Dear readers/teachers who are searching for a perspective from a sixteen year girl, All right. Lets face it. You probably haven't gone out searching for that before. Unless you’re a teacher, a desperate friend trying to figure out if those jeans are a yay or a nay, or even a hopeless uncle trying to find a present worthy of their teenage niece, your never going to be handed a teenage opinion. We’re quiet. Or sometimes we just plain don't have one. You will often hear the answer, I don't know. Frustrating. I know. But I am just an ordinary teenage girl who is going to give you a perspective on learning in school from a teenage mind. Obviously, by clicking on to this website the topic is going to be history. I have been chosen to join this years History tour in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. It has been a positive, life changing experience for me. I learned new information in many different ways on this trip. We have been asked to think about questions that make your gears turn. For example, questions that make you try and get into the perspective of other traumatized people. I have never been in a trauma. How would I know? It has all resulted in answers from different perspectives. Our whole group that has joined us along the tour represents a class. Everyone is different. Everyone matters. This is not what my perspective is on though. The argument I am going to tell you is how I think students should learn about history. And it just so happens by chance that this experience in Europe has helped my understand how I think things work well for me.
History is not like a lot of the other subjects. Clearly you cannot teach every subject in the same way. You cannot learn how to play the trumpet by using a calculator, same as you cannot find the answer to an algebraic question by running a mile. The most common way teachers think to teach history is by book. By facts. Here is the date, and this is what happened. Remember that for next weeks test. History simply cannot be an unattached subject with no meaning. There is so many levels and answers behind a date and an event that mean so much. Those levels help us understand how people thought through that time.Truly what history is, is a mark left through time, actually formed by purpose and meaning. You have to help students search for that meaning. History is past events. An event is created by different things and people with different perspectives and opinions. Past events are simply not an answer. It was created by decisions and actions. You don't allow a student to understand history by giving them dates to write down. It should not be a fact class purely based on memory. What I think history truly is is not the date and events, but the actions made by those peoples’ decisions. That is what makes history so interesting. If you forget about the dates and just tried to learn why people did what they did, it can be quite interesting! On this trip in Holland we were asked to put ourselves into the mind of the civilians or soldiers. Try to learn history by understanding it through someone else's eyes. It forms a connection between you and the history. The class would be gone to waste since most teenagers don't remember things as easily as you think anyway. We work hard. We have other work to do. If you truly want a student to enjoy your class and forget about all the other work in their life you have to leave a mark. If history was formed by opinions and perspectives why don't you give your students the voice to say their opinion? Base their marks on how well they participate. Let the student say why they think an event happened. What its true meaning was. How it left its mark on the world, and themselves. Your goal as a teacher should try and make the students want to be in your class. Try and make the student feel like nothing they try to do is wrong. If a kid feels smart in a class they will just want to inhale all the information they get, just like dollar drinks at McDonald's. Also, for all the curious teachers out there, I have a question that constantly runs through a teenagers mind that will make you understand how to teach things. The question is, why in the world does this matter, and will I every need this information to go on in life? We as students don't want to feel like what we are learning is irrelevant. We will just continue playing our music and zone out if we think it’s not useful. We think, what’s the point if this doesn't matter? Why are we learning this if it already happened and it’s over with? You as teachers have to teach us students why what you’re teaching matters! Please don't leave the student stranded with unattached facts that mean nothing to us. We wont understand why that history happened and mattered. I have discovered on this trip that history is so complex and interesting! I never really enjoyed it before now because I felt like it was all book work. I felt like I didn't connect with the work, or even have a say. Remember, not all kids are going to love history. Not every kid is going to feel that rush when they finally get to go to the Canadian War Museum. Just remember to try your best. If you show passion in your eyes about what you are teaching, the students feel so much more comfortable. And to be honest, some kids want to learn more when they notice that their teacher loves what they are teaching. As a teacher give the students the chance to search for their passion. Give them a voice. Maryn Hendry Student, Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute Smiths Falls, Ontario
1 Comment
Larry Mikulcik
9/20/2016 10:10:20 pm
Thanks so much Maryn, I enjoyed being on the same tour with you but as a teacher who learned a lot about improving my pedagogy. I will be sharing this blog with all the history teachers I know. I am now retired, but the best comments my former students gave to me were that they saw my passion for my subject and that they always felt their ideas mattered. I wholeheartedly agree when you say history is complex and that is what I worked to help my students see, that no event is simple to explain and that there are always many alternative choices that could have been made, some better and some worse.
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AuthorsParticipating educators and high school students share reflections on their professional and personal experiences during and after the program. Some posts link to the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society's blog, Studeamus bellum causa pacis. Archives
August 2015
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