Learning Through Activism

"Learning through activism is powerful because the need to use vital academic skills for social justice motivates their acquisition" (Cowhey, 2006, pg. 103).  This quote caught my attention because if a student learns through activism they will learn critical thinking skills.  The article states that this will help students develop social justice, fairness, and equity.  For example, if the student was to learn just the importance of voting it might not have benefited them compared to them doing an actual voter registration drive.  This way the students were able to ask people if they were registered to vote and if not, and they met the criteria, the students invited them over to register.  Students began to notice that some people from their community were not allowed to vote and wanted to see if they could change that by reaching out to lawyers, for example.  The article states that the teacher wanted to create an activity like this so it would empower students and their families to become active citizens.  This helped them learn the importance of voting, even though these students were not old enough to vote they were able to make an impact on the community.  I believe it is a great way because the students were not asking the people to vote for a certain party, they were simply asking them to register so they can help make an impact.  Teaching social studies could be very interesting if the teacher puts effort into teaching a lesson by not just providing dates and events but by helping students become a part of history and by allowing them to help shape it.

Walking and Talking Geography

https://requestreduce.org/categories/simple-road-map-clipart.html#overlayGallery9_post_6445_simple-road-map-clipart-11.jpg

The article Walking and Talking Geography by Fertig and Silverman (2007, pg. 15-18) talks about how students that are in 1st-3rd are more developmentally ready to view maps like the one above but with a small-world approach to help students understand the geography that is closest to them.  The article also advises that when you teach students only what is close to them they might begin to believe that was is near is more important to them than what is far to them.  So this approach is ideal because it helps students understand the geography that is closest to them.  The article involved a story about Mr. Fertig who is known to grow prize-winning tomatoes but has an issue when his tomatoes have not grown.  The students are to help Mr. Fertig through the process of getting fertilizer, a screwdriver, amongst other things.  This approach helps the students not only solve problems but become familiar people, places, and environments.  I like this idea and I feel that it would be a great approach to implement in my classroom.

Critical Literacy

Social Studies has always been a subject that interests me but while I was in school, because of time, teachers were not able to dedicate much time to it.  I remember a lot of my classmates disliking history because it was boring to them, I enjoyed it because I have always had that intrinsic motivation about wanting to know about the past.  While I was in elementary school my teachers would briefly talk about things like slavery, Thanksgiving (the wrong facts), and the TX symbols.  I really do believe these were talked about briefly, not because they are not important, but because in elementary school there is not enough time to get through a lesson because the focus has always been math and reading.  During my student teaching, we also do the same, we only allow 20 minutes a day for social studies and science and because of time, we sometimes don't even get to it.  The students once had to write an essay on an important person in history that impacted the country and most of the class could not write about it.  This was not the students' fault, but our fault because we could not find the time to dedicate social studies in our day.  Now I can see that if we dedicate only 20 minutes a day, every day extending a social studies lesson into a couple of days our students are able to get a great lesson that they are able to remember. 

I strongly believe that critical literacy is a great way to help students remember what they have learned to keep in their long term memory.  If they are able to investigate an objective and make them question and wonder they will seem more engaged.  A critical lesson could be divided into many days resulting in an engaging lesson.  Per the reading, Critical Reading for Young Citizens (McVay, 2009, pg. 2) suggests that teaching historical thinking will help the students shape our future and sustain and improve our democracy.  The students stayed engaged and wanting to learn more about what was eaten on Thanksgiving because they were able to think critically and wonder.