The Goal: To Educate and Change the Norm

Cynthia Zuñiga
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

Growing up, I loved everything that had to do with school. Well, everything except social studies. It wasn’t because it seemed challenging, I just did not find any interest or connection to it. I can remember thinking to myself “why does this matter?” I found it very boring and bland. The class was surrounded around reading from a very thick textbook that seemed to be focused on nothing but the history of the United States.

Looking back now, I may had found it uninterestingbecause I could not really connect to it. There was no “main character” in the textbook that was like me, or even reflected a little bit of my Mexican culture. However, when my background wasincluded in text it usually was focused on something negative. I remember being frustrated as my elementary school years passed by because even though I learned the same thing year after year, I couldn’t remember any of it. I now realize that I was memorizing information for the test, but not really learning, understanding, and applying my knowledge.

Based on my relationship with social studies, I want to make sure that my future students go through a complete opposite experience. As a future educator, I want to make sure that my students find interest in all that we will do. I want to create curriculums that will not only benefit them academically, but will also allow them to learn lessons and become better citizens. I want them to realize that social studies is not only a “this happened years ago, why does it matter” type of class. I wish to help them make connections with their current life. A large goal that I hold is to make the class as inclusive as possible. I hope that once my students end the school year, they are able to connect with one “History Hero” that they can resonate with. I do not want to be the teacher that just reads from a textbook and shows some films, because that doesn’t create a transfer learning strategy within the children. I want to be the teacher that my elementary students will remember in high school because of how interesting, hands on, and memorable the lessons were.