How have you made use of social studies theories and research to improve your knowledge during your internship?

 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 time for cultural mixing in China but gives no examples. I think this would be a really interesting topic and that my students would be intrigued to learn about it, however the textbook does not give any examples and I have not been able to find anything about it online. The textbook is mostly focused on military and political history so when I create my units I like to liven it up by focusing on cultural history. Using cultural history brings the textbook to life and makes the material more interesting for students to learn about. My knowledge of history has greatly improved by researching both political and cultural history when creating lessons for my students.