The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

Political Cartoons and Rigorous Social Studies Instruction at YES Prep Southeast

April 14, 2010 by Bonnie

“What is significant about the year 1948?” While a simple answer, given by a normal student in any public school would be sufficient for this question, at YES Prep Southeast, we challenge our social studies students to dig deeper. While we understand that all of our students need to know certain things about our past and present, we also know that the most important things that a student can get in a social studies class are essential skills. How can we expect students to remember every single date or person that we throw at them? They need to know HOW to analyze the world that we live in. We aren’t born with the ability to determine how an event going on the other side of the world affects people, geography, and the future. We have to cultivate it.

This “skills focus” drives our instruction at YES Prep and has revolutionized my students’ understanding of the world. While a whole group of amazing teachers worked to create this rigorous curriculum, I’ve been lucky enough to see the fruits of our labor as we study different regions of the world. In my 9^th grade World Geography class, we spend the bulk of our time discussing current issues.  We look at the causes and effects of these issues on different groups, compare issues between regions, ensure that we have a proper timeline of the historical events at play, and look at the potential biases that surround the issue. This year alone, we have talked about overpopulation, immigration, natural disasters, conflicts in Africa, the aftermath of colonial rule, and sweatshops. At the end of each discussion, we ask the question: What does this mean for me? How does this affect our lives? I knew our analysis-based approach was working when 9^th graders carried out an initiative to raise money for Haiti through a Rock Band marathon. They’ve started to think about ways that THEY could impact the world.

Their interest in world affairs culminated in our discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict. When asked why we were studying this conflict, they immediately responded with wisdom such as:

We need to know what the United States is involved in around the wor

The most important city to monotheistic religions, Jerusalem, was involved.

We need to be informed citizens because we don’t want to be lost when something big happens.

I love teaching this conflict because it includes so much of what we have already covered. It really shows me what my students have taken away from the first part of our class. It’s a chance to prove our theory that if you teach students HOW to look at history; they will be able to succeed with each and every event that we study.  Their analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict was above and beyond what even I expected. They drew inferences, made comparisons, and determined potential solutions with relative ease. When a challenge arose, they used their prior knowledge and analytical thinking skills to overcome it. They were AMAZING!

One of the activities that we did this year allowed us to develop a deep understanding of the obstacles to peace in the Middle East. After learning about these obstacles, students put a critical eye on the status quo and created some totally awesome political cartoons.

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