Social Studies Manifesto!

Wow this semester has completely shook up my ideas on how to teach social studies. Social studies is such an important subject to teach students. There is no young or old age to start incorporating it into the classroom. Kindergartens are doing it when they play or talk about different roles people play in the community and sixth graders are doing it when they are learning history. Social Studies has so many  different subjects rolled into one from history, geography, and economics. Students need to understand who they are and where they come from, why the world is the way it is and how it became that way, and the different ways people live all around the world. Social Studies can be a great tool to use when you are planning the management of your classroom. Students can help create the rules in the classroom and feel that each of them help play a part in the way the room is ran. If each student feels important and that their opinion matters it can only help a teacher build a stronger classroom community. I want my future students to feel that they are a part of not only a classroom but also a community and that each of the have a voice. Each student has opinions, ideas, and beliefs that they can each contribute to the classroom. Social studies is a great tool to help promote and for students to learn about democracy. In my classroom students will not just being reading from a book and doing a worksheet, they will be actively participating in the lessons they are learning wither it be with the acting of a play, giving a presentation, dressing like characters from history, or creating class projects about our community. Social Studies seems to be the forgotten subject in most schools but it is one that will be very much alive in my classroom. So many schools do not ever require the teachers to teach it. If I work at a school that does not share my enthusiasm of teaching social studies there are some subtle ways that I can use to teach it in my classroom. Social Studies can be integrated through so many subjects wither it is language arts with the reading of a historical novel or math when you are dealing with measuring and you can measure distances on a map. This semester was an eye-opening semester! Every activity we did help my love for social studies to grow more. This semester helped  me to face prejudice and ideas that I did not even know I possessed, but in the end, it helped shape me into a better educator. You do not have to love social studies to be able to teach it, but when you are shown ideas as I have been shown this semester you cannot help but fall in love with it!  I cannot wait until I get my own room and I can put all of these great ideas into practice!