History Dinner Party or The Course(s) of History

     

    I recently read a very interesting book called The Course of History: Ten Meals That Changed the World. The authors picked ten major events in history, like the Camp David Accords, Nixon's visit to China, the Big Three Tehran conference in WWII, and the Congress of Vienna, for example. Each event is described in great detail and context, and a major meal from the event is described. The entire menu is listed, and recipes are included. It's really well done, one of my favorite reads this year.  It also reminded me of a culminating project that I did often in my American, World, and European history classes (but it could also be easily adapted into just about any social studies class, or even literature class).

    The idea is a Dinner Party. I searched Histocrats Classroom blogs, and, apparently, I had never written it up for  blog, which I found surprising, because it's so much fun. I wish I could take credit for developing it, but like so many of the things I did in my classroom, I found the inspiration somewhere (who knows where?) and then adapted it to fit my style and needs. That's pretty much what all teachers do, right? So here's the germ of the idea, and you can make of it what you will.

   Imagine it's the end of the semester or the end of the year, and you want some comprehensive culminating project that will 

        1) demonstrate that some learning and synthesis have taken place, 

        2) not be a major stress-inducing activity for the students or for the teacher, and 

        3) not be a major headache to grade and should allow the teacher to be relatively lenient in grading         if he/she wants.

The Dinner Party is for you. It is totally adaptable to your needs or creativity.

    These are the directions I gave to my Advanced Placement European History class the last time I assigned it. I'll make comments in RED CAPS.

This project is your semester project and will count as your final, 20% of your grade. This assignment is meant as kind of a take-home test; do not speak with other  students about this project. INDIVIDUAL IDEAS. (INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS - YOUR CALL) This is a test of your comprehension of events   and should be solely your original work. 

1)  Imagine that you were going to host a dinner and invite 11 (TOTAL SHOULD BE EVEN, ANY NUMBER YOU WANT. I LIKED 10-12, AND I WANTED THE STUDENT TO INCLUDE HIMSELF/HERSELF, SO THEY HAD TO PICK 9 OR 11 PEOPLE.) figures from European history, or essential to European history, from about 1450 to today.   (We will assume that they can all speak English.) You must choose at least one figure from each century, 16^th through 20^th.  They may be famous, infamous or not.  That is, you may create a type character, like a participant in the Women’s March of the French Revolution for example.  You may even include up to 2 characters from fiction.

(YOU CREATE THE PARAMETERS FOR THE GUESTS. YOU MAY EVEN CREATE A LIST OF CHARACTERS FROM WHICH TO CHOOSE.  IF YOU DO THIS, GIVE THEM LOTS OF OPTIONS. ENCOURAGE THEM TO INVITE PEOPLE WHO WOULD MAKE IT INTERESTING. )

2)  You will create a book for your final product that must include (OF COURSE, THERE ARE A MILLION WAYS TO PRESENT THIS. I WAS OLD SCHOOL. IT CAN BE DONE WITH VARIOUS TECHNOLOGY, ON PAPER, ON POSTER BOARD, 3D, ETC)

          A)  a cover and title page

B)  a ½ to 1 page, double spaced, 12 font biography of each person invited (including yourself), complete with picture (ok if you don’t have a picture of yourself), maybe describe what they are wearing to the party

***C)  a full menu describing exactly what foods will be served and why you chose them

***D)  a diagram showing the arrangement of the room and the seating arrangement.  Describe the venue. Be sure to include a seat for yourself. Illustrate the table (will it be round, rectangular, many small tables?), and label each seat. 

E)  Next, write three to five pages double-spaced explaining your reasons for the seating chart. Be creative when predicting the sort of conversations that people might have with each other. What kinds of questions will they ask each other? Do you expect that there will be any arguments over politics or other subjects? What do these people have in common or what might they learn from each other? Who will dominate conversation? Why? Who do you want to sit next to? What do you want to talk about with them?  Why did you select these people?  Remember, a good host plans a party that encourages conversation, debate, and discussion.  Most of the time you hope it’s all positive; sometimes, however, things happen….

***Do C & D on a posterboard or  ½ posterboard.

(YOU CAN ASK FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT. I HAD STUDENTS WHO WROTE A COUPLE OF PAGES OF NARRATIVE, AND I HAD STUDENTS WHO WROTE SCRIPTS, COMPLETE WITH STAGE DIRECTIONS.)

    I wish I had some examples, but maybe this is enough to get you going. And you can find a lot of other "Dinner Party" assignments, rubrics and examples online.

Thomas Nast, "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner,"1869

The Pandemic and the Classroom, A Teacher's View

  (Since I retired at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, I asked a current teacher, Justin Sumner, to write a guest blog on his reflection of the teaching during the past school year. --- Jeff Burns)

Born and raised in Georgia, Mr. Sumner graduated high school in 2010 from Mary Persons High, earned his B.A. in history from Gordon State College then proceeded to earn a Master’s in Education from Georgia Southern and a Specialist in Education from West Georgia. He began teaching at Ola High in McDonough Georgia immediately after graduating from Gordon in January 2015 and has since taught a wide array of Social Studies courses. These include: Geography, World History, Psychology, Sociology, US History, and AP US History. He is the head girls’ basketball coach and helps out with volleyball.

 The COVID-19 pandemic brought changes, both negative and positive to the world of education. For me, I have always thrived at creating lasting relationships with my students that allow me to have a keen sense of their thought processes, emotions, strengths and weaknesses academically, and ultimately help make them comfortable during the time they are in my classroom. This allows me to identify ways to best help each student succeed. My first day of school tradition is to quickly introduce myself, go over any paperwork required, and then sit down and observe. I want to see how each student acts in their free time. Do they go talk to another student, get out a book, play on their cellphone, put their head down, etc. This is just one part of the process of getting to know my students. This year, I sat in front of a computer screen with 30% of my students being nothing more than the letter of their first name as an icon and the ones that turned their cameras on facing a world of technical difficulties, an unwillingness to turn their microphones on, and some obviously not paying attention. I was unable to make the connections that I wanted to make. Even upon transitioning to a hybrid model with 5-10 students in person and the rest online, it was near impossible to get to know the students. Masks covered their faces, more students refused to turn their cameras on, and participation rates began to decline. 

Students quickly caught on that there was not much we could do as teachers to force them to participate. There were no harsh consequences for when they refused to do their work. Deadlines turned into “I’d like to have it by” and assessments turned into group projects. On test days, half of my in-person learners would choose to stay home and the average score for at-home learners were typically much higher than in-person. Students who struggled on the first few tests or had not completed the work would magically make high A’s and perfect scores while at home assessing. There was little we could do to prevent this. Keep in mind, this was an issue with grade level, honors, and Advanced Placement students. Every teacher seemingly had similar issues.  

 It seems like the term “overwhelmed” was the most used term of the year, but I could see that many students and teachers were.. The pandemic allowed for teachers to experiment with content delivery methods, some proving to be more successful than others. Teaching a subject, APUSH (Advanced Placement US history), for the first time this year, I experimented quite a bit in the beginning. Ultimately, upon discussions with the students and examining the results of their assessments, I concluded what I have long believed: students want to simply be told what they need to know. They were being assigned work, by myself and other teachers, that seemed to me to be busy work. The type of work that checks a box to say that the students have been given something. It served no real purpose. As such, I aimed to streamline my work to be as concise as possible in an attempt to prevent a feeling of being overwhelmed. I examined the standards and objectives of my courses and taught just that. I then created my assessments to match the Georgia Milestone and APUSH exams to the best of my ability and used those to gauge how well my students were understanding the content and to prepare them for those exams in May. I believe this idea of keeping the content and skills taught as concise and focused as possible will go a long way in future years to prevent both student and teacher burnout.

  Ultimately, the pandemic created a dreadful year for many. I love teaching, it’s truly a passion of mine. I am an introvert but interacting with my students brings me joy, and COVID made that very difficult to do. I was also raised to have a great work ethic and it is disheartening to see students simply refuse to do what they are asked to do. I worry how apathetic they will be next year when returning in-person full time. It’s not uncommon to have a small handful of students who refuse to attend class or complete their work, but will we see a large portion of the students be this way now? Finally, while the pandemic was truly difficult for many people, have we conditioned ourselves and students to feel overwhelmed at any sign of difficulty? Students need to be encouraged that they are capable of conquering obstacles, but we as teachers need to work to make sure those obstacles are true learning experiences and not unnecessary bumps in the road. I look forward to a different and better year next year.