6 minute read
History Lessons
by SHCinSF
FEATURES history lessons By Lucie Duffort
SHC IS EMPLOYING CUTTING-EDGE METHODOLOGIES IN ITS CURRICULUM TO AUGMENT STUDENT GROWTH AND ADDRESS QUESTIONS OF EQUITY IN LEARNING
Gates History Project introduction video
This is the second year that, in a department-wide effort to shift to a skillsbased approach to learning, the ninth grade World History team has collectively made use of the Gates Foundation-backed Open Education Resource (OER) platform. The open source (read: free) platform provides a network of units that span all of recorded history, separated into three sections: Big History, 1200-Present, and 1750-Present. It connects teachers from across the country (and the world) to units that are interactive, collaborative and constantly evolving. OER enables a unified but dynamic basis for teaching beyond a printed textbook. Rather than focus strictly on content, teachers focus on myriad skills including geography and mapping, data exploration, sourcing, claims testing, causation exploration and more. Information presentation includes standard readings, but also curated video presentations and discussions between teachers and professors, worksheet activities, and a variety of primary source presentations. Readings themselves can be tailored for different skill levels. In other words, the sources are adaptable for a given classroom, specific student need, and different moments in time in order to customize skill development. Assistant Principal of Academics Joan O’Neill tells us that OER is a platform that supports the department’s current shift from competency-based assessment (whether a student can perform a group of tasks, and how well) to the assessment of overall skills needed as broad learners and navigators of history. “This is particularly relevant in a world where you can look up any date that you want online. This platform is context based, skills based, and the building of these skills can be followed from ninth grade through any APs they take.” In fact, students who took the course before its widespread adoption three years ago have noticed skill corroboration with APs taken later on, particularly with Data Based Questions (DBQs). When asked how AP
World History was going, one student told Instructor of Social Studies Dabney Standley: “It’s awesome, because of the DBQs we did in ninth grade, I’m already set.” “Like science, like anything, we keep discovering history over time,” emphasizes Standley, who brought the platform to the department. “The history that you and I took has been rewritten. We need to make sure the kids are learning to create their own historical narratives as new things come along. It’s all about teaching kids to create and articulate and defend these narratives.”
Standley has been using OER for four years and was introduced to it by Bob Regan, Director of Education at Gates Ventures and father to SHC alums Lizzie ’20 and Hannah ’18. Standley is one of a large number of teacher representatives called upon to curate and contribute to the ongoing self-evaluation of the OER platform. This fine-tuning of the platform’s offerings includes cyclical evaluations and measured progress, online professional development, events, and regular social media interactions which connect our history teachers to a wider network of educators and enable regular refinement of the tool. The platform itself also pulls from other familiar educational resources, connecting with Khan Academy, Project Score and Turnitin, in order to establish a set of skills benchmarked by universities and the College Board. Instructor of Social Studies Jeffrey Juelsgaard, who also serves as learning team leader for ninth grade World History, tells us, “Ultimately I think this is the future of text(books), and a lot of delivery of curriculum will be through sites like this that are really well curated. The hope is that this will be a beefy text that is easily accessible, seamlessly incorpo-
ALIGNMENT IN THE
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
A few years ago, instructors of English Paul Barnes and Jim Jordan got together to align course goals from their respective AP courses (Literature for Barnes, Language & Composition for Jordan). As Department Chair, Barnes quickly realized that streamlining could be applied across all offerings of English classes, enabling instructors to explain and explore skill building vertically, in line with the assessment goals and skill development progression of the College Board AP English program. For Jordan, who has consulted for the College Board for 15 years, this was a no-brainer. “We are an AP school, and the College Board recently produced the most concise curricular goals we've ever seen for both AP English courses. One focuses on literature and the other on composition, so it makes sense that we would adopt these collegiate reading and writing skills as curricular standards for all SHC English courses.” Jordan also emphasized that these skills extend to the department’s other year-long upperclassman offering, a second rhetoric-focused class designed by California State University and adapted by our instructors, called Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC). Most recently, Jordan has encouraged the implementation of this alignment strategy across all departments as part of the school’s WCEA accreditation. The terminology and skill assessments from the AP courses are now being used across all departments in course planning and skill building. Connecting skills and goals from freshman English to the highest level courses helps teachers communicate and build college readiness from day one. Aligned goals means that our upperclassmen are more prepared to take AP courses, and all graduates are more prepared for the types of coursework and evaluation they will face in college.
FEATURES
history lessons (cont.)
rates the activities that you want to do, and shows you why they are valuable. It makes it a little bit easier to understand the practical use of history.” Juelsgaard goes on to emphasize the positive aspects of the site’s not being quite as Eurocentric as other textbooks he has encountered in the past. Though it doesn’t have an integrated historiography piece (the study of how history is written), it does teach this in some ways through “osmosis”, providing a variety of histories of World War II, from Brazil, Ghana, and Australia, rather than just Germany and Japan. “It’s interesting for students to learn about different places,” he says, “maybe somewhere they have some ancestry. There’s a bit more buy-in.” There is, of course, room to grow with this or any new information delivery system. Social Studies Department Chair Dan Ingoglia has been impressed by the capacity of the program, but points out that while it enables the use of remarkable technological tools, including “ tailoring of content to specific reading levels, it doesn’t offer a non-digital option for students who process differently to work in a more hands-on way. While the platform provides a rich base for history education and a great starting point for the learning team’s planning process, it still benefits from teachers’ supplemental instruction and adaptation to the specific environment required by individual student and class needs.
The importance of equity in this type of offering is not to be ignored, either, which is a particularly salient point for SHC and its mission. With free access to the platform, students from all socio-economic backgrounds can interact with the information and become exploring, individual learners without buying a textbook. In providing students multiple entry points to learning, teachers also introduce students to new perspectives through a familiar lens, encouraging them to use their own interests and knowledge to go further in the construction and exploration of their own stories. These are traits that any follower of the Lasallian Vincentian charisms can appreciate, and we look forward to seeing this platform and its implementation develop over time.
The history that you and I took has been rewritten. We need to make sure the kids are learning to create their own historical narratives as new things come along. It’s all about teaching kids to create and articulate and defend these narratives.” DABNEY STANDLEY INSTRUCTOR OF SOCIAL STUDIES
