Reflecting & Storytelling About Teaching
“Let’s go on an awe walk!” I said to my 8th grade U.S. History and Civics students at the beginning of second semester last year. We took five minutes to circle our building, head toward the soccer field, and come back along the fire lane. As these middle schoolers clustered like grapes, they looked for one thing… Continue reading
The last time I wrote here about my 8th grade U.S. history and civics students writing a letter to a politician was February 2020 – just before the pandemic upended traditional teaching practices and almost three years before ChatGPT and its fellow artificial agents… Continue reading
After almost three years of encouraging students to use large language models, my best suggestion is still to follow their advice! For a year-end reflective portfolio in May, about a quarter of my 8th grade U.S. history and civics students chose to write about… Continue reading
A decade ago, after a week of professional development through the Gilder Lehrman Institute at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, I wrote a piece on what I’d discovered being a student again: “10 Things I Learned Sitting in a Classroom.” This summer I had another incredible chance to be a social studies learner… Continue reading
Every once in a while, I think about dropping regular discussions of current events from my eighth-grade history and civics class. Why? It would be easier to teach about the dormant past, not the contentious present. There would be fewer… Continue reading
In all times and especially fluid times, we as social studies teachers can help students feel their own agency—beginning with understanding the news. In my classes, students bring in an annotated news article for homework once a week. On the other days, I start class with a brief overview of… Continue reading
During the past school year, I wanted my 8th grade civics classes to be a place where students could experiment creatively with AI through large language models and image generators. I believe that AI is increasingly a helpful co-intelligence… Continue reading
Many pedagogical books aim to reach “both busy precredentialed and veteran teachers,” as China Harvey and Lisa Herzig hope for Teaching Beyond the Timeline: Engaging Students in Thematic History. In both its realism and optimism, this book absolutely… Continue reading
But it’s in students’ weekly choices of current events that their classmates and I will learn what issues matter most to them, which is how students will start to care about politics as a whole, now and as they grow up… Continue reading
As a writer, eighth grade history teacher and school administrator, I’m as curious as anyone about what will happen when the robots eventually take over (more on that later). But after reading Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, I’m newly optimistic about the possibilities of AI in education – and trying to live more like … Continue reading
Sarah Cooper 