When the Lion Roars Everyone Listens: Scary Good Middle School Social Studies

Afterword

01

Democratizing Social Studies through a Student-Centered Approach

A doctor has to begin with a careful diagnosis before treating a patient’s symptoms. Similarly, an effective middle school social studies curriculum must be based on an accurate identification of the learning needs of students. Some of these needs relate to age and stage of development. Others relate to the family and neighborhood; still others are individual and circumstantial. Middle school students are undergoing a great deal of developmental changes. They must be provided with a school curriculum that helps during these life transitions while also challenging them to think critically about their place in the world. The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) emphasizes that the ultimate goal is to help prepare students to make positive contributions as citizens in a democratic society (NCSS, 1991). Middle school students need meaningful opportunities to explore the world around them. They should also examine issues related to self-identity as they define their values and beliefs (Roney & Lipka, 2013). Middle school social studies teachers should give careful consideration to the components of their curriculums to allow students to accomplish these goals.

This chapter focuses on a vision for the middle school social studies classroom that uses student-centered instruction. It allows the social studies teacher to meet the evolving needs of students in the 21st century. We will define the components for this type of instruction and make the argument for why traditional didactic teaching is not appropriate to meet students’ learning needs. Finally, we will provide an explanation for why student-centered instruction aligns with the goals of the social studies classroom outlined in the Association for Middle Level Education’s (AMLE) This We Believe (NMSA, 2010) and the position statements of NCSS.

Feeling Weirder and Weirder while Wanting to Fit in

Kermit the Frog reminds us that, It’s not easy being green. Likewise, it is not easy being a middle school student. Middle school students simultaneously want to be accepted by their peers but maintain their individuality. They need structure but want independence. The paradoxical nature of students from this age group makes their social interactions with peers and teachers fraught with angst, pressure, uncertainty, and volatility on a daily basis (Brown, 2013). This does not even take into consideration the pressures they face from parents and teachers to academically succeed with more challenging assignments than they were accustomed to in elementary school. Our middle school students often feel twisted into a Gordian knot. They struggle to juggle all of their personal conflicts. Students assume different masks and poses that they feel will improve their image. However, no matter what pose they assume, they feel weird. In other words, It’s complicated. Middle school life may be described as disjointed and discombobulated but that is the way they perceive the world around them.

Middle school students are filled with important questions, serious questions, essential questions, and bizarre questions. The most essential of these has to do with identity- Who am I? This question will be defined, redefined, shaped, and reshaped by their choices and actions throughout the rest of their lives because it is an elusive moving target. In the middle school years, many of the puzzle pieces of this question are falling into place. A personal identity is being formed as students grapple with the academic, emotional, social, and cultural realities of becoming a middle schooler (Hawes, Helyer, Herlianto, & Willing, 2013). Students’ choices in middle school, therefore, take on greater significance. Many of the choices that students make can have lasting positive and negative outcomes on their lives.

Social studies teachers must be cognizant of this reality as they design classroom activities. Students should be given opportunities to engage in meaningful decision-making experiences. It is not enough that students make choices. They need to defend the reasoning behind their decisions with the use of evidence (Engle & Ochoa, 1988). The thought processes involved in decision making push students out of their comfort zone as they examine the intricacies and possible repercussions of life choices. As students move out of their comfort zone, they increase their ability to make better personal choices and take charge of their own personal lives. The examination of choices is pivotal because of the vast number of changes that students are going through in their middle school years.

Students go through a complex set of emotional, physiological, and social changes during their middle school years (NCSS, 1991). They are starting to develop the ability to do more abstract thinking and are thus very inquisitive about the world around them (Levstik & Barton, 2015). Questions include 1.) How do people influence their government? 2.) Why does this work that way? 3.) How do you know that? These kinds of questions fascinate students who have innate curiosity. Successful social studies teachers harness students’ inquisitive nature with focused planned discussion, careful counseling, and mind-awakening activities. Stimulating students’ curiosity should be like opening the flood gates to a dam. Once these flood gates are open, fresh life-giving and life-renewing streams of ideas flow into the classroom. Students should explore life’s important questions. These questions lead to a fuller understanding of personal identity and a person’s sense of place in society (NCSS, 2013a). They help students learn the relevancy of all of the strange and far away topics of middle school social studies.

The average middle schooler, when asked what happened in school on any day, will shrug and make no comment. This is sad. If we are successfully doing our job, most days students should have vivid positive memories of topics discussed. We believe that what middle school teachers need most are powerful, exciting, student-involving activities--activities that students never forget. These experiences not only teach facts, concepts, and skills but also change attitudes.

People’s beliefs, feelings, actions, and inactions should jump off the pages. Our students should be in awe of civil rights activists’ suffering to end Jim Crow segregation. They should laugh at the occasional vanity of John Adams as he became jealous of the greater recognition going to Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. They should weep at the battlefields of the American Civil War, which had become graveyards. The truth is that a strong social studies curriculum evokes emotions (Endacott & Brooks, 2013). Such a curriculum requires a shared vision and focused and flexible planning by middle school teachers and administrators to meet the challenging needs of students in the 21st century (NMSA, 2010).

Avoiding the Venus Fly Trap of Ground Covering

The move to a student-centered classroom can be a major shift for some social studies teachers. On the one hand, teachers are pressured by high-stakes national standardized tests on which their students must do well. On the other hand, there are constant societal criticisms of how little students learn. The No Child Left Behind Era validated many teachers’ natural tendencies to practice what Shirley Engle referred to as ground covering in social studies. Ground covering is where a teacher feels compelled to cover every chapter in the book and every unit in the school curriculum. This means moving through a great deal of content in a short amount of time (Engle, 1960). If the pacing guide dictates that we are through the War of 1812 by October 1 and we are not, we will rush to catch up by being even shallower in coverage. We may only spend a day on the War of 1812 and two days getting through the presidencies of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. The focus is on memorizing key terms, accomplishments of historical figures, and a few causes and outcomes of major events.

The ground covering approach seems logical to teachers who have to cover a great deal of material before a standardized test. It also makes planning much easier and allows teachers to juggle their many bureaucratic responsibilities. It is almost dictated by the pacing guide and the almighty textbook. Add to that the teachers themselves were primarily taught and trained in this manner. They, therefore, naturally assumed that ground covering is the only way to teach social studies.

The problem with this compulsion toward ground covering is that it is based on flawed reasoning. Memorized information is not necessarily understood. Covered information does not imply learning. The coverage of topics with ground covering prohibits students from exploring topics in depth. They ultimately gain a superficial and shallow understanding of a topic. Historical figures become two dimensional in the minds of our students. Students can answer questions like who was the writer of the Declaration of Independence? However, they struggle with questions like in what ways did Thomas Jefferson shape the educational and political structure of this country? As teachers, we should never be satisfied with our students only being able to answer lower-order questions about our content material.

The use of ground covering prevents students from seeing the relevancy of topics to their daily lives. Historical figures are presented in isolation rather than in the context of the period in which they are living. There is no consideration of the reasons for their actions or the impact of these actions. In a ground covering approach, George Washington had a plantation named Mount Vernon, fought in two wars, had false teeth, and was the first U.S. President. Then, we move on to other individuals. The topics that we cover in our social studies classroom should have more depth.

This ground covering approach ultimately results in fragmented and sporadically connected knowledge of the past. For example, students may connect the outcomes from the Treaty of Versailles in World War I to the origins of World War II. However, they will not figure in the world depression, genocide, and other events that combined to climax in World War II. History is not a thread but a woven tapestry. Events do not happen in isolation but result from multiple causes. Our students need a stronger understanding of topics in social studies if they are to make informed decisions in a democracy.

Ground covering disengages students in the learning process. Students become passive. They tune out more than they tune in, producing foggy learning at best. The topics in our disciplines seem irrelevant to their daily lives. Students are more interested in contemporary pop music icons than the U.S. Constitution. This leads to students seeing social studies as just another boring class. Little is learned and even less is expected. Social studies teachers become locked in a struggle against student ambivalence, apathy, and inattention. This type of classroom environment is not conducive to meeting the learning needs of middle school students.

Ground covering will not meet the new state and national standards in social studies. The script on what constitutes good teaching in social studies has been flipped over the last couple of years for the most part in a good way. Social studies teachers must actively involve students in the learning process by having them critically analyze a text. This means that they must determine factors such as an author’s biases and points of view and summarize the main ideas in a text. All of these skills and processes foster students’ higher order thinking skills in social studies (Austin & Thompson, 2015).

The C3 Framework authored by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) requires social studies teachers to use a variety of teaching strategies to meet the expectations of these standards. Teachers will therefore need to use other approaches than direct instruction for students to successfully meet these new standards (NCSS, 2013b). This is an improvement over the No Child Left Behind standards that focused on students memorizing the answers to lower-order questions. The standards in the C3 Framework are more focused on students using analysis skills to examine a historical event. Students must employ the thought processes of social scientists to examine and explore a historical topic (Gilles, Wang, Smith, & Johnson, 2013). The analysis of an issue or event in this manner promotes students’ critical thinking skills. This will be a major shift for some social studies teachers. We attempt to include activities to help middle school social studies teachers meet this challenge throughout the chapters of this book. For the activities discussed, example activities are provided, some of which were constructed by middle school students.

Student-Centered Social Studies Classroom

As authors, we want to offer an alternative to complete reliance on direct instruction. If we can accomplish this, it is reason enough for teachers to read this book. This reasoning is embodied in one of Ben Franklin’s assertions about learning. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn (Franklin, n.d.). This is consistent with what social studies scholars have said about how students learn (NCSS, 2016). The term that is used to describe this theory is constructivism. Constructivism may be described as students creating new knowledge and understanding by applying background knowledge (Brooks & Brooks, 1999). Constructivist teaching requires a change in the dynamic of the classroom. Students take on a more active role in the classroom while the teacher guides their exploration of topics. Middle school students should never view school as a place where they watch older people work. They need to be actively involved with every step of the learning process.

Our argument is very straightforward. To meet current educational standards, social studies teachers need to use student-centered practices. Students should be actively discussing and exploring the content material in small groups and individually through inquiry-based activities. They then share their findings with the class. The teacher needs to guide and support students’ examination of historical texts. This change to the classroom dynamic holds students accountable for their own learning and equips them with the skills to collaborate with others (Wineburg, Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2012). Below are our six components of a student-centered classroom.

1. Students need to be responsible for their own learning. We want our students to actively build content-area literacy skills in the social studies