21st century Social Studies

If you went to bed at a reasonable hour, you might have missed a highlight of the last board meeting: the presentation by the primary and secondary coordinators of the district's Social Studies program.

At both levels, a deliberate effort has been made to incorporate the development of “21st century” skills into the curriculum – with a particular emphasis on globalization. This approach is consistent with that of nations who have successfully improved their educational systems (as I mentioned on December 17th.) The combination of “inquiry-based learning” with a variety of authentic assessment tools is an important part of their strategy.

There is also recognition that technology can be an important tool for developing these skills. The opportunity to do this has been greatly enhanced by Pennsylvania’s “Classrooms for the Future” grant.

One objective of the Social Studies program is that our students should become “discerning consumers of information.”  As “old-timers” may recall, at one time research consisted of “looking it up in the encyclopedia”. Now our students need to make sense of a nearly infinite amount of readily available material.

One challenge facing the program, particularly at the high school, concerns the lack of appropriately-sized spaces. Hopefully, this will be addressed when the high school facilities are upgraded.

Another challenge is the need for opportunities for greater faculty collaboration.

Since collaboration is one of the 21st century skills we want our students to acquire, it is essential that our students see it modeled throughout the school community. So the extent to which our social studies department is doing that - both within, and with other departments, particularly English - is encouraging. But everyone needs to work together (collaborate?) to find ways to make this happen more consistently.