My copy of Teaching the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework: Exploring Inquiry-based Instruction in Social Studies came in the mail today. As I’m still a student in my education program, I get very excited whenever I get mail from the National Council for the Social Studies. It makes me feel more like a professional. At the same time, I have a habit of bringing the latest mail from them to class and showing it to the only other social studies content area person in my class.
I was just as excited to see a chapter entitled: “What did I get myself into?: Guiding Students through the National History Day Process”. Why?
Because I had the world’s most horrible time getting through my National History Day project in ninth grade. That memory is still freshly etched into my mind. And the title of the chapter “What did I get myself into?” is exactly how I felt about that project.
Don’t get me wrong. I think NHD is brilliant. It focuses on what students want to learn and gets them to meet standards at the same time.
At the time, I thought hurricanes were a pretty awesome topic. It was either that or I thought that FEMA was a funny sounding name. I’m not sure which. So I decided to do FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and hurricanes.
I loved my teacher that year. He was expressive. He made history interesting (not that I ever ended up learning the material that was covered on the test). He was passionate. He was hard.
I’m not entirely sure how I made it in to honors in the first place, but unlike a large chunk of the class at the beginning of the year, I decided to stick it out and do my best. I had been under the impression up until that point that I was an amazing student. Without studying.
Suffice it to say this was the year my parents ended up hiring my eighth grade history teacher to help me pass those tests that I wasn’t doing well on. It was thought – by everyone, my ninth grade history teacher included – that National History Day would help me improve my grade.
Of course, this was also the year that I learned that you need to follow the evidence, not just report what you want.
I’m sure there were other factors involved in the poor grade I ended up receiving, but the biggest one for me is that all my evidence was telling me how awful FEMA was, and I was hell bent on finding evidence that said FEMA was amazing. I’m also convinced that if someone had pointed out to me what I was doing, I could have turned my project around.
I will also note that someone may have pointed out to me and I didn’t hear them…
However, my point here is this: Feedback to students needs to be clear. It needs to be multi-modal if necessary to get the point across. The chapter in the NCSS’ latest publication on National History Day does mention feedback somewhat:
“Require a storyboard/outline and a plan. Critique and then require that it be edited. Make sure students are not creating bad projects.” (pg 65)
Let me stress this again: “Make sure students are not creating bad projects.”
I learned a lesson from National History Day. Unfortunately, it came at the cost of my grade, but I did learn a lesson and it’s two-fold.
Follow your gut, not your pigheaded brain. And give your students clear, thorough feedback.