Transcript

The content-free social studies classroom: James Kendra at TEDxMuskegon

Thank you. That sounds better. I don't remember, you know, what I learned taking social studies in seventh and eighth grade. So sometimes I have these kind of existential blues problems like what do I do? Does it even matter? You know, are they going to remember what I taught them? And this is this is something that's that's really important. And I'm just trying to get them to, you know, they got to do this worksheet and get through this unit and they got to take this test because they got to check it off my checklist and they got to get through the Civil War by the end of June, you know, by June because that's where we got to get to. And if they don't get to that, I failed as a teacher and you'll never be able to succeed as a an individual if you if you don't get all these done off your checklist. So I started to look into it and say, you know, what is social studies? What is the purpose of social studies? And you read stuff from the National Council for the Social Studies. to read things from the Department of Education and it usually says something about we want to create um citizens that are could make good reason decisions and they're good citizens. They make good rational decisions. They can do the research and they can be good citizens for the future. And if you do this, not only are we helping them, but we're helping the country. This is necessary to sustaining and improving our democratic way of life. So I look at that and then I get excited. What I do does make a difference. I'm saving America. I'm make, you know, in the future they're going to be without these kids that can do this. We're going to have a problem in the future. So I do think I do I I do have a pretty important job. But how come it usually doesn't feel like it? We look back at our social studies and what we learned and maybe go I'm glad that's done and I'm that was so boring. Not everybody felt that way, but I get that a lot. I had conferences last night. Some parents go, "Oh, yeah, I had social studies. I hated that class." I'm like, "Oh, great. Yeah, that's that's what I do for a living." But anyway, um, but a lot of them usually say, usually go on to say, "Now I like it. Now I watch History Chant all the time. It's interesting. It's great." And I've always wondered, why do we get that way? And we usually do look back, you know, we watch PBS shows now and say, "This is pretty cool." Seventh and eighth grade, it's like, "Oh my gosh, that was a boring video era to watch. I hated it." I think it's because kids aren't ready for that yet. I think it's a little bit backwards. I think to understand history, you got to know what's going on in the present. You got to be able to say, I understand how our world works now. I know what's going on other places. I know how how our government works. And then we can look back at other things and say, "Yeah, they did that. Now, that's that can help us now." Social studies, I think the problem is we hit too much history. And I majored in history. I'm not saying history is not important, but for kids, just to say with social studies, I know I'm going to go to the next page of the book, and I remember my seventh grade social studies. I don't remember what the content was at all, but I remember every day we got there, open to the next chapter, and we had to read and I was like the 15th kid in the row and I counted, I'm the 15th paragraph. I better be able to read that one. I don't remember if it was US history, world history. I have no idea. So we do history, history, history, which is important, but if we really look at social studies, we got to be teaching this other stuff like economics and civics. Usually save to your junior, senior year, get a semester of it there. You know all about the government. You know all about econ. Now I think we should do this every day. Seventh and eighth grade, you know, a nice slide here. Social studies is more than just the history. Social studies is life. Social studies is economics. You make economic decisions every day. Economics doesn't have to be some scary term. Economics is what are you going to do with your money? Are you going to eat lunch today? Are you going to save it? Go to a movie. Kids make these decisions. Economics is not that complicated. It's kind of common sense until you start getting into a lot of the economics, you know, graphing the future and statistics and all that stuff we we saw earlier. So, social studies is life. And because social studies life, I think it's really the reason we have public schools. We want to create citizens. We want to create good good citizens that can make good decisions. Otherwise, why would we pay billions of dollars a year to have public schools? What really do we want? We don't want kids that we said, "Okay, we've checked off that checklist and you learned all those history facts and of course you forgot them a month later and by the time you graduate high school, you have no idea what you learned in seventh and eighth grade." But if in seventh and eighth grade, and not just those ages, going into high school, every day they were looking at something that inspired them, looking at something that's going on right now and making connections, I think that would be social studies worth teaching where I can get excited about it. I can say, "Yeah, I teach social studies. You know, I'm a powerful person. You know, I I changed I can save America. I'm changing the world." And it's much more fun to teach when you feel that way. when you're feeling I am doing something that's important and kids kind of feed off that a little bit. So social studies I tell other teachers that it's the most important class students take and the math teachers don't like that and the language arts and English teachers don't like that and I say well it's true I can't teach social studies without their reading skills. They got to be able to read. They got to be able to do math. They got to be able to look at charts and do stuff. They need to do that. But social studies where they take all that information and actually put it to use. Now your life, you need to know those math skills to do some stuff. You need to know some research and reading skills so you can figure out what job you want to have. What inspires you? What's your passion? Let's find that out in seventh and eighth grade. Let's start looking at that stuff. And if they can get out of, you know, my classes and say, "Some of the stuff was boring. But I remember this one thing. It was so cool. Something that was going on invention. Last week we talked about a tunnel that they're building under in Turkey that connects Europe and Asia. And it's got to withstand earthquakes of of 9.0. Who does that? Who can, you know, some kids were like, that's that's fascinating. Okay. If I inspired two kids that day to go, I want to learn more. I want to I want to do that type of job. Then I do think, yeah, it's the most important class they take. How do we do it, though? I think we do it by changing and getting rid of this content where it's just non-stop. You better do this every day. And if you don't get through them, it's going to be, you know, you're not a you're not a valuable teacher. You didn't do your job. The content free classroom isn't learning free. The content free classroom is freedom from you got to do this worksheet today. Next week you do this worksheet. You got to give a test two weeks after that. The content free classroom is just what's going on in the world. I can show some examples of things that have come up. This is one of the first stories that we talked about this year, the civil war in Syria. And there was something in the news one of the first weeks that we might actually have missile strikes on Syria. So I show the kids an article about it, show them a news clip about it. And they're like, "Where's Syria?" Good question. Let's find out. It's inexcusable to bore kids nowadays with the all the information that's available to people with computers that we have and big screens that we have and kids have their own personal devices. It's like you want to know where Syria is? Look it up. I give you five minutes. Everybody find it and tell me something about Syria. What government do they have? What's their per capita GDP? Well, what's that? Well, let's look it up and talk about it. Let's compare it to our GDP. What kind of geography do they have there? Who is the leader? Why do they want to get rid of him? He's been leader for how long? Look it up. His dad was leader for 30 years before him. Like 1971, this family got in power. Huh? Why doesn't that happen here? We have elections. Well, why? We have a constitution. Do they? I don't know. Look it up. And they start asking all these questions and pretty soon like the class is over. They're saying, "Well, we haven't studied it yet." Yeah, we did. We talked about we learned about geography and civics and how our government works. We talked about we're going to have an election or not an election, excuse me. They're going to have a vote to see if they want like a resolution to see if we approve these air strikes. They didn't end up having that vote because Russia got intervened and we talked about that too. But then how did your representatives vote? Who are your representatives? How many do we have? Michigan has how many? Why is why do we have that many? Where are our districts? Our school district's unique where I teach because some people have one representative, some have another. So, we had to look what district are you in? Well, let's look at a map. I live here and I have this person. You live over there. You have this person. That's how they learn how the government works. You don't learn how the government works just in your one semester of civics junior year where you start throwing them all this information and teach them I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill. And sure, that's fun. I like that song, too. But they really learned how the government works when we just start talking about what's going on right now in the government and how did your person vote and why should you care four years from now they might be old enough to vote. Are you going to vote for this guy again? How do you know? You better know what's going on. You better have an opinion about it and you better kind of pay attention to how your senators and representatives feel about it. Then you can decide if you want to vote for them again. Otherwise, you're just picking a name because hey, my math teacher has that same name. I'm going to do it for that person. Is that really what you want to do? So, a lot of things that we've done last year, this was a huge one. That factory collapsed in Bangladesh. Well, where's that? And why are they working there? It's such a cheap place. Why don't they work somewhere else? Well, what do you know about it? What's their economy like? How many people live there? You know, where is this? All this stuff all comes into play. Should the government do something about it? Should we do something about it? Who who buys these clothes? I don't know. Look at your tag. Maybe I And they just start thinking. It's just each day hopefully should be them showing that they've thought about something. They I'm not trying to direct them into what you should vote for, but it's just meant to see that there are things happening like this one, Malala, who was shot for going to school because she's a girl. That raised a few eyebrows for the kids. What? Got shot. We're going to school. That doesn't really happen, does it? Will it happen here? Well, I don't think so. Why doesn't it? You know what about they start talking about the Taliban? They're like, "Well, I've heard of that. I thought we got rid of the Taliban. Didn't we have a you know, get rid of those and you know, Osama bin Laden and stuff? Well, I guess they're back. What should we do about it?" These are all the questions that come up there and really the government shutdown. This is another one that just talks, you know, not where I'm trying to say here's what you should feel and who's right and who's wrong, but this is what's happening. You should start paying attention to it. And with that, um, we're having things that's interesting and relevant. Each day it's something where they're not saying, "Why do they have to learn this?" They're saying to me, "Where is that? Hey, I've heard of that before." They're starting asking me questions. That doesn't happen when I'm just giving them worksheets and just trying to keep them quiet. Come on, do this worksheet. It's good. You know, it's all right. Come on, keep working. That's felt I was doing that for for quite a few years. I think with social studies, we help students find what interests them, help students find their passion. What do you want to do with your life? What inspires you? Maybe you want to help people in the future. Do you want to do something about slavery in other countries? You want to how you going to get involved with that? And by finding their passions, they become good citizens. By become good citizens, we're saving America. So, that's what I think I'd do. I'm I'm trying to save America. I do have an important job and I feel that way. And I think if all teachers went in saying my job's important, what am I going to do to help kids make be a good citizen today? I think uh I think we'd be better off. So that's my presentation. So thank you.