An Agile Approach to Teaching Modern World History “Okay, everybody, grab a laptop and pair
up…,” Ghani Raines announces, pausing for effect, “with someone you can work with very efficiently. I’m going to assign to you more work than can reasonably be done in one period.” “Whyyy?” groans one student amid the good-natured guffaws of his sophomore classmates. “Because I’m unreasonable,” Raines responds with a playful smile. A palpable energy fills the space as the 10th grade twosomes power-up their electronic tablets and log on to Raines’ Moodle page. “Let’s take a second to focus,” he tells the class. The room quiets momentarily; the lesson begins. On the surface, the new 10th grade history course, “History of the Modern World,” may not look so different from its predecessor, “Europe and the World.” Yet in terms of both its breadth of scope and the innovative ways in which the teachers are approaching the subject matter, the new course is very different, according to Molly Smith, history department coordinator. “It’s more global and modern than the former 10th grade course,” says Smith, who with colleagues Ghani Raines, Josh Carlin and new teacher Eleni Lampadarios, redesigned the curriculum last summer using a collaborative model. “We started with the question: ‘What do our kids need to know to understand the world they live in today—in both content and skill?” she explains. “We want to create a basic narrative from 1450 through WWI. At the same time we know we can’t tell everyone’s story, so we’re trying to create a complex representative picture that offers multiple perspectives.” Twenty-first century teaching and learning principles are woven throughout the course. “There’s a mental shift away from having content as the sole driver,” says Smith. “It’s not that knowledge isn’t important—it’s absolutely important; it’s how you get it. We’re trying to show kids different ways of doing that. Getting them to take ownership of their experience, to point out things that surprise them, to ask questions…It’s our job to find the pieces that motivate them to do these things, because ideally the questions should be driving the course.” There is no single source of information for the course, no textbook. Instead, teachers are researching and pulling materials from many different sources, including online resources, such as Annenberg Media’s “Bridging History” program and San Diego State University’s “World History for Us All” website, as well as encyclopedia articles, excerpts from monographs and video clips. “In approaching world history you have to be selective out of necessity,” says Smith. “No one can learn everything about world his-
6
Collection Magazine
Friends School of Baltimore
tory—in any year. We’re finding pieces that fit, that make sense to us.” She adds, “The four of us are working pretty hard to put it together.” The quartet meets at least once every six days (constituting an Upper School “cycle”) in an ongoing process of developing classes and initiatives and reviewing how lessons have worked. A shared folder on the School’s computer server allows each of them access to documents they are creating and materials they are using in class. “That’s the beauty of teaching together,” says Smith. “There are four of us with six sections of data. We’re in and out of each other’s classes all the time to see how things are going and to see how different people tackle different things. It’s a much more open feel.” The student experience is also more dynamic, though it can be slightly intimidating. Sophomores Caroline MacLure and Olivia Reed are in Ms. Lampadarios’s class. “We do a lot of hands-on things, which helps me remember the material,” says MacLure. “I feel like I’m learning more in class, so that when I study for tests it’s more of just a review.” Neither of the girls misses the textbook, although from an organizational stand-point, according to Reed, the course content can feel unruly at times. “We get a lot of hand-outs,” she says. “We’re giving them things that have different interpretations, so they’re excited but also a little apprehensive,” says Smith. “There’s no book, so there’s no ‘gospel’ to go to.” Despite the challenges of the new approach for both teachers and students, Smith is pleased with the results so far. “The discussions are better, deeper,” she adds pausing momentarily to reflect. “I think it’s going well.”
(l.-r.) Ben Musachio and David Bruder engage in class discussion with history teacher Molly Smith.
Fall 2010