Fall 2001

Teaching Exploration and Assisting in the Service of Education

Internet research, projector, video clip, VCR, TV, video camera, digital camera

After consultation with the two area high schools, it was deemed that our services were not needed at these schools. Though discouraged, we sought an opportunity to serve at the middle school level. At Cedar Middle School, we met Mrs. Mardie Dodds, a seventh-grade core teacher, and she enthusiastically accepted our teaching services. We arranged to come every Wednesday for one to two hours to assist in a variety of history-related projects (tests, worksheets, lesson plans, etc.). We also prepared our own lesson plan about explorers that we would teach to the seventh grade students.

Lesson Plan

Hand out Modern Day Exploration Writing Exercise. Have students share personal responses. Explain how the activity pertains to explorers. Show video clip of The Road to El Dorado. Explain the inaccuracies of Disney’s portrayal of explorers.

Divide students into three groups. Each student teacher will take one group of students and lecture on their specific explorers for 10 minutes. Rotate students until all students have been to each student teacher.

Every student remains in their assigned group for Jeopardy game. Each team chooses category and point value. Bonus round will consist of students from each team choosing an explorer and then providing vital information about that explorer.

Jeopardy questions

Modern Day Exploration worksheets

video clip

graphic organizers

Hershey gold nuggets- Angie

Blue punch- Heather

Cinnamon sticks- Shawn

Summary of Student Evaluations

Out of 21 students:

On a scale from 1-10: 1=not at all, 5=some, 10=very much

How well did the presenters know the subject they were teaching? Average score: 9.7

"I liked the game the best because it helps you to remember and to see if you were listening to them when they were teaching us."

"I learned that Columbus wasn’t the first to discover America. Leif Erickson was the first to discover America and now I know because of them."

"I really liked the group activity and the handout that helped us remember."

This service learning project gave me invaluable experience with teaching and also caused me to re-evaluate what and how we teach students about history. As we worked with our cooperating teacher, Mardie Dodds, I truly came to appreciate the incredible amount of work and thought required to effectively teach history. While helping her organize future lessons after school, I observed what kinds of topics students were being taught in middle school history classes. These ranged from Native American cultures to the diary of Anne Frank. I have learned the importance of gaining a wide variety of knowledge about many historical subjects and time periods in order to become a versatile teacher.

As we prepared for the lesson we would teach to the students, we learned how challenging just making a lesson plan can be. Heather, Shawn, and I worked several weeks to create a lesson that would not only educate the students about explorers but also be a fun experience that would spark their interest for history. We had to narrow our topic to focus on the explorers that we felt were most significant and then decide what information about them the students needed to know. It was difficult to judge how complex and in-depth to make our lesson because we were unfamiliar with the learning stages and abilities of this age group. We also had to decide what our format for the lesson would be. It was a challenge to agree upon these things because we all had differing ideas about what should happen. Eventually we were able to compromise and include at least one aspect of each of our ideas. Working as a group was a great experience because we got a taste of what working with other teachers in real schools would be like.

The greatest "eye-opener" of this experience was actually teaching the students about the early explorers to the Americas. For the most part, Heather directed the whole class activities. If I were to do it again, I would try to be more active in this part of the lesson. It would have been good to have the experience of speaking to the whole class and explaining an activity. However, since we created stations in which the students had to rotate between each of us, I was able to teach on my own and be in charge of a group of students. I taught about Amerigo Vespucci and Hernando Cortez. I learned that with this age group, it worked well to tell the historical events like a story instead of a lecture. I had to simplify some of the information I had prepared so that they could understand. I also tried to relate the information to their own lives. For example, Amerigo Vespucci became famous for his booklet about his travels. I related this to brochures that the students may have seen about Disneyland so that they could understand how Vespucci’s book attracted people to the new land by telling about the people, land, and foods there. When I talked about Cortez, I asked them about the Disney movie Road to Eldorado and then explained what in that show was not very accurate.

The greatest challenges of teaching this lesson were dealing with unexpected questions from the students that I did not know the answer to and telling what happened to the Aztecs. When I told the students that America was named after Amerigo, they asked me why the ending was changed. I said that maybe it was because of the differences in language since a German man first applied the name and Vespucci was Italian, but I had to admit that I really did not know. Another girl asked us why we play the game "Marco Polo." None of us knew the answer to that either. When I told the students how Cortez and his men essentially slaughtered thousands of Aztecs, they were horrified. I felt bad that I could not end the story in a happier way, but with history we have to face the ugliness of what has really happened in the past. Overall I really enjoyed the experience and came to really like this age group.

As I prepared for this service-learning project, I was thinking that teaching a middle-school class about history, the subject of my major in college, would be simple. I would merely prepare my lesson plan and teach; after all I had experience at teaching prior to this experience. Boy, was I ever wrong in thinking that way. It was true that I had taught before, in fact at the high school and the elementary school level, but I had always taught solo. I was in control of what got taught and what did not. But in this project, I had to collaborate with two other students, Angie Hall and Heather Koyle. This was a new experience for me and I have been greatly rewarded by working with these two women. We collaborated first on what we wanted to do. We decided to check out the two area high schools, Cedar and Canyon View High Schools because all three of us wanted to work, in some capacity, at the high school level (Angie as an English teacher, Heather and I as History teachers). As we approached both of these two schools, there was no need for our services at the high school level. To say the least we were deflated. Our efforts had all been for naught; at least that was what we all were not saying to each other. Then we decided to try Cedar Middle School as our last desperate attempt to secure a teaching project. We met with Mrs. Mardie Dodds who graciously accepted our offer to teach her class. We felt so grateful for her allowing us to teach her class. We found out that we would teach about the explorers that explored America on October 3^rd. So everything was set for our project. Now it was just time to start preparing for it.

I felt that I could have prepared more. After discussing who I was to teach, namely Leif Erickson and Christopher Columbus, I procrastinated researching these two explorers. I felt that I should have gotten on top of the research so that I could have given the students more information about these two men. That being said, I think that I had enough information to give a brief overview to the students. And, as it turned out, the students were content with the information that I gave them. After I researched the information, it was then time to present the information to the students.

I was terribly nervous before we began. Although I had experience in teaching, middle school students were definitely different than the high school and elementary students that I had taught before. The middle school students were not quite to the maturity level of a high school student, so I could not expect them to fully understand the intricacies of the explorations. But, they were above the maturity level of an elementary student, so I had to be careful not to make the lesson too simplified and insult their intelligence either. I was caught not knowing what to expect, so I erred on the side of simplifying the information, so if they got bored with my lesson, then at least they would be bored and actually know what I was talking about.

I learned a great deal from this service-learning project. I learned that not every student, or even every student group, is the same. There are different learning styles as well as different levels of interest and aptitude in every student/group. That just means that I, as their teacher, must adapt and cater to their individual needs, as well as what each group needs. The group dynamics themselves were a challenge to negotiate. The first group of students that I had, there was a little bit of participation and a little talking but not much, and I ended my lecture a couple minutes early and allowed the students to talk with themselves while we waited for the other groups to finish. The second group of students was like trying to pull teeth trying to get them to participate. We ended even earlier than the first group because I did not know what else to do because nobody was talking or even seemed interested in the subject matter. The last group was by far my most talkative group, but not necessarily talking about the topic. This group wanted to talk amongst themselves a great deal, so I was forced to bring them back on task and I actually went over the time limit trying to get them to learn the information. Overall, I think this project went well. I learned about how I could improve as a teacher, and how I would react if I were faced with a situation where I had to evaluate what a group or individual needed. This all provided me with the opportunity to not only give a service back to the community, but I also learned how I, as an educator, could improve the community with teaching students within the community.

Teaching exploration and assisting in the service of education was an amazing experience. It took us several visits to local schools before we were fortunate enough to run into Mrs. Mardie Dodds, a 7^th grade history teacher from Cedar Middle School. We started off by visiting with Mrs. Dodds to figure out her individual needs, as well as the class’s individual needs. We found out the number of students she had in class and went over some of the previous material she had covered. Mrs. Dodds explained the course material she was planning on using in the future and we began to put together some ideas of what we could do to help. We spent several weeks helping to grade papers, prepare lesson plans, and set up classroom material. We spent time helping some of her students read, we made copies, posters, and helped to prepare her lesson plans. We continued to help her as we began to plan for a class presentation of our own.

We chose to teach a chapter on early American exploration and began to get organized. We spent several hours and went through several hundred ideas before we were able to find a lesson plan that would work. We wanted something that would fit both their needs and ours. We were able to come up with several different mediums in which to teach students such as a future exploration writing exercise, a worksheet, a movie clip, a group learning activity, lecture, and a game. This allowed us as student teachers to utilize a variety of teaching strategies all in the same day. We were able to move from activity to activity which allowed us to watch the students in a number of situations. This also allowed us to monitor their reactions to the activities and concepts that we were presenting. We were able to observe the activities that worked well. We were also able to observe areas where we could have improved upon.

We each chose two explorers and then divided the class into three groups. I personally struggled to prepare my lesson outline so that it would adequately fit the needs of the students. I had to make sure that I knew the material well enough to present it in an organized and useful way. We were able to move the students from group to group, allowing them to each learn about the various explorers. After reviewing the way I presented the material, I came to the conclusion that I should have made certain aspects of my presentation more difficult, while other aspects of my presentation were much too difficult for the level of understanding these 7^th graders had. Dividing the class into smaller groups helped us to present the worksheet and teach the students on a more personal level. We were then able to answer individual questions about the explorers. I felt we were able to create a positive learning atmosphere and that the students truly gained from the time and effort we put into this project.

Angie Hall and Shawn Ferriola were both awesome students to work with. They had fun creative ideas for the presentation and worked very hard. Shawn and Angie both put forth a lot of effort to be prepared and to make sure that things ran smoothly. They were easy to talk to and get along with. Both of them plan on becoming teachers in the future and I know, without a doubt, that they will do wonderful where ever they go and whatever grade they decide to teach.

I personally enjoyed this experience and gained a great deal from the service-learning project. I hope to someday teach history in a secondary education setting. This allowed me hands-on experience in dealing directly with the students and faculty at Cedar Middle School.