When my principal first switched me to social studies at my school, I was not especially happy with him. I had spent a whole year struggling to get a handle on how to teach reading and writing to middle schoolers, and now he wanted me to throw that all away ?!?!?! Not to mention the fact that I had to study for and take another Praxis test.
But now I'm starting to think this is the best thing EVER. Teaching social studies is (more or less) awesome. My kids aren't tested, but I wish they were, since they're so enthusiastic about stuff in my room. Not necessarily the parts of class where we take notes, of course, but I get to plan so much fun stuff for social studies. Today, I had more kids engaged in latitude and longitude game than I ever have before- we were racing in teams to track Carmen Sandiego (complete with some Rockapella background music...) across the globe, and kids were literally falling over each other to give me the correct answers and be the winning team. Talk about awesome! Well, maybe not the falling- we had to put a stop to that pretty quickly. We were supposed to have an assembly during class this afternoon- and the kids were actually glad that it got canceled because they wanted to finish the activity! Seriously, this is awesome. This is what teaching is supposed to be like.
And next week, my 8th graders are going to put the colonies on trial to see if they allowed as much religious freedom as we would expect they would based on their reasons for their founding. I am super-excited to get to that lesson next week- which makes me excited to go to school- which makes me happier all around.
Obviously, not every day gets to be this awesome, but its so nice to have the ones that are :) My kids can definitely get excited about education- you just have to find a way to make it worth their while.
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