Today, I attended a session lead by @micahshippee entitled, "Hey! Ho! Let's Go! 360 Fieldtrips: Videos & Photospheres"

I can't tell you everything that I learned today, because eventually I need to go to sleep. But...I've got to share some highlights.

I approached this session with the "NEW" Mississippi Social Studies Standards in mind. When my beloved teachers bemoaned having to teach the boring 4th grade standards, my mind blazed with ideas of ways for all of us to learn more about good ole Mississippi. While many things can be said about Mississippi, our history is ANYTHING but boring!

I want my teachers to fall in love with learning about our state. (Psst....learning is fun. I want my teachers and my students to experience the joy of learning something new. I want them to feel the pleasure of neurons firing and rewiring those boring neural pathways.)

Y'all, truth is our students are leaving our schools maleducated. Somewhere along the line, we've decided that we can't teach kids to read while teaching them social studies or science.

You can ask my teachers, I've fallen victim to the same lie. I'm raising my hand to confess my sins, our sins. This isn't about finger pointing.

Hello, Mississippi! No wonder, our students aren't literate.

We have challenges. Complex challenges. I'm not attempting to minimize the complexity of the dynamics of literacy in Mississippi. I am going to force myself not to fall down this rabbit hole, because I'd really like to...but, another day. #RosieRabbitHole

I can't help but think how our students are literally crying out for us to take the burden off their shoulders.

Please don't think I'm simplifing the challenges of kids today. Again, that is an incredibly complex discussion for another day, again. #RosieRabbitHole

If you've never read A Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, I highly recommend it. Much is to be learned from the well developed thoughts of another.

While Micah Shippee was presenting today, I couldn't help but think Susan Wise Bauer's comments on "history" in our schools.

"A common assumption made by history programs seems to be that children can’t comprehend (or be interested in) people and events distant from their own experience. So the first-grade history class is renamed Social Studies and begins with what what the child knows — first herself and her family, then her community, her state, her country, and only then the rest of the world."

"This intensely self-focused pattern of study encourages the student of history to relate everything she studies to herself, to measure the cultures and customs of other peoples by her own experience. If you begin your child with herself and only then move outwards, you can easily give her the impression that she is the center of the universe, and that history which doesn’t directly coincide with her particular wants and preoccupations is unnecessary."

"The goal of the classical curriculum is entirely different. The student learns the proper place of her community, her state, and her country by seeing the broad sweep of history from its beginning and then fitting her own time and place into the pattern."

Students and teachers hold the world in their hands.

What if the very device that in one hand burdens students (with endless comparison kill joys via their choice of social media outlets) could be switched to the other hand to set students free from the "self-focused pattern" placing her story into the timeline of history and the geography of the world.

Can Geoguessr do all of that?

Well, I doubt it...but, I think it is start.

-Rosie King