Since nothing is at risk, I will offer up my fantasy US history course. As a fresh teacher, I would begin my course around content mastery and then move into projects that practice reflective thinking and have affective goals. Didactic goals provide a frame of standards to work out from. It is helpful to have finite goals to plan the course, and for the student to reach toward. Also, standards provide a measure for the outside world to judge the class. That said, I am divergent thinker and no frame work is steely enough to prevent me from exploring and playing with ideas.
I would focus the bulk of my didactic goals into the first three months of school, covering the major events, individuals, terminology wrapped up in the entire span of U.S. History from pre-Columbian to the nation today. I propose to teach the facts in nine weeks using nothing but over head projector outlines, jeopardy games and multiple choice tests. The speed and density of the content would maybe reduce weight of political history, wars and the triumphs of European settlers. There would only be as much time for that, as for the reciprocal histories of American Indian tribes, religious history, economic history, social history and the histories of resistance, dissent and minority reports. The objective would be to have recognition of the events and the cast from a broad historical perspective.
Reflective thinking would part of the next three months, where students learn more about doing history. Nine weeks would be devoted to analyzing primary documents, oral histories and how historians process some of this information. The measurable goal is that students develop their writing and research skills, so there would be weekly in-class short essays, but there would one larger essay test at the end to assimilate the issues and questions up to this point. The first month we would focus on pre-colonial to revolutionary documents and oral histories. The second month would follow up to WWI. And the last month would catch up to the current era.
Finally the affective goals would get a treatment in the spring. The major developmental goal of adolescents is the question of identity and roles. The last three months would be a synthesis of the narratives and data up to this point. These final units would likely be project based problem solving. Students would be given time to delve into a problem or condition of modern or historical America and finally to give a presentation in a medium of their choosing. Meanwhile, students would examine and discuss exemplars of such presentations and the histories around them. The objective of the historical problems project would be to give students a sense of efficacy. The project would challenge their research skills, but also their ability to synthesize and present information in a new way.
The whole course would compartmentalize the goals of author Zevin to create a pedagogical sneak attack. The course appears to cater to traditionalists at first, but ultimately the goals of the student would draw from a wide range of perspectives and history skills to produce a final project, possible one that addresses social change. While it does not seem that there is enough time to cover that much ground, perhaps that level of learning must give way so that other goals and methods have their time.
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