@KaelynBullock

Challenges of Planning for Historical Thinking

This is my first year of putting Historical Thinking skills to the test. Now that students have turned in their National History Day projects, I have mixed results about how skilled they are at this point. You can read some of my thoughts on my blog.

In some ways, my quest for historical thinking is going reasonably well. This week I am looking forward to EdCafe's. Students picked up a short article about a war of religion from The Flow of History website. This weekend they are doing light research on a modern religious conflict. Wednesday they will lead small group discussions comparing the two religious conflicts.

Recently I set out to plan units on Reconstruction and Absolute Monarchs. In both classes I have decided to begin classes with “hooks” of primary sources to begin class and get students to explore the topic and a key question. The rest of class is spent digging into the content via lecture. On the assessment I am sure to include an overarching questions that  must argue something about the era. Not too bad.

I would criticize my own approach above by saying its too teacher-centric. As I went to plan these units, I wanted to find big, non-googleable questions. I wanted the students to work to find some sources and I wanted to introduce new sources that would challenge their thinking. I wanted them to create and present products.

Why does my reality fall short of my ideal?

As I plan, I run into some pressures and problems. First, I love these two eras. I think they are full of so much rich, interesting content. I don’t want leave anything out.  Second, I struggle with time. I think the scope of my courses are too big. I know Common Core standards alleviate the need to cover everything, but after teaching this content for eight years, it is hard cut things out. But how far will I really get if I start at the beginning of time and just barely make it to World War II. Third, at our school and in the media we are bombarded with messages that students are too stressed out. School work is a major contributor to that stress. From what I remember of my high school history classes there was little homework and very few projects. We mostly took notes, studied them, and took a test. That sequence of events is not very stressful. I strive for more than that in my classroom. I want deep thinking and rich projects. That can take up a lot of class time and/or a lot of home time.

I’m certainly not giving up on teaching historical thinking skills, simply acknowledging the many challenges that stand in the way. Do others of you feel those pressures? Have you found ways to overcome them?