HIST 398 Blog

 I am student teaching at Mather High School and my school's greatest asset when it comes to diversity is immigration. My school caters to many immigrant and refugee students. I teach 3 ESL classes so many of my students are from countries around the world. A lot of my students came from Africa, the Middle East, or Asia. I brought this into my curriculum in a lesson during which I introduced China. We began a new unit in my world studies class on Ancient China and I introduced it through a discussion of culture. I started out by having students look at a website with live statistics on the world population. First students had some time to explore and play with the website, then I directed them to look at China. Once they saw the statistics, I told them that people are not just numbers, they have culture. We watched a video in which two Chinese women explained some cultural differences between China and the West. Once they concluded speaking on  a topic, I asked my students how...

 Two major issues of equity and access in my school are internet and the distance to school. Many of my students struggle with their internet connection. Being in class is vital to learning. Students who miss class fall behind on curriculum and may not understand the materials and content as well as their peers. Many of my students will alert me of internet issues that they may have. During class, students will write in the chat that they might have to leave class because of a poor internet connection. Students may show up late to class because of internet connection and miss out on vital introductions to class, leading them to be confused during the period. While many students voice their internet problems, even more say nothing. I'm sure there are a lot more internet issues going on in my classes than I realize. A second issue of access is the students' distance to school. While this problem has decreased due to e-learning, it can still affect students through extra curricula...

 I have made much use of social studies theories and research to improve my knowledge during my student teaching. I just finished my unit on African Empires and next week I will be beginning a unit on China, starting right after the fall of the Han Dynasty. Both of these topics, I knew little about before teaching them. I told my coteacher that I had been doing a lot of research and she related saying that our education was mostly centered on Europe so there is a bit of a learning curve for us teachers. She told me the textbook is a good starting place for learning about the topics. So I read the textbook before I create my units. The textbook is mostly centered on military and political history. It will describe the different rulers, empires or dynasties, their accomplishments and their wars. When the textbook mentions culture it does so in the most dry and vague way possible. For example, when describing the Period of Disunion in Chinese history, it says that this was a great tim...

 I have used my skills in social studies research to improve my civic dispositions in my ESL Civics class. I have used social studies research skills like corroboration and finding multiple perspectives. This in turn has also improved my Civic disposition. I took over my third class, beginning this week. It is an ESL Civics class. The first new topic I will be presenting to the students is on the minimum wage, specifically the proposed increase to $15 an hour in the American Rescue Plan. I did a lot of research to find good materials to use in my class for activities and explanations. I looked at multiple sources for two main reasons. First, I looked at multiple sources to avoid bias. If I found one article that was pro minimum wage, that was okay but then I had to find a counter article that was against the minimum wage. Articles that I found did not show a bias, I used at introductory articles to the topic. Second, I looked at multiple sources so that I could find the best source...