Trusting in the (Learning) Journey

Creating a large-scale endeavor like a National History Day project takes time. Going through the process for the first time can be overwhelming for teachers and students alike. It's critical to remember, though, that it is a journey.

These projects are rigorous and require many steps. Too often we expect immediate gratification--this is not the type of project that will offer quick results.  Students will be thinking, reflecting, pre-searching (to use a colleague's term), researching, selecting a topic in US History they are passionate about, locating primary and secondary sources, writing a research question, developing a thesis, grappling with this year's theme and applying it to their topic, writing digital note cards, keeping track of resources, developing a project, ensuring they place their topic in historical situational context, creating a process paper to reflect on their experience, and possibly back-tracking and at any point if they lose focus. 

Students will most likely "hit a wall" and develop frustration.

Teacher preparation and "front loading" will lessen these frustrations. Making sure we are breaking this journey up into small steps is essential, as is encouragement and feedback along the way. We are all taking a risk, but every single student will finish this project knowing that they really know how to study history and think like a historian. Every single student will examine their body of work and see how they climbed this mountain and, through tenacity and grit, achieved more than they thought possible today. We must help our students trust in their journey, knowing it's ok to be frustrated, that it's ok they don't know what the end results will look like yet. 

While searching for an appropriate quote I found one from a music artist I'm unfamiliar with (the students know of him, though). It's fitting for our learning this year:
Sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination. - Drake

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical Perspective and Peel the Fruit Thinking Routine

Image
Practicing historical perspective is an essential social studies skill. Historical perspective is being able to step into a historic situation and examine the motivations, biases, and beliefs of a person or group of people. Students have to revert to the beliefs of a group of people even if those beliefs completely contradict the views we have today. They must weigh decisions based on the situation of the time, not necessarily how situations are viewed today. The C3 Framework for Social Studies states that "Historical understanding requires recognizing this multiplicity of points of view in the past, which makes it important to seek out a range of sources on any historical question rather than simply use those that are easiest to find. It also requires recognizing that perspectives change over time, so that historical understanding requires developing a sense of empathy with people in the past whose perspectives might be very different from those of today." http://www.so
Read more

Name That Executive Role!

Image
Students today learned about the many roles of the head of the Executive Branch, the President of the United States. I found several images of former Presidents in these roles--can you guess which is which? Post your answers below or email them to me. Choices: Commander-In-Chief Chief Executive Political Party Head Chief Diplomat 1.  President Eisenhower 2. President George HW Bush (on the right side of the picture) 3. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  4. President Reagan meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (this one's a bit of a giveaway!)
Read more

Industrial Revolution Haiku

Students have been learning about the Industrial Revolution in the mid1800s and how it changed life in New England. Today students processed their learning by creating haiku poems on the subject. They were challenged to think about and evaluate this topic within the structure of a haiku, a 3 line poem with 17 total syllables--5 in the 1st and 3rd lines and 7 in the second line. The poems have been impressive and some will be posted here soon.
Read more