One of the many challenges I face here at the JDC is that the students are grouped by charges, not grades. I may have a class of only six students but two are in World I, one may be in Civics, another in government, one is getting their GED, and the last is double blocked in Virginia United States History and light years away from my pacing guide. On the first day they come in, I show every students a video on why studying history is important. They watch the video and as they are watching they write down any event they know already. This gives me some basic idea of where their knowledge is already as well as answers their question that they all inevitably ask, "why do we have to know this"?!
Does anyone else have anything they use to answer that question students ask in my class at least once a day regarding either the social studies or another content?
Why Study History?
Hey Karen,
ReplyDeleteI don't teach History but to answer the question, I think it's really important to understand how we got to where we are today and the decisions that were made. If the students can understand the history and how we got here, then they can start to imagine what the future can be like and how many different possibilities there are out there.
I completely agree with you Blair! Many of my students however, not so much. One said to me a few days ago, "I really don't care what happened in B.C.E., I mean only the dinosaurs were around anyways." WOW..... It's hard for them to understand time and place or even get that things happened at the same time. They compartmentalize everything so much that I almost feel that they think only one civilization was here at at time.
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