By Greg Ahlquist
I lecture. I have used worksheets. There. I said it. It is true. I am, however, a work in progress as a social studies teacher. I will also admit that I may be closer to the starting line than I am to realizing the change I want to see in my own teaching practice. I am a work in progress.
And, so is the discipline of Social Studies. With the adoption of the NYS K-12 Social Studies Framework, informed and influenced by the C3 Framework, we social studies teachers find ourselves in a critical moment of self-reflection. No longer is social studies to be driven solely by content and the trivia of names, dates, and events. The new Framework puts a strong emphasis on content AND skills with a focus on student driven inquiry. The content is not the minutiae of history but rather conceptual understandings that incorporate the disciplines of social studies: economics, geography, history, and civics. And, we should be clear that using lecture and worksheets are not bad instructional choices at times. In fact, carefully crafted lessons are often enhanced by both.
This Framework affirms some of the instructional shifts in my own teaching practice that I have wrestled with in recent years. In the past, I had cleverly presented information on Peter the Great through a series of anecdotes and important points on a worksheet that distilled the most important information that I thought students needed to know. It grew stale over time and I had a nagging sense that it could be more. This was punctuated when a former student walked into my classroom, plunked himself down on a desk across from mine, and announced: “Mr. Ahlquist, the history courses in college are a lot different than the social studies classes we took in high school.” I realized that my classes revolved around facts rather than around my craft as a historian. My sincere desire to prepare my high school students for their next steps and the actual work they did in my class resulted in a disconnect.
My teaching has undergone a shift that is now affirmed and accelerated with the new Framework. In the last two years, that Peter the Great lesson revolves around a set of documents that present very divergent perspectives on the Russian czar as an evil, reprehensible tyrant on one hand and a virtuous, progressive ruler on the other. Students are left to reconcile the evidence and draw their own conclusions based on their careful readings as well as the historical context of the writings. The ensuing class discussion is spirited as students disagree with their peers. This shift in my instructional practice puts students in the center of my classroom. Students are the ones doing the work. Students are the ones drawing their own conclusions. Students are the ones raising questions and challenging perspectives. An inquiry based approach to teaching and learning is a centerpiece of the new Framework.
I am still a work in progress, though I have confidence that the collective intelligence and best practices of teachers across our state will speed up my learning curve. This Framework can build on the skills and instructional best practices of our teachers and also provides an opportunity for us to learn from each other, innovate, and implement these shifts.
