H-World and Teachers?

Christoph Strobel Discussion

My post last week on the "'crisis' in social studies" has made me wonder: Can H-World play a role in assisting secondary world history teachers? Can we serve as network to communicate: questions about teaching, community building, etc? What are the needs? What would be helpful? Any feedback and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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There should be a stronger link between world history research and education. The main stumbling block is student reading level and student understanding of nuance in history. Because World History is a survey course (at least in California this is the way we teach it), the hardest part is to decide what to teach and how to teach it.

What would be helpful for me is a a curriculum that is accessible to students from a range of reading levels that would also be engaging to students that don't already have a lot of background knowledge without dumbing down the material or oversimplifying important historical events. As of right now, I build everything myself which can be quite time consuming because I simply haven't found much curriculum that is both high quality and accessible to students at the same time.

I work in a large urban district in Los Angeles so many of my students come with minimal supplies and minimal background knowledge.

Hi Daniel and Christoph,

What would be particularly useful to secondary teachers to host some sort of a forum or conference which would present them with innovative ways of executing and communicating a World History curriculum. I have found that students are incredibly open minded to themes and connective comparisons made in world history, the problem seems to lie in the sawed off box frames within which such histories are encapsulated in most textbooks.

Kind regards,
Christina

Dear Daniel and Christina (and anyone else following this thread),

I'd very much like to hear from you (and others) about specific elements you'd find useful in a forum (here I presume on-line, as part of H-world) or a conference (which entails travel logistics and funding challenges to bring people together) that might be different from what's already available or scheduled.

The WHA annual meetings always have teaching panels, created by and for both high school and college instructors. Of course, not everyone can reasonably get to the WHA meetings each year.
The WHA regional meetings also have teaching workshops, panels, and materials on display--as well as the chance to talk to other teachers and possibly build connections with like-minded teachers in your area.

Daniel, the next California WHA affiliate meeting--held in conjunction with the Northwest WHA--will be Feb 25-27 at Cal State Long Beach--so striking distance from LA. Let's correspond, either directly or though H-World, about developing a panel or workshop for the 2016 meeting that would meet your needs--and also about how to more effectively spread the word, so that other teachers from your district and LAUSD could participate, too.

In the mean time, if you're looking for specific curriculum units, you might check out World History for Us All.
http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/
There's lots of material you can use directly, or adapt for your students. It's also very California-standards friendly.

In addition, universities in your area have active CHSSP (California History Social-Science Project) related sites that offer workshops, teacher reading groups, and other support for K-12 world history instruction.
CSULB: http://www.cla.csulb.edu/projects/historyproject/
UCI History Project: https://www.humanities.uci.edu/history/ucihp/
UCLA History-Geography Project: http://www.history.ucla.edu/why-history-matters/ucla-history-geography-…

The CHSSP History Blueprint curricula offer another terrific resource
http://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/historyblueprint
(self-interest full disclosure: I helped on the medieval world blueprint)

And as for a textbook that seeks to frame connections among geographic regions and especially to construct cohesive chronological connections, might I suggest (fully aware of the shameless-self promotion element) the book I worked on with Ross Dunn, Panorama: A World History (McGraw Hill, 2015).
It is a college-level text that we wrote to be accessible to a student audience with a diverse range of skills and previous knowledge. While it's probably not a book a district would adopt for the standard 10th-grade world history course, it could be a useful resource for teachers looking to create a stronger narrative arc for a high school course.

So: would a useful forum provide annotations and pointers to existing resources for teachers? Invite discussion and specific curriculum contributions around a specific topic (environment, disease, migration, state-building, religion, etc) or historical thinking skills (comparison, primary source analysis, causation, periodization, etc.)?
Do something else entirely?

Are there particular topics or teaching approaches that would encourage teachers to travel to the WHA meeting, or regional affiliate meetings?

Laura Mitchell
UC Irvine

As an editor of H-World, in addition to considering in person forums, I would appreciate if we could also consider interesting ways to utilize our new platform for such forum. Perhaps such a forum would take the form along the lines of our previous authors forums, with 3 or 4 people developing a set of introductory comments/presentations designed to get the rest of the list involved in the topic at hand.

But, with our new platform, we should be able to make short video or narrated power point presentations available to initiate the conversation and we should now be able to house digital materials that would be available for download, such as lesson plans, assignments etc.

This is not technological terrain that the editors of H-World have tread before. But, our new platform should support such a thing should subscribers which to develop such a forum a create the materials for it.

As Prof. Mitchell notes, not everyone is in a position to travel. But we do have a format that can support these ideas.

I can't speak for teachers generally, but I can speak for my "type" of teacher and give suggestions as to what my type of teacher would want from such a conference or resource guide. I am a dually credentialed teacher in social science and special education so I teach a self-contained special education class in the areas of world history, US history, and government/economics. I work with students who have mild/moderate disabilities. They read and write below grade level, but they often comprehend or analyze material at grade level. These currents are crosscut by demographics because my students live in a large urban district. Many are low SES and speak a foreign language at home (mostly Armenian and Spanish).

These cultural crosscurrents make teaching a history course difficult because they don’t necessarily have the socio-historical perspective that many other Americans share because many haven’t been outside their town or city or visited museums, etc. This is not to say that they have no history. They have access to social networks through their mobile phones and share an interesting sociological perspective that seems very unique to the urban area of Los Angeles. Meeting with parents and learning about the shared history of the area has been an interesting move for me as well.

Professionally I already try to take advantage of local PDs that cater toward history teachers in California. This past summer, I visited New York through Gilder Lehrman to study women in American History and I went through the Cold War PD at Long Beach. Both trainings were great quality and I really enjoyed them, but I find it hard to bring those ideas back into the classroom. I always feel like I personally learn a lot and I find new ways to look at history, but I have difficulty using the material without making significant changes to the material. This may just be because of the population that I teach and the difficulties that they face, but many of the general education teachers face similar difficulties. I am a member of “The History Teacher” Journal and I try to keep up with the local education union’s professional organizations. I would like to branch out more, but the cost of membership can be quite overwhelming on a high school teacher’s salary.

The main way to increase teacher interest is to provide funding for them to either attend events free of cost or to provide a stipend for attending. This is what I look for when I’m applying for conferences. The $500 price tag on many professional developments is cost prohibitive for me and LAUSD is constantly fighting to hold on to every penny due to declining enrollment so there isn’t a lot of money for teacher PD.

I think the biggest struggle for me in teaching World History is to truly make it “world” history and not just European History. This is due partly to the fact that many textbooks still center the modern world around American and Europe. The other problem is scope and sequence. How can I teach a world history course that looks at global phenomenon while touching down every now and then from the 50,000 feet to discuss something from a close range? I will be checking out the SDSU site because I have not checked them out before.

Specifically, I think I would like to know how to incorporate Asia and Africa into a World History course without just dropping names of their leaders or important figures and then moving back to Europe. Currently, I use colonialism and decolonization as a major framework for teaching the Cold War, but I’m trying to find a rug to really tie that room together.

Eric Martin has included the links provided by Prof. Mitchell as part of a sub-section on resources for K-12 teachers. Thanks Eric! You can find it, alongside other links that might be of interest, in the "Links to Programs, Organizations, Journals, and Resources" section. More suggestions for resources are always welcome!

Daniel,

This pertains to your second to last paragraph only - though I feel your pain on the rest, too. I think you are better off sticking to that ground level and bringing the 50,000 foot perspective in only by bringing it down to that level too. All the discussion here about "theory" (whatever that word even means in terms of history) frankly seems pointless to me given your challenge, which I feel is the key challenge, and not just for teachers of special ed groups, etc. As to wanting to move to the entire "world" as opposed to "European," it just seems to me to be a recipe to go from 50,000 to 100,000 feet. Just a higher even more remote level of abstraction. Why bother? Do you really think the fact that your kids have different backgrounds from other kids means they can only relate to stuff connected to their different backgrounds? I mean they are citizens of Los Angeles, a global city shaped by many forces but overwhelmingly by institutions and customs derived from the West. All you do by pressuring yourself to do "world" instead of "Europe" is keep the kids flying high and out of sight. In any case, you can do both from the ground level, in my view. If you want to go around the world, for example, why not show your kids Michelangelo's "David," a short passage of the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Terracotta army of the first Qin emperor. (I am not saying these three are related, just that they are three ground-level approaches to big topics.) My guess is all three of these will require the same effort for you to help the kids distance themselves from their own perspectives and identities to get back into those of the past. The Italian kid will be just as bewildered and astounded by "David," as the Indian kid will be by the Bhagavad Gita. And no one will be able to fathom easily why a great emperor would want all those statues down there in the dust with him. History is an encounter with other people who thought and acted in alien ways. You can't have the encounter from 50,000 feet up.

I think that your point about using physical objects or important texts is very important and needed in history. I have found that using things like visual culture gives students something to hang their hat on. Students remember the material better if they have something tangible to think back on. I definitely take your points and I dislike people who make world history for the sake of world history. I also understand the political reasons why many states want us to focus more on things that are western. There is still a sense that history ought to focus on ideas that more directly impact American or western values. I just think that a class titled "Modern World History" ought to roughly cover all the parts of the world at least somewhat relatively equitably. We can call it "European history" if we want to focus on Europe, but I just have a problem with calling it World History of 75% of the class is European or American.

Hello,

I teach Ancient World History to 8th graders in a rural, university town in Idaho and as I have been working to develop curriculum over the years, I have been grateful to find multiple resources to utilize (in addition to World History for Us All and a few others already mentioned) and they are listed at the bottom of my post.  As I have been building curriculum and working to help kids develop skills, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out a meaningful way for students to learn some interesting things about the past and also begin to see the bigger picture, break down how/why societies organize the way they do, how/why civilizations rise and fall and so on.  It is my hope they begin to see commonalities and patterns, to think about conflict and ways to resolve conflict, to question and try to answer why there are have and have-not groups, to understand the roles geography, resources, technology, and belief systems play in order to try and have a broader picture of the world around them and to make connections to the modern world.  I have no idea if how I go about it is the best way, but it is where I am at right now.

We start off the year talking about the "creation" of history, what the terms bias and perspective mean, and use a fun book called "Motel of the Mysteries" to help them understand the concepts.  Frequent questions throughout the year are "Whose perspective is this?, How might the person on the other side view this?, Whose voice is missing from this?", and others to help them see history is sort of liking having a giant jigsaw puzzle and some of the pieces are missing.    

We operate off of a set of "essential questions" and periodically they select one to answer using content and evidence related to the unit(s) of study.  Recently, they were asked to write about Ancient India and/or Ancient China.  As they have progressed through the year and we have been practicing this skill, they have gotten much better at making connections across the different civilizations we explored and to modern times, digging deeper with their responses, and demonstrating reflection.  In the last prompt, some chose to talk about the origins of the caste system in India and the modern issues connected with it and others to address how tomb items explored helped them understand Chinese history, and a few even tackled how they believed the idea of the "Mandate of Heaven" influenced the perspectives of Chinese historians.  It sincerely seems like it is working for them.   

As a class, we view a lot of artifacts, look at many excerpts from primary sources, and they love anything interactive they can do with technology (for instance, touring Chauvet Cave, pulling the brains out through the nose with a hook, exploring Assyrian reliefs, and much more).  They have opportunities to explore topics of their choice in order to practice research, writing,  and presentation skills; this also allows them to be creative and formulate their own questions, which has also seemed to work extremely well the last several years.  However, I am always open to learning new strategies, incorporating new resources, and refining my craft so please feel free to share.  As for the work so many university professors and others are doing to help me bring ancient history alive for my students, you have my infinite appreciation!  Below is just a sampling of their wares that I have come to rely upon and that my students enjoy.  

 

Suggested Resources (not in a particular order):

I just wanted to say how impressed I am with what Angie Bailey's doing with her 8th graders -- and the variety of her resources is likewise wonderful.

I second Dr. Burkholder, and included the links in our resources section.

If I may add to various of the points raised here:

(1) As a community college instructor, I have basically "learned on the job" when it comes to teaching world history (I mostly teach online and cover the first half). It would be a wonderful opportunity if there were a way to either have more local workshops, where HS & college faculty could come together and spend a week or so "catching up" with some of the newer research as well as approaches to teaching world history. 

(2) Another alternative would be to join a grad seminar in World History, offered by a university in a given area. Perhaps an "educator's discount"? Again, the purpose wouldn't be so much to write a seminar paper, but to play a bit of "catch up" for those of us who just came to the field because we were asked to teach a section.

(3) +1 for the Panorama textbook--I acquired a copy at the AP World History grading and it is very well done!

(4) Speaking of (3): this coming June, as has been true for years, thousands of HS and college faculty will be attending the world History grading session in Salt Lake City. This seems a more than appropriate venue to set up smaller venues after the grading of essays (assuming we are still coherent!) perhaps sponsored by either the WHA or the local affiliate to begin meeting/discussing some of the issues/topics articulated by Prof. Mitchell.

(5) Lastly, I echo the suggestion on different materials to use in world history class. I am an enthusiastic user of audio, from the wonderful History of the World in 100 Objects to other wonderful resources produced by the BBC. For example, there's an audio, full cast production called Falco. Set in the Roman Empire, he is a detective--what's wonderful about this is that the story is interesting, but integrated are aspects of the Roman world that can be used for discussion (a scene where his family at home prays to the gods can be used to illustrate Roman religion). Both audio and video is what I call CSI:Middle Ages, as presented by Brother Cadfael Mysteries. Again, the possible avenues are crime, the Church/monastery, technology, etc. One last example: a company called GraphicAudio produces full cast productions. One series, North America's Forgotten Past can be used for a unit n the Americas.  
A sample is available here, http://www.graphicaudio.net/extended-samples

I, too, would like to thank Ms. Bailey for her generosity in sharing not only the links, but her teaching philosophy. This is tremendously valuable.

Thank you Angie for this excellent list, which I have already tucked safely away. Although I haven't taught 8th graders, one of my go-to primary source text references for Mesopotamia is a site with translations of early cuneiform. The language is basic and easily understood, while the numerous subjects provide insight into first urban settlements, irrigation, regional commodities and trade networks, you name it. Good lead-in for Sargon, Hammurapi, etc. Your class sounds terrific. Lucky students!

ETCSL Project (Online). Enki and Ninhursaja. Oxford, UK: Faculty of Oriental Studies,
University of Oxford, 2006.
--------, Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta. Oxford, UK: Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of
Oxford, 2006.
<http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk.htm//&gt;

New teachers of World History need to develop a conceptual understanding of the discipline. Once this is accomplished, they can use it to plan, teach and assess. I agree with earlier comments that the best way for this to occur would be through local workshops sponsored by the local WHA affiliates.

I agree with Tom on both counts, sort of...

New teachers would greatly benefit from a conceptual understanding of the discipline they have been assigned to teach. And local workshops sponsored by the local WHA affiliates is a very good place to work on developing such an understanding. But perhaps the WHA, the WHA locals, and the H-World community could also consider utilizing the technological platform H-World offers for something other than text exchange.

I can imagine the presentations of a workshop at the WHA June meeting being recorded and being posted here on H-World, along with any downloads of any handouts.

I can imagine the H-World editorial staff working with motivated individuals who wanted to experiment with developing a teacher workshop specifically designed for H-World.

I can imagine collecting one such workshop from the WHA June meeting, one or two from the WHA affiliate meetings, and running one specifically for H-World annually. Over the course of time, we could develop a fairly robust set of workshops housed on H-World so that a new teacher would be able to spend a week doing a crash course on developing a conceptual understanding of the discipline which they have been asked to teach.

Several ideas come to mind, but I propose the following for the moment:

-- Perhaps there is an appropriate workshop being planned for the WHA in June to experiment on? If so, H-World would need permission (and a volunteer) to record the session and well as a volunteer to make sure that digital copies of all the handouts were secured. These two (or more?) volunteers need not be tied to offering their time to H-World for any future projects, just this one. It might even be a good job for a graduate student looking for a way to be more involved with the field.

I am happy to be the H-World contact for this experiment both in terms of helping to organize it and getting the material posted. But, I will not be in Savannah.

Speaking to Eric's points, as someone who has taught at the secondary level, I would say some sort of digital recording of WHA events could prove quite valuable to teachers. Workshops of this nature are quite helpful for teachers, but a common problem is the ability to attend them. Not all schools are able to provide compensation to teachers who take time off to attend conferences/ workshops, which can dissuade teachers from going. Online material can give teachers easier access and not punish them for missing the actual events.