Social Studies Involves Human Behavior and Interactions with the World

To be honest, I don't like History classes at all because these have so many things (names, dates, places, ect) to reading and remembering. I'm actually not a person that have a good memory, this is why I spend most of my time on this class. Nevertheless, I have to admit that history is still relevant today because people can get inspiration from the great men of the past throught history. I want to be a Dental Hygienist, from this class I have learned so many new things. I'm not sure this class can be helpful to me in my field, but at least it teaches me what our forefathers experienced and suffered in the past in order to make our country what it is today.

History class in itself has a specific purpose which seems to be frequently forgotten. We learn about violent and horrible events in our past, as well as life- changing and positively impacting ones. From the negative events, we learn what went wrong and how to prevent similar tragedies from happening. From the positive, we gather knowledge and comprehension of the basis of our modern society. We are a self- repairing race, analyzing every flaw and figuring out what caused it. It's an ancient practice, trial and error is human nature.

This class has really opened up my eyes to many new views and opinions toward certain information and assumptions. Before taking this class I did not believe I was racist or had any downward views towards any people or cultural. This soon came to my attention that everyone has a little bit of racist in them no matter how hard you try not to be. I also thought that Columbus discovered America, I found it very interesting and almost common sense when we discussed this issue and how the school curriculum has been lying to students in a sense about the discovery of America. The finial bias I soon came to see was that no matter how much you think you will not face other cultures or other religions in schools that you are not familiar with your chances are very slim. No matter where you plan to teach at their will always be situations that you are unfamiliar with.

“I don’t understand why I have to take this class. All that old history stuff has no relevance to my life, and it is a waste of time to fool with it. My life today is more important than the lives of all those dead and boring people.” This remark is said more frequently than we realize. History is a combination of events that created our present and future today. The past it what simply gives our present it’s value. Another way to look at history is it can be compared to our ancestry line. Without our ancestors we wouldn’t have the make-up of genes that we do today. For example, the Columbian exchange is one of the events in history that has really impacted our world. Not only did one change come from the event but a variety including food, plants, animals, goods and knowledge. History also exposes knowledge to us. It is the resource that allows us to better our lives and expand our knowledge. Believe it or not, our life we peruse everyday consist of history. Including languages, we inherited, religions that weren’t just created on the spot, technologies that have been upgraded in the past years, and the clothing we decided to put on our backs everyday that has evolved from different materials to different fittings. The world has evolved in many ways in the past and it continues to evolve.

There is a purpose behind taking history classes. The goal behind learning about history is to learn from it, to not make the same mistakes as the ones who came before, to become as advanced as possible while surpassing ancestors follies. The Chinese government tries to cast aside the knowledge of the Tiananmen Square massacre. If Tiananmen is forgotten… isn’t it more likely to happen again? Slave revolts in the United States of America were caused partially by denying Africans’ human rights and education, the more education these enslaved individuals had access to the more revolts were caused as a response to their enslavement and unfair treatment.

The ugly truth about my education was that I was not being taught the whole history of the United States. In my classes, historic tales were being told. Beginning with Once upon a time on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria came the settlers along with their servants indentured and otherwise to Jamestown, and ending with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement left gaps, no, canyons, that needed to be filled. To get a glimpse of what I had been missing in History class for the past twelve years was overwhelming, especially since it often required me to alter my thinking about my world; the events and people in it.

American History was challenging; I do not believe I had taken as many notes in one class as I did in that one, we worked from bell to bell, it took some serious adjusting. The course was quite intimidating at first, but after a month or so, I grew accustomed to the number of notes we took, and the material we had to study.

Students come to the classroom with their own ideas and pre-conceived notions. As a future educator it is important for me to understand what students know and where there are misunderstandings. These incorrect ideas about our world and history translate into misconceptions, gaps in knowledge, and stereotypes that will be taken as fact until otherwise taught. To better understand the missing pieces in social studies education and to find ways to address these gaps, I delved into the minds of two third-graders, one male, Sawyer, and one female, Brooke. After conducting my interview I have a better understanding of topics that students are not clear on and would benefit from more instruction. One topic students have missing information about is knowledge of famous women in history. A second topic students seem to be confusing is basic geography understanding.

History classes have always been a requirement for high school students to graduate. Some of these classes include United States history, Government, and World History. Although, there is a lack of any classes dealing with local history. State history alone only receives attention in the elementary school system and about a week in Government class. All school systems should include, in the required classes to take to receive a high school diploma, a local history class, so that the students may have a knowledge of the place where they live.

Have you ever looked at something and wonder how it came to be? It was probably created by one (or all) of the five fields of social studies. The five fields of social studies are culture, economics, geography, government, and history. They all have a huge impact on our country. Some even combine and effect the country. For example, the history of African-American culture effected America. Now you know what the five fields of social studies are but now you need to learn about what each one means.

When signing up for classes I hadn’t put much thought into my personal goals for this class, let alone any of my classes and being a liberal arts student my main purpose is to find a subject that clicks, something that challenges me, not only as a student but as a person as well. That’s what I want this class to do for me. I’m not looking for an easy grade, I want a class that forces me to think. All throughout middle school and high school history has been somewhat of a guilty pleasure of mine. And I say guilty pleasure because so many people have discouraged me from choosing the subject as a major in college. The past has always interested me far more than the future. I want to know our origins before I learn about what may possibly be in

I felt this course has become extremely helpful in learning about and understanding United States history and gave me better overviews of all the significant events that shaped the United States into the great country it is today. So many things I have leaned about in this course were quiet magnificent. The most important thing that I noticed about history is that it’s always changing. No matter how much evidence we have of the past, the way we look at the past can be distorted in many different ways.

The main reason I wanted to take a history course to gain both college and highschool credit was because I am just so intrigued by the past. There are just so many complex strands that construct our world's DNA, so to speak. Not only is the guide for the present, but also the impending future. Correspondingly, I loved that this United States History course dwelled deeper into the rich era's that brought forth the great nation of America. If only we could have continued to learn more about just the entire essence of the timeline. Additionally, I really enjoyed how we detailed the colonization of America and the American Revolution. In my opinion, those events are the strongest building blocks that supports the growth and welfare of the country.

I think that as my time as a DHS student that American History has been one of the most interesting classes that I have taken a part in. I enjoyed learning about how we formed as a countries as well as the issues that we faced internally and how we dealt with them. Something that I had never realized before taking this class was how much art was effected by U.S. principals at the time. For example, in World War II with propaganda in newspapers and in cartoons, we depicted the Japanese as inferior, as well as less intelligent. The reason that they did this was so that people were not intimidated by the Japanese and were not afraid to fight them in the Pacific. Before this year I did not realize the profound effect that art had on society and how people viewed issues of the time. I really enjoyed this class because it focused onto these aspects that other history classes did not go into such depth about and opened my mind to different ways to make connections to ideas.

It overlaps with other topics and considered everything could be considered social studies. Teaching and learning social studies should be incorporated into other lessons and is better learned through ecperiences related back to the topic and making accomodations for individual students like discussing a holiday a student celebrates alone. In this lesson, the topic was birds and they specifically focused on activities for birds in their community so they could create experiences rather than just staying in the classroom and seeing pictures of birds. The strategies used were to make food for the animals so they could look at a bird from different perspectives, but the children were more intrigued by the tool that made the bird noises. They would listen to them repeatedly and laugh every time one was