I have been thinking about these questions for the past couple of days as well as watching the live discussion with Shawn Clark @shawnblove and Brady Venables @bradyvenables. I then started looking at my teaching and what I have done that would be considered examples of innovation. I have an example of my teaching that I would consider innovative but I am having second thoughts. so I will share and you can tell me what you think and how I could improve.
What came to my mind was something George @gcouros said in the podcast this past Saturday, for something to be innovative it needs to be new or an iteration AND better. So with that in mind, I have been tackling this issue "how do I teach the Reconstruction of the United States following the Civil War in a way that is meaningful but is a review because the focus of the course is post Reconstruction to Modern America?" In the past I would have either lectured through it, boring for me and the students, or had the students debate Congressional v. Presidential Reconstruction. I like having the students debate in my history classes but this is something that I have done before and not every students engages like I would hope. In an attempt to be more innovative and give the students choice, with the goal to empower students. I chose to do something a little different. I decided to have students come up with a proposal all their own for how the United States should solve the problem of reconstructing America following the Civil War. I gave them a few resources and showed them a short clip of the documentary Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War on YouTube (the first 10 minutes) to give the students an idea of what America was facing after the war. I then asked students to work with a partner to come up with a proposal that would be most effective in settling the political, economic, and social issues facing America and the South post-Civil War in the short term and long term.
The reason I consider this activity innovative is because, at least for myself, it is a new way of teaching a topic I have taught before. Also I think it is a better way because students have to think about the short term and long term effects of their decisions. They have the benefit of seeing what happened as a result of the decisions that were actually made following the War in order to propose a better plan. This activity is better because students need to think about and learn about so much more than just Reconstruction such as the social, political and economic issues facing America and how those things work. For example students need to find out what GDP means, what is a tariff and what happens to the consumer when those tariffs go up or down and how the tax system works. Knowing these things can inform students on present issues as well. As emerging consumers in the world today it will be helpful to know how the economy works. Socially students need to answer or at least approach the hard question about race in America. How do you help a society heal following the Civil War that won't lead to groups like the KKK but will still ensure the freedoms of former slaves? Students need to make connections from those events to the issues facing America today such as the Black Live Matter movement and shouldn't we have an American Lives Matter movement instead? Is there a proposal out there that would produce the latter movement?
Having students consider all of the implications of their proposals helps them think critically about those proposals and the impact they will have on real human lives. This activity also validates their ideas, students have great ideas and can solve hard ill-defined problems if given the chance. My hope is that this historical question and others like it will lead to students actively looking for answers to contemporary problems in our society.
Students use the technology they have to research information but the innovative part is the problem solving of real world issues in a new way and empowering young people to take ownership of their ideas. We must believe that our students have great ideas and then allow them to actually voice them, then we need to take those ideas seriously.
Let me know what you think, innovative, not innovative. Maybe this type of thing is already being done and I just don't know about it but then again maybe not.
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