Net Gain
The year had started off so well. I felt calm and collected. I made a conscious effort to carve out time to get to know my students. I methodically established routines and protocols. I taught and modeled the necessary skills for historical inquiry. I constructed a scaffold of support that I would eventually dismantle when my students achieved independence. I afforded time for the students to write to learn.
Absent was the harried feeling so common at the beginning of the year that often established the tone and pace. Instead, the classroom atmosphere I had constructed was a stable, supportive foundation conducive to more meaningful learning.
Then it happened. I opened up my laptop and clicked on my curriculum planning document from last year. I gulped. I swallowed. My heart beat rapidly as a feeling of dread washed over me.
I was almost three weeks behind schedule on content than I was last year.
Reality efficiently evicted that sense of calm that I had constructed the first month and a half of school and immediately took up residence. Reality: unforgiving, harsh, and cruel. What a hard slap in the face.
I closed my laptop. I wasn’t prepared to challenge Reality. Yet.
For me, a subject’s curriculum consists of content (what) and skills (how). When I map out my year, I ask myself: What do I want the students to know and how will they learn it? Once I identify the content, I designate the skills necessary in accessing and mastering the content. For example, the student needs to know the causes of the Great Depression (content). However, to understand those causes, the student must employ historical thinking skills such as cause and effect, change and continuity, and turning points. Therefore, those skills need to be taught, modeled, and practiced in order for students to effectively master subject content.
I shared in my first blog post that in the past I focused more on content. I taught the skills, but it was evident demonstrating content knowledge was valued more than historical thinking skills. Upon this discovery, I realized that for meaningful learning to occur I would need to shift the focus from content to skills, affording more time for my students to explore and discover.
Reckoning with Reality
Making this shift from content to skills now has me reckoning with the harshness of Reality. As we are all too familiar with in education and in life, you cannot add to an equation without also subtracting. Allocating time to focus on skills resulted in deducting time for moving forward on content.
Was my decision worth it? While I had to subtract, did my students experience a net gain?
I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask my students. Following a unit test last week, I asked them to reflect on the activities done in class that they felt best prepared them for the assessment. More than half of the students identified that the Write-ins that focused on a specific historical thinking skill helped to clarify content and gave them a deeper understanding. Specifically, for one Write-in they were asked to write a letter through the eyes of someone living during the 1920s. This skill, looking at a historical era through the eyes of a specific individual, requires the student to consider an individual’s values and their worldview and how this affects the choices they make. A great deal of thinking — exploration and discovery — is occurring as the student contemplates an individual in society. Moreover, the student can apply this skill beyond the history classroom and in their own life.
Nonetheless, my reckoning with Reality demonstrates that I do need to strike a balance. I hope that my front loading at the beginning of the year will allow me to progress more efficiently through content this next quarter. Yet, I am confident that by focusing on skills my students are experiencing a net gain. I am reminded of that Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. However in my case, teach a student a historical fact, they know it for a day. Teach them a skill and they can use it for a lifetime.
