For my opening week unit, I decided to focus on the idea of perspective.

We have spent a

lot of time this summer discussing the necessity of nurturing a students identity and I believe

that an emphasis on student identity, goes hand in hand with the importance of perspective when

studying history. Ive attempted to design a unit that will allow students to begin to understand

their own perspective and the impact it has on how they view events, as well as the differing

perspectives of others that they will encounter in the coursework and in life. In having the

students utilize a number of different source materials in the first week, I hope to prepare the

students to look at our textbook and what they see in the world around them, with a careful and

critical eye.

In planning this unit, I strived to implement the three stages of backward design

(Tomlinson and McTighe, 2006, p. 27-28). I feel as if I was successful in stages one and three,

but struggled with stage two. It may be a result of this being a first week unit with little actual

coursework, but I had a difficult time determining what evidence would show me that the

students had gotten out of the lesson, what I wanted them to. I also attempted to use this unit to,

as Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) explain, uncover the content (p. 109). I aimed for the

essential questions coupled with the activities to guide the students to the understandings. I feel

like a student coming to a conclusion themselves, is much more powerful than a teacher simply

telling them what is right.

On day one of the unit, I attempted to take the typical and necessary administrative tasks

of a first day of school, and implement some strategies we have learned this summer. Rather than

simply handing out a syllabus and set of classroom expectations, I want the class to design a

class constitution together. I will of course have a few non-negotiable rules, but as Weinstein

and Novodorsky (2015) discuss, inviting input from the students is one of the best ways to foster
a positive student-teacher relationship (p.57-58). I want the students to know and agree upon the

rules so that they can hold themselves and each other accountable, rather than just me.

The lesson plan for day one also includes a discussion of growth mindset. While

Understanding by Design aims for students coming to their own conclusions, I felt it best to be

rather explicit when discussing mindsets. I do not think I am alone in believing that my school

experience may have been quite different if I had Carol Dwecks idea of growth mindset

explained to me early on. So many students and adults have told me how they did not like history

or they felt they were not good at it. Why do they feel this way? I want to ensure that from the

first day of class, my students understand that there is academic research behind the importance

of having the correct mindset. According to Dweck (2010), students with a growth mind-set

focused on learning, believed in effort, and were resilient in the face of setbacks (p. 2). I want

my students to understand that they, with the right mindset, can overcome anything they find

challenging. I also want to emphasize that this strategy can and should be applied to any and

every subject in school, as well as any challenges they face in life. I cannot assume that other

teachers are discussing growth mindset, but I can be sure that students who come through my

class leave grasping the power of their outlook.

Day one is also when I will first describe the units main assignment, a personal history.

The personal history gives the students a chance to tell their own story. I want them to

understand the power and importance of their own personal identity and perspective. I will be

student teaching at Furness High School, a school with a very diverse population and high

population of recent immigrants. Knowing this, I want to be able to ensure that students who feel

they have very little connection to the events of 19th century America, still feel that their

perspective is important. My time working with Migrant Education at Southwark this summer
gave me a glimpse of how an incredibly diverse class can bring together a number of different

experiences, identities, and perspectives, and how this diversity can be more of an asset than a

challenge.

It also serves a chance to let the parents know what we are emphasizing in class. Part of

the assignment is to, if possible, have the students interview their families. After the first day, the

parents will have a class syllabus to sign and their children will be asking them questions about

their family history. I hope this signals to the parents two things: that I value their childs

individual perspective, and that I want the parents to feel included in and aware of what we are

working on in class. Oakes and Lipton (2013) discuss attempting to build a bridge to allow for,

but not determine the direction of, a flow of support, culture, and respect between parents and

schools (p. 335). Involving the parents in the first week is a strategic attempt to build that bridge,

especially when I am not from the community myself.

With administrative tasks out of the way, day two is when we will talk about how our

class is organized and in turn, how the study of history is generally organized in our schools. I

want my students to begin to look at their textbook for what it is, a carefully edited single version

of history. I want them to understand that it is a tool, that alongside other resources can help tell

the story of history. We will discuss what is good about the book, what is bad, and how we

would improve it. When teaching my more advanced students in South Korea last year, I found

that critiquing the text as a class helps to build a relationship of working together towards a goal

rather than I am the teacher, do what I say. This class will also be an opportunity to see what it

is that my students enjoy learning about in history. Too many students say history is boring and

then go home to watch shows or movies that feature the same drama and excitement history is

made of. I want my students to think about any aspect of history they have enjoyed learning
about and why they enjoyed it. Finally, the students will take their criticisms of our text and

combine them with what they enjoy learning and we will come together to make a table of

contents for our own dream history text. It will then be my challenge to bring in as much of

that table of contents as I can, throughout the year.

After the students have an opportunity to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of their

textbook in day two, I want them to see for themselves the challenge of telling anothers story in

day three. I will distribute my own personal history and then ask the students to, in groups,

summarize my whole story into just three sentences. I hope that the difficulty in doing this and

then the differences we see when comparing the groups summaries, will highlight the intrinsic

difficulty of telling someone elses story. In a history textbook covering hundreds of years, its

likely that an individuals story, if included at all, will be shortened to just a few sentences. In

shortening my story themselves, I hope the students can see how what they read in their textbook

is far from the whole story and by nature must leave out innumerable key details. When sharing

with the class, it will be interesting to see if any groups choose different details to highlight in

their summary, and thus tell a different version of my story.

Aside from giving the students an example of the finished assignment and a chance to

summarize someones story without possibly offending a classmate, writing my own personal

history has value for me as a teacher. Although speaking more to teacher research, Milner (2007)

discusses the importance of understanding yourself and your relation to others (p. 395). I think

this same framework can be applied to teaching, and in writing this paper I can better understand

myself and what I bring to the classroom, good and bad. I may also be able to glean some of my

relation to my students by gauging their reactions to and conclusions drawn from, reading and

summarizing my personal history.

give the students a chance to work with primary and secondary sources. This will of course be

good practice for the students working with source documents, a skill they will need going

forward, but it is also important to again get them thinking critically about what biases or blind

spots come with the perspective of these sources. Working again in groups, students will analyze

and summarize different source material and then come together as class to see how the stories

told differ. The hope is that the students will be beginning to see just how important it is to use

varied sources and always pay attention to where the sources are coming from and what biases

they may bring. Like the progressive social studies education Oakes and Lipton (2013) describe,

I want my students to learn to think like historians, political scientists, geographers,

anthropologists, sociologists, and economists (p. 146). Whether or not they go on to become

any of these things, my students will have experience thinking critically which will help them in

whatever they choose to do.

Finally, on day five, I will begin to set the scene for where we will pick up the actual

coursework. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, United States History in

11th grade covers 1850-Present day. Having already talked about the textbook and primary

sources as resources, I now want to introduce the use of maps and statistics. This is where access

to computers would be very helpful, but not necessary. Groups will look at maps and

demographic statistics to try and create a snapshot of what life in the United States looked like in

1850. When we are finished, I want the students to have an idea of what life looked like, but I

also want to see if they can practice using the critical lens we are developing to think of some

stories the statistics are not telling. Putting up some of their findings on the board, I will lead
them with questions to get to some blank spots in the history that these statistics and maps are

not touching.

In this five day unit, I want my students to come away understanding that their

perspective is as important as an any they find in a textbook. By showing the fallibility of

textbooks and source materials, I hope to begin to work with them to develop a critical lens

through which they can study history. History that may not sound like their history, that may

overlook their gender, race, or ethnicity, or that may attempt to beautify or even ignore ugly

events. After writing their personal history, they should feel more confident in giving their

perspective on an issue or thinking about comparisons they can draw between their personal

histories and what they read in textbooks. Giroux (1988) calls for teachers to make the political

more pedagogical so that we can prepare our students as critical agents with a voice in their

education (p. 127). I have crafted this unit to try and help my students develop the critical

thinking skills that will allow them to be those critical agents, in school and in life.
 Questions for Implementation

1. Does this unit allow for enough differentiation?

I had a hard time adjusting the lesson for differentiation without having an idea of

what my class looks like. I think part of the reason it is good to go with a first

week unit that does not cover much actual coursework is it will allow me to get a

read for the different types of students I have and how I can best differentiate

instruction for them.

2. Am I doing enough to set this classroom in the direction of social justice learning?

Going in, I had very high hopes of making a social justice themed unit to start the

week but seem to have ended up with a more technical unit than I had planned. I

hope that the critical lens we develop in this unit can be used to dig a little deeper

in future units.

3. Am I doing enough to create a classroom community?

I tried to include some team building and ice breaker games, as well as a heavy

dose of group work, but I wonder how much of a community I will be creating.

Never really having had a class that felt that way, I am not sure I know what it

looks like in practice.

4. Will some of these early activities be asking too much?

I want to set high expectations right from the beginning, especially since these

first activities will not really be graded, but I worry a bit that the class reaction

may lean toward deer in the headlights. I was not really asked to do these sorts of

things in my K-12 experience and am not sure how they will be received by the

students. I would hate to have to fall back on a more traditional approach.

Dweck, C.S. (2010). Mind-Sets and Equitable Education. Principal Leadership, 2.

Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as Intellectuals. 127.

Oakes, J., Lipton, M,. Anderson L., & Stillman, J. (2013). Teaching to Change the World. 126,

335.

Tomlinson, C.A., & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding

by Design. 27-28, 109.

Weinstein, C.S., & Novodorsky, I. (2015). Middle and Secondary Classroom Management. 57-

58.