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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