Teacher Poll

Monday, March 8, 2010

Loewen brought out an important point in his book, Teaching What Really Happened. He states that we, as teachers, need to enable students to see that their lives do have a larger meaning. All too often students see history only as something in the past that happened to other people. I agree with Loewen’s belief that researching the history of their own family, the school, or our local community helps students to see their own lives in a larger historical context. The links to the past are clearly evident in our area, and students should feel themselves to be a part of the chain of events that make up history. Although time constraints and testing schedules make such projects difficult I plan to incorporate some aspects of this type of research into future lessons. If you have done projects of this nature please let me know what worked most successfully for your students.

1 comment:

  1. I've let kids research local history as extra credit and post-EOCT assignments. It's always interesting to me how they moan and groan when I give the assignment, but most admit that they learned something new or even enjoyed doing the project/paper. One time we did an ABC book about Liberty County history...they had to find something that had to do with each letter that was related to the topic, then explain why it was important in LC history and provide a picture or drawing. Being a history nerd and from here, I think I take for granted that people know about Liberty County's past. It was really cool when kids were able to tie in Liberty County/South Georgia historical events with national historical events and timeframes.

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