Shawn Ferriola and Claudia Hensel
Service Learning Report
History 2710
Dr. Earl Mulderink
Contents
I. Project Overview
II. Shawn Ferriola’s Reflection
III. Claudia Hensel’s Reflection
IV. Student Evaluation Summary
V. Mr. Richard Anderson’s Evaluation
VI. Student Evaluations
Our project was titled “The Effects of Propaganda on World War I.” Our intended audiences were Mr. Richard Anderson’s A.P. U.S. History classes at Cedar High School. Mr. Anderson was our contact. Our project was completed rather quickly. We taught two 1-½ hour classes on February 28, approximately 3 weeks after first meeting with Mr. Anderson. After deciding we wanted to work in a high school setting, we met with Mr. Anderson three times before presenting. Our first meeting took place on February 1st, during which we discussed possible topics for our presentation. He said that we would teach two classes, either on February 26th or 28th. During our second meeting, we finalized the date, and he let us know that our topic would be on WWI. He gave us the class textbook and told us that we were to discuss the events leading up to, the causes of, and the United State’s involvement in the war. Any teaching method or activity to be used was completely up to us. Shawn and I met with him for the last time the Monday following Spring Break, and planned our lecture and activity to be presented that Thursday. We used WWI video footage and an overhead projector. This project is a continuation of Shawn’s project from History 2700, although the audience and the objectives were different. Following our presentation, we asked Mr. Anderson and the students to fill out evaluation forms so we could gauge our effectiveness in meeting our objectives. These evaluations are included later on in the report.
Shawn’s Response and Evaluation
I chose to do my service-learning project in teaching history again because I wanted to have the opportunity to teach high school, rather than middle school, and this project enabled me to do just that. Even though the same principles that I used in last semester’s project (developing teaching skills, preparing a lesson, and reaching students), the challenges were vastly different.
We, Claudia Hensel and I, sought out an opportunity to teach in a high school and we found Mr. Richard Anderson, of Cedar City High School, who agreed to have us teach his A.P. U.S. History classes. We had preliminary meetings with Mr. Anderson that had both Claudia and I confused as to our directive. Our only instructions from Mr. Anderson was that we were to teach the factors that led to World War I and America’s involvement in that war. We had major concerns, first of all with the timing of our project. We were originally scheduled to teach the Tuesday that we got back from Spring Break, but we had Mr. Anderson give us a two-day reprieve so that Claudia and I could go over our material after we got back from the break. We were to teach two classes the same lesson on Thursday February 28.
Because of our uneasiness as to what exactly we were to teach, preparations were made difficult. We decided that the best way to teach would be by lecture and then integrate video and small groups after our lecture. We gave a brief overview of the involvement that other European countries had before the U.S. got involved. We focused on the different warfare that had been used up to the war and why the war was revolutionary to its’ predecessors. As for America’s involvement, we mainly focused on how support was rallied on the home-front. We discussed George Creel and how the Committee on Public Information’s influence on public opinion distorted what was really going on in Europe. As for how the classes responded to our presentation, that was a different story.
The first group that we taught seemed interested in what we were teaching. They frequently asked questions and engaged in the material that we were teaching. After teaching this first group, I was thinking that I do not know how that could have gone better as far as feeling like we accomplished something with these students.
The second group was more difficult. They seemed disinterested in the material we were teaching and it was difficult to keep the group focused. This group went on many tangents during the class and it was a challenge to persevere through the lesson. The contrast of the two classes provided an accurate representation of how teaching will be once I finish school and get my teaching license. I learned that I have a lot more to learn about teaching before I step into a classroom. I am grateful for this experience and hope to use it as a way to benefit my future students. Although this project was similar to my last service-learning project in that I was teaching again, there were many new challenges that I faced that provided new insight in how I teach history in the future. This experience of teaching high school students about World War I gave me a new understanding of how students learn and how they need to have the opportunity to learn.
I enjoyed this service-learning project. When Mr. Anderson told us that we would be teaching on WWI, Shawn had just completed his group presentation on George Creel and WWI propaganda. I was excited to teach on a topic that I felt familiar with, and Shawn and I quickly decided that we would try to incorporate the propaganda information into our lesson as an activity. We thought it would be fun and a little different for the students to try to analyze the “evidence” like we do in class. Since I am an English major, I also wanted to use some WWI poetry and other literature (including text by Ernest Hemingway) to try and show the contrast in views on the war, since the propaganda is obviously pro-war and the poetry showed the horrors of the war. But other than the activity, Shawn and I weren’t quite sure on how to proceed. Mr. Anderson didn’t give us a whole lot of direction, so we felt unsure as to how we should present the material. I was also worried that we wouldn’t have enough information to cover the 1-1/2 hour class periods. We proceeded to divide the information in the text so that we would at least know what each of us would be covering.
On the day of the presentation, Mr. Anderson talked to us a little about his students. He said that the first class would be more talkative and might be a little harder to keep on task. The second class, he explained, would be more reflective and would carry on good discussion. He said all of his students were bright, would participate, and would be prepared, having done the reading before class. Given this information, and the fact that we would only be “warming up” on the first class, I figured our second round of our presentation would go better. I was surprised at the outcome, however.
I was unsure what to expect and felt quite nervous. Shawn, however, was very confident with the history information, and his enthusiasm helped me to gain my own. The first class was more talkative, just as Mr. Anderson had predicted, but they were equally as enthusiastic as Shawn and I were. Their attitude quickly warmed me over, and I began to feel at ease within the first ten minutes. They asked questions, answered ours, and participated well during the activity. The second class, however, was quite different. The second class was extremely hard to reach—the students were more preoccupied with their nametags than they were with listening to us. While the first class was excited, the second class only seemed bored with the lecture. They participated well during the propaganda/literature activity and during our final discussion, but overall, the second class left me feeling frustrated and a little disappointed. But I do know that I will have to face those kinds of situations in my own future classrooms, so it was a good experience to try and deal with.
Mr. Anderson was nothing but enthusiastic and supportive. Even though it was frustrating that he didn’t tell us exactly what to do or how to present the material, I think that that is why the experience was ultimately so satisfying. We had to decide how to present the material and how to make it relevant to the students, and so the project really was our own, even thought they were Mr. Anderson’s students. Mr. Anderson was free with his compliments, and was excited that we wanted experience in the classroom so early in our college careers. Ultimately, he told us just to have fun with our students and to enjoy teaching. Even though the two classes were extremely different, I enjoyed the project immensely, and look forward to my future teaching career because of it.
“Don’t just say what’s in the text.”
“I liked looking at different types of propaganda and inferring their meanings.”
“Look at students while speaking.”
“The group activity was very helpful and helped keep my attention.”
“They were well prepared but had trouble expressing their knowledge at times.”
“They need to put things into perspective (wrap things up) instead of leaving the facts hanging.”
“They just threw out facts. We want the story and the facts.”
“If you are going to ramble on the whole class period, have an objective.”
“They were fun and knew their stuff.”
“They presented everything properly.”
As evidenced above, the students’ responses were as varied as they were. We are not sure what to make of it, because we did not know who wrote what. We are assuming that the second group had the more negative comments because we could tell that there were not many people that paid much attention in that group as opposed to the first group. We are not sure what to make of that, other than we have some more things to learn before we enter the classroom as real teachers. This experience provided a simulation as to what our future classrooms will be like. Some classes will be really attentive and responsive, while other classes will be disinterested and unmotivated.