This semester I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Iowa Department of Education Social Studies Consultant Stefanie Wagner. I won't go into detail on the new standards, but the vision for Social Studies Stefanie presented is exciting and compelling. I would definitely recommend looking into them!
I am super excited that we are beginning to take Social Studies more seriously in our state. These new standards help to make the importance of Social Studies apparent. They focus more on building students into real-world problem solvers and good citizens. There is so much value in using history and other Social Studies subjects as a core building block of good citizenship, not only to create good citizens for our nation, but also to create good citizens of a global community.
In my last blog post, I talked about the History Tech blog and gave a link to a post discussing the standards the blogger of History Tech, Glenn Wiebe helped create in 2011 and reviewed this year. These standards are also focused on building up students as citizens and problem solvers.
And really, that is what history, and all Social Studies, is all about.
Social Studies are not about remembering a giant list of facts as has often been the case in classrooms for decades. That way of teaching Social Studies is (pardon the highly overused and rather lame pun) history! Though I myself often enjoy listening to a good (dry, boring) history lecture, this is not how the students of todays world will learn Social Studies, and it will not help propel into their futures. I am excited to see our standards catching up with our students, and I can't wait to see where these standards and the amazing Social Studies educators who are coming will take us!
Link to History Tech Blog post: Crowdsourcing the Standards
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