Embedded Files
About Me
About Me
My name is Joseph Guercio, I am a secondary eduction with a focus in history and a minor in law. I have gathered strategies on how to teach about silenced parts of Americas recent past, as well as white washed versions of eurocentric history. Also incuded is how to simultaneously practice Chrisopher Edmin's call for teachers to involve academic content that is involved in the world that affects students. Ensuring that students lives and backgrounds are reflected in the ciriculum as well as the classroom will diversify the over used and under representive history that is taught to the youth.
This article by the Doyle's highlights what I strive to teach my students in the classroom. The period of time we are going through today is very revolutionary and peole do not seem to notice. There is a clear turnover power to the younger generation and now is a time to pave the way for a new way of learning. Thanks to many years of effort, the call to action of rewriting our countries history is relevant now more than ever. This is a chance to teach parts of history that have been silenced for generations thanks to the heiarchy in this country. Teachers should be elated and relieved to see freedom of teaching on the horizon.
In my classroom it will be vital for individual students to learn about their own heritage. A way that I could incorperate this into my classroom would be to create a project that allows for studnets to explore their own past and heritage. They would be able to highlight past historical figures that they find to be important to this countries history. The idea would be for studnets to engage with figures that relate to them.
This article is very important to many debates going on at board of ed meetings across the country. For some reason many communities are concerned about changing how history is tught. People think that highlighting different aspects os history and incorperting more is somehowunpatiotic. This is apparent with older generations and maybe have not learned about different aspects of history that have been silenced. The failure to aknowledge the oppresion of marganilized groups of people in our countries history is alarming and not teaching it in our public school system is truly wrong as well as injustice to the students.
Classrooms should incorperate more realisitc terminolgy of events that have happened in the past. For example, when teaching about the civil war textbooks seem to mention that slave owners were sometime nice or even that the North was a "safe haven" for African Americans. This is an over simplified and over glorfied telling of the story that should no longer be taught to kids. I would introduce students to racist practices that were put in place closer to home (in the case of New Jersey) than once taught. I believe that incorperating books that tell first hand encounters of what happened at signifigant points will help create a more well rounded understanding of what happened, allowing students to create their own thoughts on what happened.
Teaching relevant history to studnets is asimportant as the content itself. This article pointsout the factthat students are becoming more diverse. The core cirriculum of whitewashed history is not representative of the majority of youth students in America. There needs to be a reassessment of what histroy needs to be taught to our youth. A more worldly view would be very helpful to teaching a more full history. Annie Hall says, “No single account, written from one perspective, captures the complexity of the past,” . This is extremely accurate as new light gets shed on American History but history in general. I cannot stress enough the importance of teaching a rounded history that highlights as many divere aspects of the past that can relate to the class.
Being able to identify the different backgrounds of students in the classroom is the first step to teaching relevant history. With more ethnicities being in classrooms now more than ever, its important to highlight how their culutre has impacted the country. American history has a strong tendency to highlight white males who helped shape the country, but that is because of who is in charge. My clasroom will involve many more diverse lessons on minority firgues that have been left out of the textbooks to hopefully engage more of the students in the classroom.
The importance of understanding where the history that is being promoted to be taught in the ciriculum is coming from is important to be able to relate it to the classroom. The two books compared are from California and Texas, both on either side of the political spectrum show how local governments are choosing how certain aspects are taught. Today our classrooms should include dialogue on what history should be taught to the youth. Unsilencing a more complicated American history should be introduced at the secondary level to break the routine of having to relearn history at higher levels of education. In my schooling experience I was never taught the deep roots of racism within our country today. It should be incorporated in classrooms everywhere to highlight the importance of the mistreatment of marginalized groups of people by the white man.
In the classrooms textbooks should be used as the most baisc form of introducing topics that shape the countrys every chaning past. The facts remain but what is being brought to light to paint the past is the importance of understanding history. As a teacher of the youth it will be important to add a more well rounded understaning of our countries past. Historiography will be a main point in the classroom as well because knowing how your history is written can be more vital than the history itself.
As important as it is to have an inclusive and well rounded approach to teaching it can be hard to incorperate something into your classroom that may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable to teach. This can be for a variety of reasons but the most commonly coming from the unfamiliarity of the topice. Reading this article puts the brief time that African American history has been taught in schools. After reading this article I realize that African American culture is a vast one that is not even mentioned at lower levels of public education. Acknowledging African American history in oubkic education is long over due. When teaching in urban neighborhoods it is important to teach a relevant history. African Americans have been silenced for too long, it is a disservice to students that come from such a rich past. The lack of representation of African Americans in history disconnects African Americans thier past and makes school that much more boring.
In the classroom having a diverse background in history would be an easy way to teach about different narritives that have been taught for decades in schools. Teachers with a history focus are required to take diverse history courses that introduce studnets to history that may have never been taugtht to them before. The same texts and research should be brought into high school classrooms and be used to start critical converations. Creating these kinds of dilogues will lead to a more progressive wave of thinking allowing room for more change. The classroom should prepare students for new ideas that are going to be presented to them as they continue to learn new history.
Page updated
Report abuse