For those of you who don’t know, this past year I have been somewhat scrambling to take my required amount of history classes in order to teach social studies. I realized a little too late that Psychology wasn’t exactly the course of study I wanted to pursue. I love the aspect of understanding people and their thought processes; however I want to actually get involved in people’s lives!! I wanna get my hands dirty!
However, my major was not completely fruitless with regards to teaching. I can’t even tell you how many classes involved some sort of research methods! So here I am, now able to use this research to do what I really want to do: teach! However, I am a little...how do you say…scared out of my mind to teach history, when I didn’t even major in it! (There's a lotttt of history!) So I really want my research to help me in this process of being confident to teach history. Am I just going to stay one step ahead of my students and read the book the night before? Should I be reading primary sources on top of the textbook to make sure I really know what I’m talking about? Should I be reading other books written by historians as well? I fear as if every night during my first few years of teaching I will have loads more homework than my students will.
So, I think I want to study and compare successful teaching methods in Social Studies. I’m not exactly sure how to do this, but it will probably be a mix between qualitative and quantitative. Maybe something like how often teachers use their books, do outside research, etc. I’ll probably even ask them to remember back to their first years of teaching. This still needs to be revised, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!
6 comments:
Kristina, I love that you are committed to being an excellent teacher. I don't know if you have enough definition of your topic idea here. I think it would be interesting to ask teachers how they prepare, but I'm not sure that would be the best topic. Maybe you could locate a teaching technique that sounds interesting, and then ask teachers and/or students how it works for them. Maybe something like using the internet, etc. And in doing the related research and getting the perspective of the teachers, you would learn all about the technique.
Kristina, just because you are worried about being a good teacher, I am sure that you will be. While I have not had any experience with history, I have encountered some of the same issues you have with being prepared. There are a lot of literature texts out there for students (and teachers) to read, so I feel that I understand where you're coming from. Dr. McCoy is right, finding a teaching technique and investigating that is probably more researchable, but I would not let that stop me from also asking questions about being prepared for lessons, even if the answers to those questions do not directly affect the research! In my experience, I have always tried to learn from those with more experience than myself, because they have obviously figured something out that works for them. Good luck!
Kristina,
One option is to study how social studies teachers learn their broad content. What do they do (or what did they do) for their own edification? Also, how do they then take what they've learned and develop a lesson plan around it? This could be done by interviewing a small sample of teachers, or maybe surveying a larger number, and then picking who to interview from there...
Kristina...oh my goodness, you took the words right out of my mouth, and I was a history major!!!! I wont speak for everyone, but I agree, History is a HUGE subject, I'm not sure if I will ever feel qualified. I am looking forward to hearing about your results. I think interviewing teachers to determine how much "outside" work they do will be very helpful. Maybe you could even look at how often teachers try to incorporate new historical information into their classes. For example, say a new book about Thomas Jefferson comes out (I have no idea). How many teachers read that book and then implement it into their classrooms? At any rate, I'm excited to find out what you learn!
Kristina, I'll agree with what Amber said and say that I too am pretty nervous about that first time in the classroom. There are certainly some subjects that I feel very confident in, but others that I know little to nothing about. My AP US History teacher was one of my best instructors that I have ever had, in either high school or college. There were many reasons for this, but one that sticks out was his use of information that he had just learned from new books. He was an avid reader, and when he was reading something relevant he would occasionally bring it in and share some fun facts that he had learned. Not only was this effective because it gave him interesting things to share, but it was also a good idea because it got his students excited about the possibility of reading for pleasure, not just for school. This won't help you much with your study, but just wanted to pass it on!
Kristina, you are not alone! I don't think any teacher is every fully prepared to teach a lesson any given day. I think there is the need to be humble, realize that knowing everything is impossible, and then study ahead of the students and come up with creative ways to express history, civics, or psychology to them. I think the history field would be the perfect place to look at preparation. You could them share that with me. In teaching Spanish, I feel like I'll need to take a trip to Spain or Mexico every few weeks to brush up on my language and feel completely comfortable in front of the students. This research of teacher preparedness/technique will do us all some good.
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