Do You Remember?

Trying to think back to elementary school, I don't quite remember learning anything about history. Do you? Maybe I have learned something maybe I haven't. In elementary school, I remember just picking a person to do a history research on and then to present it. Do you remember those projects, do you? I remember going to high school and taking history everything was taught from the books. Do you remember your high school Social Studies class? Was it taught from textbooks?

Do you remember what your high school Social Studies textbooks look like? You may not remember exactly what it looks like, but you can give details about the cover of it. It was blue? Had the American Flag on it? Had war pictures on it? Monumental statues? Presidents? I remember my high school textbooks, I had two different Social Studies textbooks; one was a dark blueish color, had flags on it, and of course it had the big word HISTORY on it. My other history textbook, I think was green, and had a lot of monumental statues on it, war pictures, and course again, the big word HISTORY on it. Do you remember your textbooks?

When I was in high school, I went to two different high schools, the first one my Social Studies teacher taught straight from the book. Would give us assignments on just reading a specific chapter in the textbook, then answering the review questions, then the next day in class we would reread the chapter and then go over questions. Do you remember having a teacher like that? Or similar to? I only remember that because for that whole year I stayed there, he work became repetitive. Now, when I went tomy second high school, I thought it would all be the same. But I was wrong, we had hands on activities, we did debates, we had projects, etc. That class I still don't remember muc but I do remember he didn't go based off the textbooks 24/7. Yes, we read the textbook and referred back to the textbook every here and there, but he would turn the textbook asssignment into something that would make us interested to learn whatever he was teaching.

I always remembered in my high school Social Studies class, before class would even start, my teacher always asked us how our weekend or our nights were. He would then ask if anyone has seen or watch the news, because he knew that the world around us is history as well. When some students spoke and talked about events they seen or heard about, he would then get us in this type of discussion, that would just get all of us talking. I remember that from my Social Studies class. When events happened in the world he always had us do some sort of activity; we'd make a newspaper, podcasts, posters, deabtes, etc. Do you remember activities you did in your high school Social Studies class? Was your class textbook based? Did you do any hands on activities? If you remember and can reflect back on your Social Studies school experience, how would you want to make it different for your future students? Would you teach out the texbook?