I plan to teach in the surrounding area and coming from a military family will help me relate to students who also in a military family.  I worked at a recreation center over the summers and although i dealt mostly with 10-13 year old's, I feel like I can take most of my experience and apply it into a high school class room with a few distinctions. The social studies are seen as just remebering random facts, peoples, places, and dates. It is much more than that and I know I can bridge the gap between past to present in order to relate the material to todays world. 

I want to encourage discussion in my class. The social studies are typically lecture heavy and while i do not want to completely stray from that, i want the students to connect history to them and discuss how it makes them feel. I will be the captain and the students will be the sailors. Ill guide them with lecture get them where they need to be. I want to use Vygotsky's method in school, Zone of Proximial Development, in order to stimulate the students minds and help them bridge the gap between old information and new information. In schools I believe that it should not be 100% academic but a social space as well. These students spend a third of their days in the school and it needs to be a place that cultivates them and train them for global society. I feel like I lean towards a teacher centered model of learning in my classroom and focusing towards perennialism. Another very important belief I have is social reconstructivism in the classroom so the students can challange the norms and not be afraid to question.