Good afternoon friends! Don’t forget that the 2019 Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference is coming soon (and you can register here!). Not only do we have some excellent regular sessions planned, but we also have our friends and colleagues from the Florida College and University Faculty Assembly joining us! Let’s take a look at some of their featured sessions, which targets those interested in some specifically research focused or driven sessions around the social studies! Please note that this list features only some of the planned sessions. 

Session 1

Complexity & Connections: Archaeology Addresses AP World History
Shannon Peck-Bartle, University of South Florida

Changes in the Advance Placement World History curriculum limit students’ ability to develop complicated webs of connections and human interactions. The use of material culture and archaeological methods are suggested to “thicken” the curriculum.

“I don’t want to cause trouble”: A white history teacher’s negotiation of racial boundaries in a diverse rural school
Travis Seay, University of Florida

This narrative case study of a white history teacher uses a framework of cultural memory to situate racial and historical knowledge in the teaching and learning setting.

Session 2

The LGBTQ-Inclusive Curriculum: An Imperative for the Social Studies
Bárbara C. Cruz, Katty B. Francis, and Cristina M. Viera, University of South Florida

This presentation provides a brief history of LGBTQ content in the K-12 social studies curriculum. Discussion focuses on popular approaches for integrating LGBTQ issues in the curriculum, current legal challenges, and trends in the field.

Incorporation of Cross-Curricular Training in Social Studies and English Language Arts Pre-Service Teacher Preparation Programs
Allison Sheridan, Mary Dougherty, and Chris Spinale, University of Central Florida

For this study, the researchers aimed to examine how university programs are preparing pre-service teachers to incorporate social studies standards into ELA classrooms and vice versa. 

Session 3

Adolescent Identity Exploration and Civic Identity Development in a U.S. Government Classroom
Sarah Mead Denney, University of South Florida

This multiple case study examined adolescent identity exploration and civic identity development in an AP U.S. Government class. Findings suggest the promotion of these processes is both possible and practical, but require intentional, purposeful teaching.

How Do I Get My Ideas Published?
Scott Waring, University of Central Florida

This session will include general publishing tips and an overview of four social studies journals currently edited by the presenter.  The remaining time will allow for discussion and an opportunity to pose questions.

Be sure to check this space for more! Register for the conference today! 

Learn here about the keynote!

Check out some of the sessions! and here!  and here! 

Check out some of the exhibitors here! and here!

Good afternoon friends! Don’t forget that the 2019 Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference is coming soon (and you can register here!). Not only do we have some excellent sessions planned, but we also have some fine exhibitors joining us. Today, we’ll highlight a few more (and don’t forget about some of the other ones that we covered earlier!).

The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute

 
If you are reading this blog, you are likely familiar with the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at UCF’s Lou Frey Institute. If you aren’t, take a look here and find out what we have to offer you to support your work in teaching civics, government, and US history. Or just visit our table at FCSS! We are excited to be able to still attend and support the Florida Council for the Social Studies and continue our outreach to teachers new and old!

Step Up America

Step Up America joins FCSS at its annual conference again this year, and I know FCSS is happy to have them there. If you aren’t familiar with the good work that these folks do, be sure to check out their website and visit their space in the exhibit hall. Their Franklin Project is a unique learning experience that engages students of all ages. Ben Franklin comes directly into the classroom and interacts in real-time with students to present them with the civics and history lessons that are required by state standards. Be sure to stop by and say hi!

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

FCSS is thrilled to have Gilder Lehrman joining us at this year’s conference. Be sure to visit their website as well as their space during the conference. Oh, and they are also doing what looks to be an excellent session!

The Arnold-Liebster Foundation

The Arnold-Liebster Foundation has a mission that is so important in this day and age. From their website:

The Arnold-Liebster Foundation seeks to promote peace, tolerance, human rights, and religious freedom by peaceful and nonpolitical means. Building on the Holocaust-era experiences of its founders, Max Liebster and Simone Arnold Liebster, the foundation supports historical research, teacher training, educational seminars, scholarly publications, roundtable discussions, museum exhibitions, film showings, and similar projects.

Through these activities, the foundation especially aims to help young people to repudiate racism, xenophobic nationalism, and violence, and to learn to listen to the voice of conscience.

Be sure to stop by and visit their space at the conference and see how they can play a role in helping your students understand their responsibilities in civic life and community.

And More! 

We’ll highlight additional exhibitors and sessions over the course of the next few weeks. Be sure to check this space for more! Register for the conference today! 

Learn here about the keynote!

Check out some of the sessions! and here!  and here! 

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing at least two posts a week with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact.

Are you familiar with Deborah Sampson? If not, you should be, for we might consider her a Founding Mother, and certainly perhaps the first woman in US history to get a military pension.

She was born the poor daughter of a poor though preeminent family, a great granddaughter of founding Pilgrims Myles Standish and William Bradford. She was indentured at age 10, completing her service at 18 and then working as a self-educated teacher in Massachusetts. But in the heat of war, as the Revolution raged, she felt she had to do something more. She wanted to fight. But she was a woman, and that was impossible. Or was it?

She disguised herself as a man, and served as a light infantry scout, led men in battle, was wounded more than once (and taking care of the wounds herself, less her true sex be exposed) and served proudly as a soldier in Revolutionary Army. But then she fell ill and lost consciousness, and was then honorably discharged from the army. She married, had children, and traveled the new country telling her story.

“Four years after Sampson’s death at age 66, her husband petitioned Congress for pay as the spouse of a soldier. Although the couple was not married at the time of her service, in 1837 the committee concluded that the history of the Revolution “furnished no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity and courage.” He was awarded the money, though he died before receiving it.”

You can learn more about Deborah Sampson by visiting Mount Vernon’s excellent overview of her life and service! 

You can get a copy of the slide on Deborah Sampson here: Sampson AFM 2019

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing at least two posts a week with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact.

American Founders’ Month in Florida continues today with a look at the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty were a sometimes controversial secret society devoted to combating what it perceived as British oppression by any means necessary.

While they may be most famous for organizing boycotts of British goods and dumping tea into Boston Harbor, they also took sometimes-violent action against people seen as serving British interests. We all recall, for example, those images from the era that illustrate Sons of Liberty tarring and feathering British tax collectors.

The Bostonian Paying the Excise-Man, 1774 British propaganda print, referring to the tarring and feathering, of Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm four weeks after the Boston Tea Party. The men also poured hot tea down Malcolm’s throat

The Sons of Liberty were sometimes extreme in their pursuit of liberty; was that extremism always justified? How can we really say, from our own vantage point today? What a fascinating discussion we can have! You can learn more about the fascinating Sons of Liberty and its role in the Boston Tea Party from the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Grab the PowerPoint slide featured in this post: Sons of Liberty AFM

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing at least two posts a week with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact.

American Founders’ Month continues in Florida, and it coincides with Freedom Week. There may be no quote more famous in our nation’s history than Patrick Henry’s “…give me liberty or give me death!” It is perhaps an appropriate way to start off our celebration of Freedom Week as we wrap up American Founders’ Month.

Patrick Henry, like many of his peers, was a man of many talents, beliefs, and contradictions. He was a brilliant orator, fiery and powerful, but few of his speeches survived him, as he rarely wrote anything down. Unlike his contemporaries, he did not write many letters, so we have few primary sources to consider him with. A passionate advocate for liberty, he was, like many of his elite contemporaries from the South, a slave holder. Like many of them (though not all!) he recognized the evils of slavery without necessarily choosing a path towards relief of his own complicity. A believer in strong bonds across the states, he was embittered by what he saw as New England’s reluctance to contribute fairly to the national project under the Articles of Confederation.

His passion for liberty led Henry initiallt to the Anti-Federalist camp; he did not trust those working in Philadelphia at the constitutional convention, and he did not trust the new Constitution.

 This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, Sir, they appear to me horribly frightful: Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy: And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every American? Your President may easily become King: Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue forever unchangeably this Government, although horridly defective: Where are your checks in this Government? Your strong holds will be in the hands of your enemies: It is on a supposition that our American Governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this Government are founded: But its defective, and imperfect construction, puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men

Ultimately, however, he sided with the Federalists, in part because of rivalry with his fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson. He is, without a doubt, a good person to begin this Freedom Week with. You can learn more about Patrick Henry’s famous ‘give me liberty’ speech with this close reading plan here!

Grab the PowerPoint slide featured in this post: Patrick Henry AFM

We here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute were saddened to learn of the passing of the wonderful Dr. David Colburn, former director of UF’s Bob Graham Center (among many other roles played at the University of Florida). Dr. Colburn was a fantastic colleague, a strong friend, a good teacher, an effective and well-known scholar, and a wonderful advocate for civic education. He was a friend of the Joint Center and the Institute, and he will be missed. Our deepest condolences to Dr. Colburn’s family and friends, the Bob Graham Center, and the broader University of Florida community.

We encourage you to read this fond remembrance of Dr. Colburn shared by our friends at the Graham Center.  

His family suggests that expressions of sympathy may be made in the form of donations through the Graham Center’s David Colburn Student Advancement Fund, c/o the UF Foundation, P.O. Box 14425, Gainesville, 32604-2425, or to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, 100 NE 1^st Street, Gainesville 32601.

Services are scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 22, at Holy Trinity Church, 100 NE 1st Street, Gainesville 32601 at 2 p.m. The university plans a public service later this fall.

A reminder, dear friends and colleagues, that the Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference is fast approaching (and you can register here!). So let’s take a look at some of the sessions on the docket for the conference! We’ll be doing this over the next few weeks, highlighting 3 to 5 interesting sessions that are likely to draw your interest.

Saturday, October 19

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s Propaganda! 

This looks fantastic! The approach taken here to this session is simply really cool.

Is Superman simply a tool for wartime propaganda or a reflection of national identity? This session will engage the participants through the use of original Superman comic books and cover art to answer this question. The participants will be provided with a brief background about Superman, where they will receive a copy of his “origin” from the 1940s comics. Using the propaganda analysis tool and a list of propaganda techniques, the participants will engage in an analysis of the cover art from the 1940s Superman comic books. These will then be compared to the cover art of the Wonder Woman comics, through analysis and evaluation. Additionally, the participants will read a comic about Superman that is titled, “How Superman would end the war” as well as the German response to the comic in order to determine if Superman is being used more for propaganda or if he is a reflection of national identity.

Be sure to check out this session. I know I will try to be there!

Historical Thinking With Cinderella

What an interesting approach to using primary sources with elementary kids!

Using different sources from the Library of Congress, we plan to show our participant how to compare the history of Cinderella using Dr. Sam Wineburg’s Historical Thinking Skills. The Cinderella story we know today seems to have started it’s journey as early as 1697 in Paris. The original story then travels throughout Europe and the world, turning into culturally influenced branches of the original Cinderella story.

This integrates Wineburg’s work with fairy tales! Another session that should attract a good crowd!

Accountable Talk in the Civics Classroom (Poster Session)

We will be featuring a number of poster sessions at the conference this year, and this one looks good, especially if you are as civics-obsessed as your humble bloghost!

Because of how polarized our political world is today, many teachers (ourselves included!) have shied away from engaging students in discussion-based activities, despite all of the research regarding the importance of student ownership in and discovery-based learning. In order to overcome this fear, we have implemented accountable talk during student-led conversations in order to keep the students engaged in the content, thinking critically about the material, and expressing their opinions- all while being respectful of their fellow classmates and differing opinions. In our presentation, we will give teachers a playbook for how to utilize accountable talk in their classrooms. We will discuss how to prepare the class to use accountable talk, we will provide examples of statement stems that will help teachers implement the accountable talk, and we will discuss potential challenges and solutions that we have discovered ourselves while using accountable talk in the classroom. We will also provide specific examples/lesson plans we have used in our classrooms that have centered around using accountable talk (appropriate for both for middle and early high school aged students.)

I look forward to checking this out!

Sunday October 20 (80 Minute Sessions)

Formative Assessments to the Rescue

Formative assessments are so very important in the social studies and oh there are so many! What are the best ones to use? How can we think about formative assessments that we can use in our different content areas?

Do you need a quick check for understanding from your students but you don’t want to grade another piece of paper? Come and join this interactive workshop on formative assessments and how you can use them in your social studies classroom. All social studies disciplines are welcome. Participants will be shown a variety of formative assessment strategies to help them in their social studies classroom. We want to get away from the paper-based quizzes and more toward “quick checks” that are engaging and more interactive for students but give valuable, immediate feedback for teachers. The presentation is adaptable for all social studies curriculums. Some strategies include SWAT, Agreement Lines, Value Line or Human Spectrum, Odd One Out, Inside/Outside Circles, ABC Graffiti, Grafitti Review, Shower Curtain Review, and many more. We would like to give some time in between strategies for teachers to think how they would use each strategy in their own classroom.

So these are just some of the cool sessions we will be having at the conference. Why don’t you go ahead and register for this now! 

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing at least two posts a week with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact.

American Founders’ Month continues in Florida. Today, we look at Thomas Jefferson. Out of all of the Founders’, it may be Thomas Jefferson that most schoolchildren are most familiar with. They know him, of course, as the author of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, of course, is considered on of the clearest rebukes of tyranny ever written, and it remains to this day a symbol of the pursuit of liberty the world over.

Like many of his peers, however, Jefferson was a man of massive contradictions. An advocate for liberty who owned a great many slaves, a slaveowner who recognized the evils of slavery (‘the rock upon which the Union would split’) but never freed his own slaves (unlike his colleague and friend George Washington, who freed his own upon his death), an opponent of an activist and strong central government who nevertheless used his power to purchase vast swathes of land from the French (despite his doubts about whether the Constitution gave him that power), and a believer in the importance of civility and comity in politics and life who was involved in one of the most brutal presidential campaigns in American history.

Thomas Jefferson was indeed many things, some good, some bad, but all important to the legacy of freedom and the Founders of this country. As one of his successors as president, John F. Kennedy, once said while hosting a dinner for Nobel Prize winners,

I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet.

Log in and learn more about Thomas Jefferson from this excellent lesson provided by our friends at iCivics! 

You can grab the PowerPoint featured at the top of this post here: Thomas Jefferson AFM

Good morning, friends! It’s Constitution Day today! September 17th celebrates that day back in 1787 when the Framers and Founders gave us our Constitution. It is, to this day, the oldest written and codified national constitution still in force. Yes, it has flaws and weaknesses, but it has also given us a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and allowed for the growth of liberty and freedom over time in these United States. The fact that it is so very adaptable to the times is important, and it has allowed the nation to work towards those founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even if it has not always been able to reach them.

Now, if you ask me, every day should be Constitution Day! So where can you find some resources for teaching about Constitution Day?

Students Investigating Primary Sources 

On the Florida Citizen website, you will find a number of primary source-oriented lessons built around the founding documents, targeting grades 3-12 and exposing students to the principles of our founding and the documents that create the framework for the liberties we enjoy today. These were developed in collaboration with the National Archives and with teachers from across the state of Florida. There are lessons there that cover the entire Freedom Week! Our elementary and middle school lesson plans elsewhere on the website also address different aspects of the Constitution and our other founding documents. Be sure to check out these free resources! 

The Civics Renewal Network

How about some resources shared through our friends at the Civics Renewal Network ? Of course, we need to begin with the Preamble Challenge!

Preamble Challenge

Find terrific classroom activities and lessons for all grade levels with the free online Teacher Toolkit. Take the Preamble Challenge, and today, share your videos and photos on Twitter and Instagram using #renewcivics and #preamblechallenge. Let’s see all sorts of creative ideas for learning about the Preamble.

Check out some more CRN-linked resources on the Constitution here! 

For more CRN-linked resources from the FJCC, go here.

Schoolhouse Rock

Well, it IS a classic, isn’t it?

Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing at least two posts a week with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact.

Judith Sargent Murray was born in pre-Revolutionary Boston, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant family. It as fortunate for us, as it was for her, that her parents believed in educating their daughters as well as their sons. Unfortunately, this education was limited to reading and writing; Sargent Murray had little opportunity for advanced education. Instead, she took advantage of her father’s vast library and educated herself in history, civics, philosophy, literature, and so much more. This education, so much of it self-taught, she put to work as a writer and thinker and, most importantly, advocate for the rights of women and the equality of the sexes.

For Judith Sargent Murray, the way in which we consider the roles and educations of boys and girls was unjust, stifling, and wrong. In her seminal work, ‘On the Equality of the Sexes‘ (1790), she raises doubts about the argument that men are inherently the intellectual superiors to women:

“Yet it may be questioned, from what doth this superiority, in thus discriminating faculty of the soul proceed. May we not trace its source in the difference of education, and continued advantage?…As their years increase, the sister must be wholly domesticated, while the brother is led by the hand through all the flowery paths of science”

In other words, the only reason men can claim superiority to women is because we do not give women the same education and opportunities as men! This theme would reappear throughout her work over the years, and she never ceased believing that America offered a great opportunity for a reconsideration of the role and education of girls. The new nation, after all, needed women who would raise the next generation to believe in and understand the American spirit and model, a ‘Republican motherhood‘ that required educated, passionate, and (to a degree for its day) liberated women.

Sargent Murray practiced what she preached, educating the children in her house as she believed they deserved and as was right. She also wrote hundreds of essays and letters and articles, many of which were published under pen names in such a way as to hide the fact that she was a woman, for she feared her arguments would be automatically rejected. She was a ‘Founding Mother’ of the pursuit of equal rights, an advocate for the American project, and someone who encouraged the new nation to live up to the ideals it promised. You can learn more about the wonderful Judith Sargent Murray from this excellent lesson.

Grab the PowerPoint featured at the top of this post: JSM 2019

And of COURSE this Freedom Month don’t forget the Preamble Challenge from our friends at the Civics Renewal Network! Check it out today!

Next up: Thomas Jefferson!