Page 295 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 13 How Can the Curriculum Be Expanded and Made More Powerful through Homework? 267
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could help them better understand their lives or solve important problems. These models of homework rarely reflected the backgrounds of my students’ family relationships, their imagination, or their values.
I also fell into the rut of allowing a generic curriculum dictate the course of our studies. I prescribed traditional assignments and assessed students’ compli- ance in completing those tasks. Most students followed directions and did what they were told in order to receive credit for completing my assignment. I lacked the artistry to find connections between the curriculum and my students’ inter- ests, and also the teacher-student relationships were ignored. The web of curric- ular interactions remained limited and artificial.
The educational values that I developed during my undergraduate work eventually collided with my frustrations about not meeting my own expectations in engaging students in a form of learning that was intrinsically rewarding to them. I knew that I needed to develop social studies learning around a differ- ent curriculum framework. I wanted to maximize the number of opportunities that my students had to apply information to their lives and connect with con- temporary issues. I believed that homework could be a valuable tool in creating a personal frame for my students to organize their world and share their learn- ing with others in unique and unforgettable ways. I was at a critical place in my career when I needed to remember why I became a teacher in the first place.
Graduate school allowed me to structure my goals as a teacher, scholar, and researcher. A particular book club activity in Dr. Alleman’s class pushed me to consider ways that I could make small incremental changes to homework. Using the book, The Game of School, we began to think about the difference between how students traditionally experience homework and how they experience other learning opportunities in their life unrelated to school. I quickly realized the con- nections between this book and Powerful Social Studies and how they both call for teachers to reconsider age-old practices that waste time and fail to engage students intellectually.
During one of our book club sessions in class, Dr. Alleman said, “in order to actually learn something you have to feel it. Motivation is always at the heart of the matter.” I remember writing that in bold print at the top of my page. The question, “how can I make this homework assignment more meaningful for my students?” has become the guiding question in my planning. I now respect homework as the single most helpful tool in making connections between school and my students’ lives. I have seen the positive impact of utilizing students’ experiences outside school with dramatic increases in student atten- dance and family interest in our classroom topics of study, along with numer- ous situations in which my students talk about registering voters on elevators,