My teaching philosophy is based on a belief that students deserve an equitable, student-centered classroom environment that seeks to provide quality education for all students regardless of their learning abilities. As a social studies teacher I envision myself as an educator and a mentor devoted to recognizing individual student potential. I believe that teaching history and social studies should inspire creativity and enthusiasm toward learning. I aspire to teach students how to think critically and to understand how this knowledge will benefit them by becoming life long, informed learners and citizens.

Social studies and more specifically the discipline of history is best taught through the reading, analysis, and interpretation of primary and secondary sources. This approach teaches students how to learn perspective and bias in these sources and to think critically of the experiences reflected in document-based learning. I’ve implemented this approach on several occasions as a student teacher in my U.S. History class. For example, my students were tasked with the analysis of the Chicago riots from the differing perspectives of African Americans, Eastern European immigrants, and newspaper accounts to learn how the riots were not only based on racism but the struggle and competition for jobs between immigrants and recent members of the Great Migration. Teaching this period in history provided students with an understanding of the historical themes of labor, racism, and the role of media in reporting sensational accounts.

I view teaching adolescents as a challenging and rewarding endeavor in part because teenagers seek truth and as a result have an innate ability to sense when they are being treated unfairly or when a lesson falls short of engaging and understanding. This ability makes students not only unapologetic and vulnerable but holds me as an educator, accountable in my teaching methods and ability to inform my understanding of student’s learning abilities and difficulties.

The methods I use involve direct instruction as an introduction, followed and supported by group learning, graphic organizers and a final summative project or unit exam. For example, in my economics class, I began with the History and Social Studies and Common Core standards to identify what was needed in this lesson. Students were given a 10-15-minute lecture on taxation using scaffolded Cornell notes, followed by group work engaging in a graphic organizer that identified different forms and functions of taxation. Once students completed the organizers they were required to think of a teen-centered community center with the taxation necessary for the project to be completed. This lesson addressed the needs of the diverse learning community in the class. Students who excelled at drawing, writing, and analysis were all able to contribute to their group’s project. This project was an example of the use of Bloom’s taxonomy where each level of learning and understanding is built upon an earlier level. The result of this approach was students gained a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of taxation through different learning tools and group support.

 As with teaching economics, history and other social studies subjects can pose difficulties for student learning. This is based on student’s belief that social studies are not relevant to their lives and therefore not worth their time and energy. Few students come to a history class with a love of the discipline, therefore it is imperative that students have a real-world connection to their social studies lessons. Using the above example of the Chicago riots, I connected the primary source accounts of individual’s experiences during the riots to our country’s current struggles with immigration and the perception of some Americans that their jobs are at risk of being taken away and how this fear, like the riots, can translate to violence. 

Students have varying difficulties with social studies content in addition to making a connection with the subject. I believe that an emphasis on reading and writing is imperative to understand the subject and being able to transfer those skills into other disciplines and beyond into adulthood. I’ve found through student teaching that students benefit from vocabulary, “jigsawed” reading, short sentence exercises and sentence starters as preliminary building blocks to writing effective essays. Student pairing and group support of these approaches is also crucial to helping students such as English language learners, students with IEP and 504 plans and others progress through these learning processes.

My teaching credential is enhance and influenced by my master’s degree in history. An advanced degree has provided me with an understanding of the discipline that extends beyond that of undergraduate work. For example, my knowledge of historiography and methods for researching and writing about historical content has greatly expanded my knowledge and skills. I wrote my thesis on the AIDS epidemic in Sonoma County using original research from oral histories of survivors, activists, medical personnel, and the media. This experience provided me with first hand experience dealing with issues of perspective and bias critical to understanding  historical events. These skills have prepared to teach social studies with an emphasis on critical thinking based on research, writing, analysis, and interpretation.