When High School North American Studies teacher Laura Bond began to plan a day-long forum on the Holocaust and genocide, she thought back to a program she had attended as a student at Holmdel High School.
“One year my history teacher took us to see ‘Schindler’s List,’ which had just come out. Our school trip made it into the local paper, and the story generated a hate letter from a neo-Nazi group. Our teacher shared the letter with the class. I was shocked that so much intolerance still existed in our society. This experience helped inspire me to become a teacher.”
It also made her realize the value of bringing real world experiences into Social Studies. On January 3, all 11th grade students at High School North participated in a day-long educational forum titled “Student Forum on the Holocaust and Genocide.” The program included a screening of “Schindler’s List” and a panel presenting first-hand accounts of experiences during acts of genocide.
The panelists included Jerry Ehrlich, a Doctors Without Borders volunteer in Darfur; Nuran Nabi, Plainsboro Committeeman and witness to the Bengali Freedom Movement; Vera Goodkin, professor at Mercer County College and Holocaust survivor (and the mother of a North teacher and grandmother of a North student — see box, page 17); Eugenie Mukeshimana, Rwandan genocide survivor and founder and executive director of Genocide Survivors Support Network; Don Tow, the Rape of Nanking scholar; and moderator Paul Winkler, executive director of the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education.
Eleventh grade students at High School South had participated in a similar forum in December, which involved watching “Schindler’s List” as well as a lecture by Winkler and break-out discussion sessions, focusing on the issue of why genocide still happens today.
Both programs are part of a larger effort by the Social Studies Department to make history more relevant to today’s students, which in turn is part of a district-wide effort to incorporate its 21st Century Competencies into the curriculum. The “competencies” are designed to make a student become an innovative and practical problem server; an effective communicator; a collaborative team member; a flexible and self-directed learner; an information literate researcher; and a globally aware, active, and responsible student-citizen.
According to the WW-P district, “The 21st Century Competencies is a framework to combine proven learning methods and modern tools, processes, and environments to ensure that all students will succeed in the 21st century.”
To that end, WW-P Supervisor for Social Studies Curriculum K-12 John McNamara and his staff are devising new and creative ways of teaching social studies that will encourage students to “become more actively engaged and become better citizens.”
McNamara explained that implementing the Competencies has enabled the department to enrich and expand the social studies curriculum. “I see the Competencies as a framework, or a series of lenses. Teachers look through the lenses of the 21st Century Competencies to fine-tune their curriculum, and focus in a more purposeful manner to ensure that the students are actively engaged in learning. By refocusing instruction through the lens of the Competencies, students work more in pairs and small groups, have more discussions and hands-on learning. The teachers are still providing instruction, framing the issues and facilitating discussions, but they are not just lecturing to the students-it is more of a dialog. This helps the students to be more actively engaged in their learning, expand their ideas, and become more tolerant and understanding of other people’s views.”
In addition to designing lessons to fit within the 21st Century Competencies, the Social Studies Department has recently made several changes in its K-12 curriculum. McNamara says that the purpose was to eliminate some redundancies of topics being taught in more than one year, as well as to highlight certain major themes that occur throughout history. For instance, “certain topics that were being taught in ninth grade have now been moved to eighth grade, including the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Age of Exploration. We are making ninth grade more of a 20th century course, focusing on post-World War II and current global issues,” McNamara said.
“We are spending less time in grade 10 on colonization and revolution because these are covered in depth in seventh grade. There is a brief review of these topics in the beginning of the year, and then the focus will be on changes to the Constitution, especially at the end of the 19th century. And in 11th grade, the focus is now on the U.S.’ role in the world — how did we get to be a world power and what is our proper role in the 21st century.”
McNamara added the K-5 curriculum has been reviewed as well, and “modifications have been made to the scope and sequence of the lessons. The premise now is to teach kids about their experiences in an expanding world. In kindergarten, the focus is on themselves; in first grade, on their family and their neighborhood; second grade will focus on their town; third grade our state, and fourth grade our country.”
In addition, the department “is considering instituting a new course for fifth grade students, which is tentatively titled “Passports to the World.” In this course students would be introduced to and experience different cultures and different parts of the world. This will help set up the sixth grade world history program of study.” McNamara explained. “This is still under discussion; we need to review our resources, the need for training, and other issues. This is an idea for the future.”
There is also more of a district-wide effort to connect learning across disciplines. For example, in the middle schools, there is cross-curriculum learning between the Language Arts and Social Studies departments, as well as between Science and Social Studies. “This interdisciplinary learning helps students collaborate more, expand their thinking, develop better reading, writing and research skills, and become more involved in the learning process. This is another way of applying the 21st Century Competencies, like having panel discussions, forums, and guest speakers,” McNamara added.
McNamara said that the department has a long history of bringing in guest speakers at the classroom level, but they are expanding this concept and are inviting even more speakers, many of whom are local residents who have extraordinary skills and experiences to share with students. Past guest speakers have included advocates, lawyers, Holocaust survivors, immigrants, World War II veterans and politicians. “When we invite speakers in, we also try to invite others with differing viewpoints. We are trying to educate the students, not indoctrinate them.” He also mentioned that the district is working within the community to tap into the expertise of community members, and bring them to the schools.
He explained that the district Social Studies teachers are trying new and innovative ways to make history “come alive.” “History is not just about learning facts and memorizing names and dates. It is a lot more sophisticated and nuanced — the importance is the research and analysis. It is a long, winding story with deep roots and we need to get that across to the students.” Teachers are now directing students to read and interpret more primary source materials, rather than just reading textbooks. “When we are learning about recent events, we can bring in speakers to address the students. For past events, we are using primary source materials — the words written directly by the people we are studying themselves. We are de-emphasizing the ‘middle man’ and having the kids go directly to the sources.”
Teachers are also integrating recent and current events into the subjects they are teaching. Says McNamara, “It makes more sense to integrate current events into lessons rather than to just discuss them separately at the end of the week like we used to. Students can make comparisons between Viet Nam and Afghanistan, or compare immigration issues of the late 1800s to the immigration issues of today. The exception is when there is a currents event topic that is particularly relevant or pervasive, such as a presidential election.”
McNamara noticed that “this year, the students were more engaged in this election than any time in the past 14 years, when I first came to WW-P. There was more motivation, more enthusiasm. It was very encouraging to see. I am not sure what is motivating them — their parents, the times, the environment — but I would like to think it is partly due to the way we are now teaching Social Studies, and the application of the Competencies.”
McNamara knows first-hand about the importance of studying history, especially because originally he planned to be a math teacher. Both of his parents worked in the business sector, and McNamara was a math major at Columbia University before he decided to switch to history. “I became a history major by accident. I was studying Advanced Linear Algebra and was not enjoying it — it was just too abstract. So I decided to try another major, and I had always enjoyed history, so I switched to history.” McNamara ended up earning two master’s degrees, in history and educational administration, at Columbia. “I never finished my PhD because my two children came along. So I started teaching. I was certified as both a math and a history teacher, so at first I taught both.”
McNamara worked in the New York City School District, as a teacher and as a principal of the summer program at Edward R. Murrow School in Brooklyn. He came to the WW-P District in 1999 as the supervisor of Social Studies at the high school level, and then became the district supervisor for Social Studies Curriculum K-12. He also runs summer seminars for teachers at the Guilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. “Many WW-P teachers attend these seminars, because,” McNamara says, “they really want the kids to become knowledgeable, so they keep up with their own scholarship by going to conferences and forums themselves.”
From time to time, McNamara still teaches Social Studies courses as well. He said one of his favorite teaching moments came while he was teaching AP U.S. History at South. The class was studying the status of African Americans after the Civil War, and McNamara had asked them to consider the question of whether “giving people citizenship and the right to vote is enough to function, or should the government have done more? I wanted them to think about this issue, as it related to both the post-Civil War and today.” And one student told him, ‘this thinking stuff is really a lot of work.’ I responded, ‘yes it is, thinking is hard work — but what’s the alternative?’ That is exactly what I want my students to learn — that thinking is important. That is why we are trying to teach Social Studies in more creative, engaging ways.”
Other innovative programs offered by the social studies department include Grover Middle School students holding mock press conferences as they study about the Civil War, with some students in the role of newscasters and some playing historical figures; Model UN and Model Congress programs and debate clubs for middle school students; the We the People competition, for which 11th and 12th grade students research and prepare presentations on constitutional issues; the eighth grade museum project, where students transform the classroom into a living history museum; field trips such as traveling to Washington to see the Holocaust Museum, visit the Israeli Embassy, and have discussions with guest speakers such as representatives from the State Department; and the extracurricular movie nights offered by some teachers to offer additional opportunities for discussion of relevant topics; as well as the opportunity to participate in discussions-oriented forums such as the Holocaust and Genocide Forum.
One such forum is the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. program, “How Do We Teach Non-Violence,” to be held Sunday, January 20, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the West Windsor Library. This free program is being co-sponsored by the West Windsor Township Human Relations Council and the WW-P African-American Parent Support Group. WW-P Superintendent of Schools Victoria Kniewel will be the keynote speaker, and high school and middle school students will be among the participants.
In a press release, Kniewel stated that the teachings of King are very relevant to the 21st Century Competencies, as his work “set the stage for how we approach problem solving in today’s world.”
#b#Family Tie-In#/b#
Some of the impetus for North’s day-long program on genocide came from a student, Margaret Goldman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivor and panelist Vera Goodkin. “Dr. Goodkin’s story is so interesting. She is one of the Holocaust survivors that were saved by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg,” North teacher Laura Bond explained. “She has spoken to a few high school classes over the years, but never the entire grade.” She said that her husband, Christopher Bond, a fellow history teacher at North, has also had Goodkin speak in his classes.
Bond wanted all of the students to be able to learn and exchange ideas with Goodkin. In fact, three generations of the Goodkin family were present at the forum: Goodkin, who was introduced by her granddaughter, Margaret. Margaret’s mother, Debbie Goodkin, who teaches drama at North, was also present. Margaret and Debbie live in Plainsboro.
Bond noted that each panelist had an amazing story to share with the students. “Dr. Tow has studied the Rape of Nanking. Friends of his had been there — through his stories, the students could still feel the emotion and rancor between Japan and China. And Eugenie Mukeshimana was pregnant when the genocide in Rwanda broke out — she had to flee and deliver her baby while she was in hiding, with no diapers, baby food, or anything. Dr. Ehrlich visited Darfur, Sudan, recently through Doctors Without Borders. He brought photos of the conditions in the refugee camps, as well as pictures made by children there.
“And Professor Nabi, who was a participant in Bangladesh’s independence movement and witnessed the genocide there, is now a councilman in Plainsboro.”
