Template for Class Unit & Performance Assessment Ideas

Planning Template

(p. 30 Tomlinson and McTighe)

Stage I – Desired Results
Established Goal(s) [all standards/proficiencies]: (VT H&SS7-8:14): Identifying problems, proposing solutions, and considering the effects of a course of action in the local community, state, nation, or world. INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, AND INSTITUTIONS (National Standards for Social Studies Teachers): Social studies teachers should possess the knowledge, capabilities, and dispositions to organize and provide instruction at the appropriate school level for the study of interactions among Individuals, Groups, and Institutions. Learner Expectations Institutions such as schools, religions, families, governments, and businesses all play major roles in our lives. These and other institutions exert enormous influence over us, yet they are no more than organizational embodiments to further the core social values of those who comprise them.
Understanding (s): Students will understand that… - Local, State, and National governments allow citizens to participate in different manners, each level and branch of government serve a different purpose for the people. -When students identify the potential problems in the world, they have a responsibility to propose solutions to reconcile issues within their community. - Citizens may have competing interests, some of which people may disagree with, but that does not mean these people do not deserve a voice equal to ours in the political process. - Many decisions that are made both by representatives and citizens have profound and meaningful change to our society, and we hold a responsibility to ensure that we do not restrict the rights of others in the process.	Essential Question(s): -What purpose does the government serve? -What does a civically active citizen look like? -How can we make a difference and propose solutions?
Students will know…                                                           Students will be able to…                                            -that as the largest stakeholder in education, they do in fact have a voice,  and will find various outlets to be heard properly. -Critically examine past legislation and actions, while connecting the legacy that said legislation has carried. -Defend their own personal convictions in an academic manner while maintaining decorum appropriate for the intended audience. -Become active citizens that take stake in their lives through creating projects and volunteering in their community to ensure that they are leaving the world a better place.

Performance Assessment Ideas

Performance Assessment Map

One of the most basic functions of education is to ensure that students are actively engaged citizens within their local, state, and national government. The youth population (10-19) makes up nearly 42 million Americans, or 13% of the total population. These 42 million citizens are going to become eligible voters, and participants in our society, yet oftentimes, students are not necessarily taught how to make a difference within the government and their communities. Most civic classes (if they are even offered) merely teach about the branches of government and the history of government, as opposed to how one can be an agent of change in society. As a future educator within this field of study, I feel it is my obligation to ensure my students know that they matter in our world, and they can in fact, make a meaningful difference.

My unit is geared towards proposing solutions to the problems that students face in the world. This reflects with the VT Proficiencies (as seen in the Ubd table), students should be able to make critical inquires about our government and sociopolitical issues and discuss how they can resolve these matters. The first performance assessment idea I had is to have students create a TedTalk like presentation, in which students choose an issue of their choice and present to the school. Members from outside of the school will be invited, including the school committee, and local representatives. Considering that 7th grade is an age where many students are unsure about their identity and their self esteem is typically lower than at other ages in life, it is important that students will feel comfortable enough to present to the school, and that starts with two factors: Creating a positive, and supportive community in the school, and also having periodical practice presentations and reports within the class. This establishes a sense of confidence for the students to have, as well as time of honest, and constructive peer feedback.

Another form of performance assessment would be a blend of community service, or a service project involving some type of change within society (whether locally, or globally). Students would get to choose their form of community service, or advocacy work to ensure that students can properly question and inquire about their world, while simultaneously proposing solutions to societal problems. For both of these types of civic engagement opportunities, students would collect evidence of their progress through a portfolio. This portfolio would include a weekly blog/report (1-2 paragraphs), as well as having a reflection paper at the end of the unit, explaining what they have learned, and how they can make a difference. I understand that some students may not have the access after school to get to volunteering opportunities, and I would never want to add that burden to a struggling family, so an alternative component would be that students could write a paper of how they would propose a solution to common problem in the community, and what avenues they could take to resolve said issue. Providing choice for learning styles is an integral component towards fostering high levels of engagement for students. Every student has different learning personalities, and I want to be able to harness their preferences so they can build their confidence of making change in our world.

I would connect this unit with PC 7.1: Knowledge of Content Area, because this incorporates my prior knowledge of history and political science in order to establish a rigorous learning experience. In high school, my sophomore history teacher had us take the time of learning how to send a letter to our representative, and ensuring that we would get a response. Representatives (or their staff) are legally obligated to write back to people if they end their letter requesting a response. In addition, my teacher had our class research a subject that we were writing about, and he had us explain to our class why we chose a topic, and what we learned about this concern. This helped us look into research, and dissect policy that can seem foreign and not very intuitive to most readers. I am also adamant as a political science major, that we need to inform everyone of how government officials are public servants that work for us, and are meant to serve our interests. The apathy of our current government and lack of voter turnout has been deeply concerning to me, and I am more frightened by the negligence of our school systems not teaching how students can be civically engaged.

My proficiency in being civically engaged has been mostly experiential and having the privilege of merely being in the right place and the right time. My past experiences have included serving on the Massachusetts Board of Elementary & Secondary Education, where I represented the concerns of my peers, as well as working with the National Association of State Boards of Education, where I was able to advocate for how policymakers could incorporate student engagement as a part of best practices. I am currently working with the Vermont Agency of Education, the D.C. State Board of Education, and Apple to work on creating meaningful student constituencies that have a voice in their education, since students are the largest stakeholder in education. Through these experiences, I have learned how people can participate and advocate for themselves to create policy that benefits their demographic. I vehemently oppose the notion that I can ever learn enough to be an expert in a field. Instead, I believe that I am the least important, and least knowledgeable person in the room, because that allows me to learn from others. Learning about government participation is constantly evolving, meaning that I will be forever learning more about how we can become advocates for our concerns in government.

Explain Everything/Shadow Puppet Reflections

One of the quintessential aspects of being a quality educator is the ability to digest complex information within one’s content area, and be able to illustrate the central themes in a way that makes sense to all students.

I am taking two ED classes currently (Literacy & Curriculum), and within these two classes, we have recently worked on creating a visual tool to display our content areas, as well as our preferred content theories in a way that demonstrates our comprehension of the material. For my literacy class, we were assigned the task of making a Shadow Puppet presentation with a partner, to demonstrate collaborative efforts, as well as presenting our content areas in an engaging manner. Additionally, for my curriculum course, we were designated the responsibility of designing an Explain Everything presentation that shows our ability to both navigate through multiple apps so we can utilize programs effectively with our future students, and to display our understanding of what content theory we best align with.

Within my study of political science, ideologies and texts is continuously expanding since it is very much a study of the human condition. When Katelyn Crandall and I worked on our Shadow Puppet Project, we both collaborated and discussed what might be our central themes within our respective disciplines (Katelyn is a math major). We both were working together to firstly figure out what essentials can we pick out from our other majors to ensure that we convey the key elements to both math and political science. We both had a conversation, and drafted an outline of a script to ensure that we could attempt to condense the breadth of our studies into a five minute presentation. When we both finished our script, we provided evidence for P.C. 5.2  to show our collaboration efforts and that link is provided HERE:

Through this collaboration, we were also able to articulate the primary ideas within our respective fields of study, which connects P.C. 4.1. Being able to condense an augmenting field of study and showcase the provisions within a content area demonstrates a high level of comprehension in regards to working with the material. Within our Shadow Puppet, I discussed how civics and history are more than just text oriented documents, they are living breathing accounts of the world in which we currently live, and to better understand who we are as a society, and as the human race, it is pivotal that we understand the major events and socio-political movements that preceded us.

In addition to history being a study of the human condition, it is necessary to break the barriers between your students and your audience when dealing with the misconceptions of a particular study. In our shadow puppet, we both described common misconceptions of the way people view literacy within both math and political science which connects to P.C. 4.2.. For example, people may assume that history deals with primary and secondary documents. Though this statement is true, it is also misleading in the useage of the word, “documents.” Documents can be more than text oriented artifacts, the discipline of history and political science deals with all aspects of human life, whether this is artwork that demonstrates personal or societal struggle, or perhaps history is analyzing Star Wars, and viewing with a critical eye and connecting parallels between the fictional Sci-Fi Thriller, and World War II. There is tremendous brevity in regards to how an educator could demonstrate that history and political science is more than books, history is the culmination of our lives!

Furthermore, I utilized Explain Everything, an app that allows people to make tutorials of presentations to educate others. For example, my Explain Everything was about Humanism, which is an educational theory that promotes personal choice, and having an educator act as a facilitator in order to best engage the students which instills the desire to learn. Within this Explain Everything, I discussed what drives me to excel as a future educator. We have a substantial population of youth in the United States, yet the interactions between adults and students are so sparse, in terms of having a meaningful dialog about what future do we envision for ourselves, whether it is a vision of government, education, or how we treat others. When the current education system has largely (not in all cases) decided that education is a top down process in which no experience or learning can be received by educators, administration, or policymakers when students are talking, we completely shut off and hinder how successful our society will be. I vehemently oppose the notion of having a classroom be a top down process, when we have the ability to learn from each other and grow as citizens in our world. I don’t merely want to teach my students, I want to learn with my students and ensure that we are doing our part to create a better world and better community. I believe this aligns well with the Saint Michael’s Education Department and their mission statement including the section on having passionate educators.

Outside of school, I have been working closely with high school students in Vermont, and Washington D.C. to create student advisory councils, or an entity of students that can present information to the state boards of education. These two boards also have student members that preside, and by allowing the student representatives on the board to have a constituency, they can work together to implement and promote well-constructed educational initiatives that will better the lives of all stakeholders in education. When I work with these students, I do not simply tell them what they should do, nor am I trying to teach them a lesson. To the contrary, I believe that the only way one can truly learn is that one must genuinely believe they are the least important, and least knowledgeable person in the room. When I work with these students, I ask them what they want to do on a local, state, and national level and what their short term and long term goals are. From here, I do my best to suggest the best practices involved with making their goals an actuality. Through my political science, and secondary education program at Saint Mike’s, I have learned both theories and strategies that help me take my content area and apply it to meaningful issues on a local and national level, to ensure that all students can be heard, and I believe this connects with P.C. 5.1.

In the future, I do want to be an educator, but I feel that I would be better suited for working at an educational agency, or consortium, in which I could do field work to learn more about what is going on in all of the classrooms, and what experiences are missing in schools, in order to enhance the quality of learning within school systems. I want to continue to work with secondary students from across the country to build the largest stakeholder in education and to affirm their role and solidify their voice so other stakeholders will be able and willing to hear their voices.

The Digital Literacy Disconnect: Ignoring the Elephant in the Room

The Disconnect: Policymakers & Educators

Recently, my education courses have inadvertently highlighted a significant discrepancy between how digital literacy is being implemented and what students actually need to learn. In the past week, I was assigned to read an article from The Atlantic, entitled: “Digital Natives, Yet Strangers to the Web, which can be viewed below:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/04/digital-natives-yet-strangers-to-the-web/390990/  

This article offers compelling insight into the fact that the fears of adults have largely driven what students have been learning in terms of digital learning. This article poses both an intriguing and engaging question in regards to whether or not our school system is adequately teaching students how to integrate technology into their lives in a meaningful way.

This skepticism can also be validated with substantial research that has been conducted by Digital Learning now, an initiative with the ExcelInEd Foundation. Digital Learning now has 10 different metrics in terms of how to measure how a state manages digital literacy/digital learning, some of these metrics include, but are not limited to: Quality content, instruction, eligibility, and accessibility. As of the 2014-2015 school year, out of the 50 states within America, 24 states have received the grades of a D or an F. In other words, this means 48% of students in America are receiving below normal, or even abysmal services in regards to digital learning, which is not only incredibly disadvantageous to our students, but it is a complete disservice to any other stakeholder in the education system (for more information, please visit: http://www.digitallearningnow.com/report-card/).

The Elephant in the Room: Students

Stakeholders have been working diligently to resolve the daunting issues pertaining to the technological boom, and how students can learn effectively with technology and instruction of technology, yet nearly every policymaker has completely and utterly disregarded the elephant in the room. In fact, this elephant happens to be, by far the largest stakeholder in education, the students. Why haven’t we engaged our students in the discussion of technology? Why aren’t we tapping into the first generation of students that have been born in the age of the internet or the computer? Why aren’t we asking what they think is the quintessential aspect of digital learning? The boards of education are silent in this country, and so is the state legislatures when it concerns the inclusion of students in the conversation, and that is the greatest disservice of all within this potential educational crisis. That being said, there are some state agencies, such as Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education that have a student serve on a Digital Learning Council, but a sporadic instance of a couple of students serving one some agencies is not enough to engage the 14.8 million high school students within these United States. Let’s change the conversation and ensure that all stakeholders are being engaged and invited to policy discussions. This can be accomplished through existing student advisory councils across the country creating a digital learning task force that reports to their respective Departments of Education.