The first blog entry of the new year greets the stakeholders of 7.1 Social Studies with a type of anticipation and immensity that might have waited for the Framers at the conclusion of the American Revolution. After having striven so far, endured so much, battled through so many adversaries, we are left with the ruins of our freedom; Now, what do we do? How do we start an immense task? How do we reconfigure what we once were into what we are, and more importantly, into what we will be?
The Framers and I seem to share some similarities… It might be only time that I share something with those folks on the dollar bills.
We have emerged from the Winter Recess as a new nation, as a new people, and as newly emerging scholars. The Chapter 6 Writing Assessments will be returned on Monday, 1/5. At the time of this blog’s posting, the grades are not yet tabulated. Revisions of the chapter 6 Writing Tasks will be due on Monday, 1/12, with Social Studies Progress Reports given to students on Friday, 1/9.
However, this serves as nothing more than window dressing for what we will be commencing upon our return. We will be engaging in a study of the Constitutional Convention and the issues emerging from it. Our method of study will begin with a Sensory Feeling introduction, whereby students envision questions they might have after being faced with a variety of situations that bear some thread of the tapestry woven by the framers at the conclusion of the American Revolution. This anticipatory set of questions will help to immerse students into the context of where we are in the dialectic of American historic consciousness. Following this, we will begin to attempt to grasp the vocabulary of the time period. In human history, the emergence of power has been accompanied by the control of language. This lesson will be demonstrated in this setting as students engage in a vocabulary exercise where they will seek to “fit” together terms and meaning. After gauging the dynamic between freedom and control, and how the two concepts can be mutually exclusive at certain points of human progression, we will attempt to piece together an understanding of the Constitutional Convention through the Jigsaw Teaching methodology. This format of instruction involves students delving into a portion of the text and becoming a “leading expert” in that section, and then taking that section to teach to other students, who in turn serve as other “leading experts.”
I have always taught the Constitutional Convention through a direct lecture/ instruction format. Traditionally, I have dominated the use of the LCD projector (despite the gifted clamoring of others) and engaged in a lecture style methodology of both the Constitutional Convention and the actual document that followed. I was completely prepared to follow this method this year, full with my notes about how the Federalists and Anti Federalists clashed, how the Virginia Plan rivaled the New Jersey Plan, and how the Compromise over Slavery continued the practice and reduced people of color to 3/5 of a person. Yet, something held me back from my full commitment to another year of straight lecture. I felt it to be a presence that I could not articulate. I was reminded of the ever present image of Eastwood’s film, “Mystic River”- a body of water where something lies dormant, yet omnipresent. Its waters run still and deep. Its shimmering surface belies a body of truth, pain, beauty, and droplets of redemption. Its brooding cannot be put into language of description, but rather has to be fully comprehended through the lexicon of experience. Indeed, as something lay in that river of ideas- the intellectual current that serves as the lifeline of scholarship, of my teaching and their learning- I realized that the lesson might hold more power and serve more compelling purposes if I began the process of asking the students to start the process of assuming ownership of the dialectic of teaching and learning. The jigsaw method of instruction allows students to engage in the reciprocally reflexive exercise of teaching and learning. At the same time, I began to understand that the method of instruction should reflect the content itself. The traditional view of the Constitutional Convention is one of proud and ardent strides towards self determination, articulate conceptions of freedom, and pure justice. It is depicted as a moment where the realization of struggle is embodied. The “winners” actually proved to be triumphant. It is a moment that “established a republic that has thrived for more than 200 years.” (last page of chapter 7, section 3.) In reading these lines out of the textbook, I understood that such a moment in American History could be depicted through the methodology of direct instruction and straight lecture. Yet, the “Mystic River” metaphor crept into my mind. Beneath this exterior of justice and triumphant glory reflects indepth complexities that belie the easy platitudes offered by the textbook. The formal and embedded establishment of a nation’s “original sin,” the constant battle between freedom and control, as well as the dialectic of how to include other voices in a tapestry which begs for it became the legacies of this river- this body of water that might have washed over one set of conditions, but left many more in its deluge. The “Mystic River” did not only run in South Boston, but seems to have pervaded the Constitutional Convention, an event whose memories seem to provide the legacy with which all of us as members of this great, yet sometimes sad democracy have to wrestle.
As we seek to make sense of this legacy, we find that there are no easy answers. There can be nothing that provides immediate salvation. We seek it, we strive for it, and sometimes we even cry for it, knowing we will never grasp it. There is no “font of knowledge,” no centerpiece to allow for absolute understanding of such a powerful and yet sad event. When Dave says to Jimmy, “It should have been you in that car,” he speaks the absolute truth of someone who realizes that there is no absolution. Confronted with such a terrifyingly abysmal like view of American History, we seem to endure by assembling the jigsaw puzzle of meaning. A piece is found in one place, and its complement is found later. Perhaps, we become animated with the discovery of a “corner piece.” It made sense to me that the jigsaw method of teaching can bring a meaningful understanding to the content of the lesson for the topic itself is a jigsaw puzzle, with some of the pieces not having been included in the original packaging. At the same time, the jigsaw teaching approach also helps to create a more meaningful understanding of what education ought to be. Rather than endure an exercise where we, as teacher and students, see the textbook or a sole entity as representing the proverbial “font of knowledge,” jigsaw teaching captures the essence of scholarship. It emphasizes that if there is a concept as pure teaching and learning, it comes from a variety of sources. Our purpose as learned individuals is to assemble this understanding, as one would assemble a jigsaw puzzle. When this is done, the river of ideas that shrouds us and washes over us is mystic, yet strangely beautiful.
Eastwood’s “Mystic River” seemed to blend into the idea of how time passes. The river which runs through our ideas and our souls continues onward, and we look at the body of water in many different ways at many different times in our lives. 7-1 Students will examine it in one way starting on our return from break. Years from now, they will see it differently for they will be different. All scholars endure this transformation. All people endure this, as well in our own lives. We seem to see one thing in one way at one point in time. At that moment, our view is replete with absolute certainty. Yet, this image serves as only a prelude, as we endure change and repudiate it later as an illusion. In thinking about how Eastwood’s image occupied so much importance in articulating how I progressed from lecture to jigsaw in my approach to teaching chapter 7, I was reminded of one of my favorite songs by Judy Collins. When she sings of how clouds, tears, love, and life were seen in one way, and then another way in her etude to dreamers and pain, “Both Sides Now,” it hit me that teaching is much the same. Both learners and teachers sense intellectual concepts in one particular vein for a while, but songs of innocence become meshed with tunes of experience. The result that sight and illusions yield is that we “really don’t know life at all.” In such challenging situations, it seems that the only things we can do is piece together what we know having seen our own intellectual and personal “Mystic Rivers” through “both sides now.” At this point of convergence and examination might be where truth and understanding might reside. It certainly should be where teaching and learning should attempt to strike.
Man, is this going to be a fun year, or what??
On tap: Chapter 7, Returning of Chapter 6 Writing Tasks, and Social Studies Progress Reports being sent home on Friday, 1/9.
The Framers and I seem to share some similarities… It might be only time that I share something with those folks on the dollar bills.
We have emerged from the Winter Recess as a new nation, as a new people, and as newly emerging scholars. The Chapter 6 Writing Assessments will be returned on Monday, 1/5. At the time of this blog’s posting, the grades are not yet tabulated. Revisions of the chapter 6 Writing Tasks will be due on Monday, 1/12, with Social Studies Progress Reports given to students on Friday, 1/9.
However, this serves as nothing more than window dressing for what we will be commencing upon our return. We will be engaging in a study of the Constitutional Convention and the issues emerging from it. Our method of study will begin with a Sensory Feeling introduction, whereby students envision questions they might have after being faced with a variety of situations that bear some thread of the tapestry woven by the framers at the conclusion of the American Revolution. This anticipatory set of questions will help to immerse students into the context of where we are in the dialectic of American historic consciousness. Following this, we will begin to attempt to grasp the vocabulary of the time period. In human history, the emergence of power has been accompanied by the control of language. This lesson will be demonstrated in this setting as students engage in a vocabulary exercise where they will seek to “fit” together terms and meaning. After gauging the dynamic between freedom and control, and how the two concepts can be mutually exclusive at certain points of human progression, we will attempt to piece together an understanding of the Constitutional Convention through the Jigsaw Teaching methodology. This format of instruction involves students delving into a portion of the text and becoming a “leading expert” in that section, and then taking that section to teach to other students, who in turn serve as other “leading experts.”
I have always taught the Constitutional Convention through a direct lecture/ instruction format. Traditionally, I have dominated the use of the LCD projector (despite the gifted clamoring of others) and engaged in a lecture style methodology of both the Constitutional Convention and the actual document that followed. I was completely prepared to follow this method this year, full with my notes about how the Federalists and Anti Federalists clashed, how the Virginia Plan rivaled the New Jersey Plan, and how the Compromise over Slavery continued the practice and reduced people of color to 3/5 of a person. Yet, something held me back from my full commitment to another year of straight lecture. I felt it to be a presence that I could not articulate. I was reminded of the ever present image of Eastwood’s film, “Mystic River”- a body of water where something lies dormant, yet omnipresent. Its waters run still and deep. Its shimmering surface belies a body of truth, pain, beauty, and droplets of redemption. Its brooding cannot be put into language of description, but rather has to be fully comprehended through the lexicon of experience. Indeed, as something lay in that river of ideas- the intellectual current that serves as the lifeline of scholarship, of my teaching and their learning- I realized that the lesson might hold more power and serve more compelling purposes if I began the process of asking the students to start the process of assuming ownership of the dialectic of teaching and learning. The jigsaw method of instruction allows students to engage in the reciprocally reflexive exercise of teaching and learning. At the same time, I began to understand that the method of instruction should reflect the content itself. The traditional view of the Constitutional Convention is one of proud and ardent strides towards self determination, articulate conceptions of freedom, and pure justice. It is depicted as a moment where the realization of struggle is embodied. The “winners” actually proved to be triumphant. It is a moment that “established a republic that has thrived for more than 200 years.” (last page of chapter 7, section 3.) In reading these lines out of the textbook, I understood that such a moment in American History could be depicted through the methodology of direct instruction and straight lecture. Yet, the “Mystic River” metaphor crept into my mind. Beneath this exterior of justice and triumphant glory reflects indepth complexities that belie the easy platitudes offered by the textbook. The formal and embedded establishment of a nation’s “original sin,” the constant battle between freedom and control, as well as the dialectic of how to include other voices in a tapestry which begs for it became the legacies of this river- this body of water that might have washed over one set of conditions, but left many more in its deluge. The “Mystic River” did not only run in South Boston, but seems to have pervaded the Constitutional Convention, an event whose memories seem to provide the legacy with which all of us as members of this great, yet sometimes sad democracy have to wrestle.
As we seek to make sense of this legacy, we find that there are no easy answers. There can be nothing that provides immediate salvation. We seek it, we strive for it, and sometimes we even cry for it, knowing we will never grasp it. There is no “font of knowledge,” no centerpiece to allow for absolute understanding of such a powerful and yet sad event. When Dave says to Jimmy, “It should have been you in that car,” he speaks the absolute truth of someone who realizes that there is no absolution. Confronted with such a terrifyingly abysmal like view of American History, we seem to endure by assembling the jigsaw puzzle of meaning. A piece is found in one place, and its complement is found later. Perhaps, we become animated with the discovery of a “corner piece.” It made sense to me that the jigsaw method of teaching can bring a meaningful understanding to the content of the lesson for the topic itself is a jigsaw puzzle, with some of the pieces not having been included in the original packaging. At the same time, the jigsaw teaching approach also helps to create a more meaningful understanding of what education ought to be. Rather than endure an exercise where we, as teacher and students, see the textbook or a sole entity as representing the proverbial “font of knowledge,” jigsaw teaching captures the essence of scholarship. It emphasizes that if there is a concept as pure teaching and learning, it comes from a variety of sources. Our purpose as learned individuals is to assemble this understanding, as one would assemble a jigsaw puzzle. When this is done, the river of ideas that shrouds us and washes over us is mystic, yet strangely beautiful.
Eastwood’s “Mystic River” seemed to blend into the idea of how time passes. The river which runs through our ideas and our souls continues onward, and we look at the body of water in many different ways at many different times in our lives. 7-1 Students will examine it in one way starting on our return from break. Years from now, they will see it differently for they will be different. All scholars endure this transformation. All people endure this, as well in our own lives. We seem to see one thing in one way at one point in time. At that moment, our view is replete with absolute certainty. Yet, this image serves as only a prelude, as we endure change and repudiate it later as an illusion. In thinking about how Eastwood’s image occupied so much importance in articulating how I progressed from lecture to jigsaw in my approach to teaching chapter 7, I was reminded of one of my favorite songs by Judy Collins. When she sings of how clouds, tears, love, and life were seen in one way, and then another way in her etude to dreamers and pain, “Both Sides Now,” it hit me that teaching is much the same. Both learners and teachers sense intellectual concepts in one particular vein for a while, but songs of innocence become meshed with tunes of experience. The result that sight and illusions yield is that we “really don’t know life at all.” In such challenging situations, it seems that the only things we can do is piece together what we know having seen our own intellectual and personal “Mystic Rivers” through “both sides now.” At this point of convergence and examination might be where truth and understanding might reside. It certainly should be where teaching and learning should attempt to strike.
Man, is this going to be a fun year, or what??
On tap: Chapter 7, Returning of Chapter 6 Writing Tasks, and Social Studies Progress Reports being sent home on Friday, 1/9.
All best and happy hunting!
Mr. Kannan
Mr. Kannan
1 comment:
It is very significant that such careful study of our 1787 constitutional convention be undertaken by the children of our country. Only by learning the lessons of the past can they hope to lead our country when their time comes to do so.
I'd like to bring to your attention a website that will allow your students to study about one of the articles the 1787 convention created. Article V. The convention, as you know created an amendment process in Article V. One way the Constitution can be amended in by convention.
At www.foavc.org your students can read the texts of the actual applications, well over 650 applications, from all 50 states and see how the states have used the provisions of the Constitution since the convention.
I hope you find the site to be of use in your course.
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