It is hard to know exactly what to do in a pandemic. Most of us are consuming the news, responding to the litany of emails from our employers, and stocking our pantries. Some of us are teaching and meeting online, homeschooling our children, and working to keep our elderly relatives and friends safe. Everyone we know is scrambling to adjust and is tired from the effort–especially teachers.
But social studies teachers are a hardy breed. C3 Teachers are even hardier. In the midst of what was becoming a quarantine, they did what social studies teachers do best by asking compelling questions that have begun to emerge during this crisis.
We organized those questions into disciplines that make up Dimension 2 of the C3 Framework. While no question is purely civic, economic, geographic, or historical, we sorted them knowing that it was one way to view these questions and that there was likely a driving discipline that would anchor a student’s exploration.
While we are all living in uncertain times, inquiry remains a fundamental part of being human. We thank the graduate students at the University of Kentucky for helping us remember the importance of questions and the ways in which questions move us forward.
Keep inquiring, social studies teachers!
—Kathy Swan, John Lee, and S.G. Grant