Studying effective teachers. Part 1

As part of my Middle School Curriculum and Instruction class I have a field placement at Goshen Middle School with an 8th grade social studies teacher. I spend one period a day with her on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the entire semester.

Today in class she did a powerful exercise related to the slave trade. The teacher began the class by showing a short clip from the movie Roots that discussed the difference between a "loose pack" and a "tight pack." Afterwards my teacher had the students lie on the floor in the amount of space a slave would have had on the ship that was transporting them to Europe.

As they laid scrunched together she talked with them about how the journey often took longer than a month, how hot the conditions would have been, and how they would have been surrounded by bodily fluids. The students were appalled by the details.

The slave trade exercise reminded me of how important it is for teachers to make history "real" to their students. Worksheets and textbooks do not have the power that real life demonstrations do. Students need to be pulled out of their seats as much as possible to make learning effective.