and has primary sources embedded in short analytical and engaging activities.  Instead of just asking students what a source says, they are asked deeper questions about the value of the source, the motivations of the authors, and so much more.  This a better source for U.S. than for world history teachers, but what is there will elevate the conversation in your classroom.  I also can't stress how interesting the sources are.  Not your typical text book appendix stuff.  Worth a visit and the time it takes t...

Risk and sacrifice are essential if one is going to make great changes within a short period of time.  When Japan was forced to thrust open its doors to western powers in the mid-nineteenth century, the Japanese people had a choice: to succumb to foreign influence or to refuse to lose themselves and to push back. They pushed back. But risk and sacrifice had to be a part of the energy behind that push.  There are many groups that gave of themselves to make it possible, but the group that stood out to me was women.  The victimization of women is an important part of history, but it is incredibly difficult to teach to teenagers in a sensitive but realistic way is a challenge that history teachers must face. Background Information For more information on the history behind Japan's journey from a private mysterious samurai culture filled with tradition to a technologically advanced world power that bombed Pearl Harbor, check out these resources: Imperial Japan...

Human beings tend to either fear what they don't understand or to make their own far-fetched assumptions. In 18th and 19th centuries, this was certainly true between Americans and Japanese.  Some of the interpretations of the culture and people across the Pacific are comical.  The best way to help our students understand this historical perspective is through the eyes of the people who were living at the time.  Visual primary sources are the go-to resource.  All of the primary source images in this post are from John W. Dower's essay "Black Ships and Samurai" on MIT's Visualizing Cultures database . Historical Perspective I love these simple charts from The Historical Thinking Project . Both would be helpful when implementing this lesson. The first helps students to put aside their modern bias because they have grown up in a time of instant communication and technological fashion. The second helps students compare historical perspectives that are at odds w...

Tokugawa Ieyasu truly was the ultimate warrior.  He was able to unite Japan in the early 1600s after decades upon decades of fighting between competing warlords.  He did this with a combination of strategic alliances, patient planning, and fierce loyalty to his family name.  Ieyasu's rise to power was his life's work and he built a military empire that was meant to last with strict structures and social classes in place. Government and Social Hierarchy The Tokugawa shogunate was a huge bureacracy , but unlike the inefficient double-dipping politicians we think of when bureaucracy is mentioned in the present day, the Tokugawa regime had a clear system of authority and everyone knew their role.  Most never questioned the authority of the shogun.  Society was divided into 5 classes, with the two at the top being of samurai stock and education.  Ieyasu himself defined the levels of society best as documented in the early seventeenth century : …t...

One of the steamiest, most widely read novels of love, scandal, sex, and betrayals in world history has nothing to do with shades of any color - not even gray. In Heian Japan, court society placed a heavy weight on obedience to rules of behavior and class.  People who did not appreciate the value of life, beauty, and education were out of sync with their society.  In the midst of this world, the first ever novel was written - by a woman, for women - about living life in a way that is good while enjoying the pleasures that tempt evil. The Tale of Genji You MUST watch the video at this link to catch a glimpse of the scandal, gossip, romance, and drama that unfolds in the novel. Visits from spirits are a metaphor for the lovely world readers visit when they read The Tale of Genji.Courtesy Library of Congress Digital Collections How could I have ever taught the Heian Period in Japan without having my sex-crazed teenage students read excerpts of this novel?  I've ce...

Making medieval life relatable to adolescents in 21st century is a challenge.  But in imperial China people studied long and hard for civil service exams and then waited anxiously for the results hoping they would earn a high enough score to enable them to work in a coveted career.  Similarly many jobs in law enforcement, medicine, law, and education depend on scoring well on licensure and civil service examinations today, I am quite familiar with spending hours and hours studying for my MTEL and for my Massachusetts Bar Exam and waiting on pins and needles praying that my time and effort had paid off.  I was one of the lucky ones in both instances. So a great response to students who ask why they have to learn about medieval world history is that it tells us the roots of our modern system.  Indeed, the modern examination system will likely be a part of many of my students' lives as they journey toward their own career choices.  In fact, as I type this, they...

Common Core has re-calibrated many teachers to consider their content alongside important reading, writing, and communication skills.   One of the standards for 8th graders covers persuasive writing .  I could ask the students to write persuasive essays, but a real world application of those persuasive communication skills would be more useful and more exciting for them.  Advertising is the best example of persuasive communication in action.  Students are exposed to it every day and are unconsciously familiar with advertisers' techniques. My social studies classes were in the midst of a unit on technological and scientific advances in imperial China.  They were studying the impact of inventions like steel, the compass, movable type, and mechanical clocks.  When asked to imagine how life might be different without these inventions they realized their importance.  A great way to assess their understanding of the...

Problem : Slightly less than half of our 8th grade middle school team students are out of the country on a French trip to Quebec.  What do 3 teachers and 2 paraeducators do for two WHOLE school days with 66 adolescents who resent being in school while their friends are on an adventure in another country? Solution : Time Travel... Yup. One of my missions as I spend one year teaching 8th grade, with the opportunity to work with a team of teachers who specialize in different subject areas, is creating as much interdisciplinary work as possible.  So, since the two subject area teachers remaining at school during the 2 day experiment were the science teacher and me, I saw an opening. I teach medieval world history , including imperial China . She teaches earth science , including the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes . Hold on to your hats, people, I have an idea! You see, in imperial China people believed the the emperor had the right to rule because of the ...