Teaching With Primary Sources Leadership Team: Recap

In my last post, I described the work I was doing with high school teachers from the Evergreen and Vancouver districts funded by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Western Region division.  I thought the project went great – and so did the teachers.  Breeze through a few representative quotes to get a feel for the participants’ enthusiasm:

I learned that the kids are able and willing to think for themselves – that they’re willing to jump in and give it a shot.  It’s all about getting kids to think… not just compliance.

We just went through the same inquiry process looking at the student work as [the students] went through with the documents.

This was not like a learning walk.  I worked on a lesson related to my work, and I’ll use it.  This is the way professional development should be.

It was great to work with other teachers who have such expertise.  This shows what teachers from different schools can do with each other to benefit kids.

We’re all after the same thing: Seeing kids being able to connect with the material and make their own meaning is the big payoff.

We lit the fuse, and the kids took care of the rest.  The collaboration was valuable…  Hearing others’ observations reinforces the idea that I can relinquish some control and that the questions are as important as the answers.

The conversations and questions that we had today make me hold off on retirement.

I wonder: How far can this go?

I think there were several fundamental reasons why the project was so successful:

1. The folks from the Library of Congress Western Region office were fantastic.  They were able to introduce the Library of Congress archive in a way that both demonstrated its immensity and its usefulness. They emphasized the role primary sources play in catalyzing student inquiry and meaning making. They were flexible in adapting their approach to our needs.
2. We used a lesson study approach. This helped teachers explore the immediate application of the approaches in the classroom. It guided collaboration in an authentic and accountable fashion.
3. The teachers displayed true professionalism. Throwing a bunch of strangers together, providing them with new resources, and asking them to play with each other required a willingness to be public learners and not let vulnerability shut down the process. They met the challenge head on.

If you’d like to read more about the project, I’ve posted the final report here.

Click here to learn more about the grant program.

In the next several posts, I’ll share the lessons teacher-teams developed through this process. Sharing these does not mean to suggest that any are “Super-Lessons”  (if any such thing exists.) I think that they are interesting as artifacts of a powerful professional development process – and they’ll probably get you thinking about great ways to guide student inquiry in your classroom. If the lessons are kept alive by your testing and tweaking, if the comments section is used to share what changes folks made and how their students responded, then the process continues. Here’s hoping!

Teaching With Primary Sources Workshop

The best historical inquiry - and teacher professional development - leads to laughter.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of working with high school teachers and coordinators from Vancouver and Evergreen Public Schools in a workshop led and funded by the Library of Congress Teaching With Primary Sources Western Region Program.  Through the workshop, teachers learned about the immense resources available through the Library of Congress website and discussed ways to guide student historical inquiry using primary sources, including the development of Annotated Resource Sets.  Using a quick version of the lesson study cycle, teacher teams designed lessons that will serve as the basis for demonstration lessons and debriefs throughout February (for which we’ll use this debrief protocol.)  After the demonstration lessons and debriefs, teachers will share their new insights with their school-based Professional Learning Communities.

The agenda wiki, filled with fantastic links, is posted here.  I’m looking forward to attending all the lessons in February!

History Day Judges Needed!

Followers of this blog know that I love National History Day.  National History Day challenges teens to investigate historical questions and present their findings in papers, websites, exhibits, performances, and documentaries.  Students discuss their work with interested adults as they strive to rise above the competition first at the school, then at the district, state, and national levels.  All this depends on interested individuals offering to talk to these young historians. Will you show them you care about their learning?

The Southwest Washington History Day Competition will be held Saturday, February 25 at Wy’East Middle School in Vancouver.  Judge orientation will begin at 8:00.  Preliminary round judging will conclude by 1:00; if you’re available to stay for the finals round, you’ll be done by 4:30.  Clock hours will be provided.

If you’re able to join us to judge, please email me.  Whether or not you can join us, please spread the word!

The end is nigh

While we may have thought that we made it through May 21 unscathed, I received two messages yesterday that our friends in the colonies might have considered providential signs.

The first was an email from Peggi Zelinko at the Department of Education.  She wrote to say that no new Teaching American History proposals would be awarded FY 2011, ending any hope that “Competing Visions: Debates that Shape America”, the excellent proposal we submitted in March, would be funded.   This confirmed my suspicions – but was disappointing nevertheless.

The second was a posting on the National Coalition for History site:

HOUSE PANEL CLEARS BILL TO TERMINATE TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY GRANTS

The House Education and Workforce Committee this week approved, by a strict party line vote of 23-16, H.R. 1891 the “Setting New Priorities in Education Act.” This bill would eliminate 43 programs at the Department of Education including Teaching American History (TAH) grants.

An amendment was offered by Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), and cosponsored by Representatives Davis (D-CA), Woolsey (D-CA) and Wu (D-OR) that would have potentially preserved TAH. The amendment would have required the Secretary of Education, in consultation with the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence to determine if the United States was experiencing a shortage of linguists. If it was found that was the case, Department of Education funds could have been used to improve foreign language education, economic and financial education, arts education and the Teaching of Traditional American History. The Holt amendment was defeated by the same party line vote of 16-23.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MI) has decided to adopt a piecemeal approach to reauthorizing the ESEA, considering a series of targeted bills instead of one large one. H.R. 1891 is the first of those bills to be introduced and passed by the panel.

H.R. 1891 will now be considered by the House where it is expected to pass. While this is disheartening, the bill would still have to pass the Senate and be signed by the President which is unlikely. Traditionally, there has been strong bi-partisan support in the Senate for the TAH program.

In the Senate, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) will soon introduce a single all encompassing ESEA reauthorization bill. It was expected he would introduce the bill right after Easter, but that has not occurred. There is no indication at this time what Chairman Harkin’s position is with regard to TAH in particular or history education in general.

It’s a shame.  Based on our experience, I believe that TAH projects have catalyzed important change, critically supporting teachers in ways that renew and expand their vision and capacity to improve students’ learning experience.  I hope that teachers find creative ways to continue the work on their own.

I look forward to next week’s demonstration lesson in Castle Rock and our final “Causes of Conflict” program June 29 & 30.  Enjoy the long weekend!

Another round of Lesson Study!

It’s been a provocative season of demonstration lessons with 4th and 5th grade teachers!  Using the lesson study process, teacher groups planned a lesson, then gathered to watch the lesson be taught and studied how students interacted with the material.  In the past week plus, I’ve been at five schools where young learners took on a variety of historical challenges, including:

• analyzing correspondence between John and Abigail Adams to consider what the American Revolution meant for women;
• interpreting images to hear multiple perspectives on British efforts to manage the American colonies;
• using primary images and texts related to different events to evaluate their role in leading to the American Revolution;
• evaluating competing narratives to determine who was at fault for the Boston Massacre; and
• identifying who lived at Fort Vancouver and how each cultural group contributed to its success.

The impact of the lessons on student learning varied from session to session, but the impact on teacher learning seemed consistently strong.  Here are a few representative snippets of participating teachers’ conversation and writing:

Observing other 5th grade students grapple with challenging text/images impacts my universal understanding of how students learn. To be given highly engaging historical documents and to work collaboratively with their peers stretches their thinking and informs me about my own expectations for student learning. It’s easy to feel isolated at times in regards to teaching history. Being a member of the lesson study team broadens my own perspective and fosters a need and a desire to dig deeper personally into historical thinking, teaching, and learning.

I saw a way to involve my Intensive Reading students in a more active way rather than just being passive learners.

I saw that I did not have to teach history the way I was taught as a student… Planning lessons with a group & revise them has heightened my teaching abilities and my students will benefit greatly.

 As we begin to revise the lesson, we are generating more thoughtfully developed ideas and questions.

I was surprised by how each of the teammates helped support one another.

We can’t work in a vacuum. Self-reflection is important, but our teaching will improve much more drastically by peer review and debriefing.

It takes me from direct instruction to guided, researched, and discovery learning. It makes me feel that history is really alive!

I’ve used different strategies before to make history more exciting – but never to make it more real!

At first, we were concerned about who would be the demonstration teacher. Then, there came a point in our planning where we realized that any of us would do it – because the only thing we’d be worried about would be to stay accountable to each other.

I’ve learned that students will rise to the occasion if you ask them to.

I’ve learned that there is so much about the past that I don’t know, but that I can tell the students ‘as you’re learning, I’m learning too.’

 It’s led me to see that history is more than recall.

This has reminded me that I need to be open to my students as people.  It’s made me a better kidwatcher.

One historical question should lead to another. That’s really happening for me now – and it didn’t before this year.

I’m looking forward to meeting with teachers June 29 & 30 to study what students did with the revised lessons.  I should note that this work was made possible by a Teaching American History grant from the US Department of Education.  That program, along with many others (including the National Writing Project), is described as wasteful and inefficient by House Bill 1891 and targeted for closure. You can read more about HB 1891 here.

Teachers:  Please add your input to the comments section!