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The Peopling of the World

           Recently I cruised through an Upper School ninth grade history class where students were grappling with the history of the human race. It looked quite different than the Western Civilization classes I had visited in the same classrooms just a few years ago. In this class, we started with essential questions – the why behind the exercise of the class. We were being asked to consider whether or not people ultimately made their way to the Americas by one method or many methods – apparently a historical debate that has raged for quite sometime. It was a question without a clear answer, even in the world of our adult scholarship, but our ninth graders were going to take it on in a 45 minute period one Wednesday morning in History class.


            The kids were paired off – with one computer a piece – to consider eight different archaeological findings including names like Kennewick Man, Buhl Woman, and Luzia Woman. While I am sure these are all famously known by our parents, I had literally never heard of any of them. The teacher set the kids off with some basic who, what, when, and where parameters and were given about ten minutes. At the end of that ten minutes, all of these famous archaeological discoveries had been researched and catalogued by the ninth graders. We began the process of sharing our findings. What our teacher was able to do so masterfully, however, was push the students further. After they had the facts, he asked them to construct meaning by asking questions like: what does this one tell us about how people possibly migrating 12,000 years ago? Does it seem reasonable? What are the problems with some of these theories we are considering? All of this was integrated with images facilitated through technology. It was not seventeen kids coming up with seventeen factual reports but a class of our ninth graders collectively building a theory about the history of humans through research. I actually forgot where I was, as I was spellbound but the possibilities of our ancestors as a nation. 


            For me this was Curriculum 2020 in action in our classrooms already - today. Rather than being asked to learn a fact or theory and remember it for a test, our students were creating the theories. Rather than read facts out of a textbook, our kids were actually seeking out the content on their own. It was how they synthesized this content that actually mattered. I wish you could have been there with me, as I bet you would have lost yourself for a moment as well. It gave me hope for our direction, and I found myself ready to go back to high school. I have not said that too many times in my life, for the record. I need to visit more classes more often.

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