Open Education Resources in Action

There are so many fantastic ways to incorporate learning resources into the 21st century history-social science classroom. More and more teachers are engaging students in reading, writing, listening, and speaking as historians. Historians travel to new places, meet new people and conduct interviews, research through reading primary and secondary sources, and report out in a variety of ways: in their own writing, through interviews, presentations, videos, and firsthand experiences.
While most history-social science teachers see a need for engaging their students in meaningful ways, finding new resources and taking time to learn how to use them requires teachers to go outside their classrooms and comfort zones. In the last two weeks, nearly 50 middle school history-social science teachers took time out of their classrooms to engage in professional learning that enabled them to network with other SDUSD grade-level content area teachers and put themselves in their students’ shoes to experience learning activities from free resources such as California Education and the Environment Initiative Curriculum and the History Blueprint, a project funded by the California History-Social Science Project. They were able to step out of the student role and put their teacher lenses on to debrief the lessons and discuss ways they may help their students successfully complete the learning activities. Students are sure to find new ways and new materials to generate new interpretations of the old history.