I need help and resources to change my history class into a "historians" class. (Long post)

I teach 7th grade world history at a rural school in PA. My curriculum is poorly defined, but generally begins with the Middle Ages and ends as far into the modern era as I can get in a year- typically, WWII. I have literally every 7th grader in my classes, so at some point, every child in the district comes through my class. As an untested subject (no standardized tests for social studies), I have a lot of freedom to teach what and how I want, which is great. Every student has a Chromebook, so access to technology and internet resources is not an issue.

Generally, I teach well and am well liked by my students, colleagues, and administration. I'm very active in leadership in my union, and I'm always asked to spearhead all the dumb new initiatives and stuff my district wants to do. In ten years at my middle school, I've had two parents complain about something in my class, and both were stupid misunderstandings on their part.

I mention all of the above because I can generally do whatever I want and am trusted to just do a good job at it. The kids, parents, and admin are on board and/or more concerned with tested subjects anyway.

However, I am burnt out. I have a toddler at home who is all I care about every day and I miss him a lot. If I could be a stay at home dad, I would immediately without guilt or hesitation. I don't have the energy or willingness to really go big at my job, nor do I even believe I should have to. It's a job, not my whole life. Last year (pandemic stuff) also demonstrated that my district administration is full of a bunch of assholes who don't actually care about me anyway, further strengthening my belief that I should just do whatever I think is best for my classes.

In the last several years, honestly, it's gotten worse at my school. Class sizes used to be small, around 20, and I could teach content and historical thinking more easily. Even if kids didn't previously care about history, I could convince them to engage in class with humor, enthusiasm, personality, stories, etc. Now I have 30 kids and there are more disruptions, phones are out of control, and I don't have the ability to connect with my students and will them into getting something out of my class anymore.

Also, they're bad students. They are seemingly incapable of critical thinking, evaluating information, distinguishing between good and bad evidence, citing sources, supporting arguments, etc. They can't even or won't even bother with developing opinions of their own most of the time, which makes teaching history to them incredibly boring and dry. Last year especially, this looked like just a lot of lecture, because anything else would be too unproductive. I don't want to teach like that.

Here's the point, finally. I want to scrap the way I currently teach, by running through eras of history and telling stories, etc. while teaching facts and content. I want to change my class to be a "historians class" instead where students learn how to think and act like historians. I still would cover content, of course, but rather than eras of history being the units, I envision historical skills being the units, with history content and big ideas as the material we use to get to the actual skills. For (a crappy, impromptu) example, rather than teaching "The Middle Ages", I want to pose a question such as "The Middle Ages are sometimes called 'The Dark Ages'. Do you feel this is a good title for the time period? Explain, etc."Students would then ideally gather evidence for and against, analyze it, develop a position, and support it. I'd curate this process and guide it, using lots of prompts and discussion, but they'd hopefully come to a conclusion based on what they've learned and discussed, rather than just what I told them to put in their notes.

I want them to be able to answer a posed question or prompt by locating several sources of trustworthy information, evaluating and considering it, and drawing and supporting their own conclusions based on it. I want them to be able to perceive and avoid damaging biases. They'll need to develop internet research skills, they'll have to write and probably speak in front of their peers. They'll have to discuss and debate, etc. Currently, they have basically none of these skills when they arrive in my class.

This seems almost insurmountable to me, especially due to the fact that I barely want to do my job anymore anyway. However, I think that if I could put together a class like this where we learn content in the course of actually developing history skills, rather than just getting through content as in the past, I would be happy to put more effort in. Plus, someone has to do it or we're honestly doomed. Their parents sure as hell aren't.

How should I approach doing this? What should my units be? What essential historical skills should I really focus on for everyone's mutual success? What should my expectations be for 7th graders, especially those with the issues that I described above? What resources do I need? Should I do cooperative learning groups?

If you can't tell, I am struggling to conceptualize a change this big. Any help, direction, resources, or discussion would be very useful to me. Thanks for taking the time.

Submitted July 03, 2021 at 11:42AM by HotDamn18V https://ift.tt/3xiMDiR