Zachary Cote, Author at Thinking Nation

The National Council for Social Studies: A Recap

This has been a busy season of travel for the Thinking Nation team, but the travel ended on a high note with the National Council for Social Studies in Nashville, TN. With almost 5,000 people in attendance, it is by far the largest gathering of social studies educators each year. The weekend was filled with vibrancy, collaboration, and especially new friendships. It really is such a treat to be a part of.

Just an excited History nerd about to present.

This year, I was fortunate to present a power session, entitled “Cultivating Historians, not History Enthusiasts: Maintaining Relevance in Education’s Future.” I’ve written in the past on this distinction, but it was especially exciting to dive deeper into the ramifications of making this distinction among fellow social studies educators. In the session, I addressed why our primary goal should be to cultivate historical thinkers in our classrooms in order to best empower our students as both citizens and future participants in the workforce. Moreover, historical thinking can be a unifier in our discipline. Often, we silo ourselves based on the content we teach (World History, U.S. Government, Ethnic Studies, etc.), which makes it hard for us to collaborate and vertically align across our discipline. As I wrote in Education Week back in May:

We can bring legitimacy back to what we do. Focusing on the discipline rather than the content allows us to rise above the culture wars, redeem ourselves as teachers of literacy so that we can properly collaborate with other content areas, and, most importantly, empower our students with the skills and dispositions to reinvigorate a visibly injured democracy.
“History Teachers Deserve Respect,” Education Week, May 15, 2023.

Cultivating historians in our classrooms is essential if we want to be seen as a legitimate discipline in such a future-focused education atmosphere.

Spenser, Annie, and Me (Zach) hanging out at our booth before the rush of attendees!

But onto the rest of the conference. Spenser (Our COO), Annie (Our Director of Curriculum), and myself had such a fun (and busy) time in the exhibit hall talking to educators from around the country. We firmly believe that our resources, assessments, and professional development can help facilitate a paradigm shift in classrooms and schools, and we were so excited to share more about that with curious educators.

The motivational Rachel Humphries from the Bill of Rights Institute.

We also got to meet or reconnect with such inspiring educators throughout the country. It was great to finally meet two prominent Instagram history educators (Of course our very own Annie Jenson is @apushladyboss): Dan Lewer (of @History_4_Humans) and Cate Baumgarten (of @thegreatcatehistory). Cate even saved my own presentation by lending me her clicker! Thank you Cate!

Few scholars have personally influenced me as much as Sam Wineburg. What a treat to chat with him for a bit!

I also finally met and enjoyed a conversation with Karalee Nakatsuka, or better known as @historyfrog (GLI’s CA Teacher of the Year!) She has consistently been doing such great work pushing boundaries in using edtech in her history classroom. You’re a rockstar, Karalee! It was great to connect with folks from the Bill of Rights Institute, OER Project, Sam Wineburg of SHEG (Now Digital Literacy Group), and Sarah Jencks who does incredible work in the museum space (civicmuseums.org). The list could go on! NCSS continues to be such a fruitful and rejuvenating conference and we feel so fortunate to be a part of such a dedicated education community.

The Front of President Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Lastly, it was a treat to see some of Nashville’s rich history. We walked around historic broadway where the music could not be contained to the bars they originated from. The streets were flowing with talented music. We got to see Tennessee’s State Capital (where President James Polk is buried), and Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. But perhaps most inspiring was the several Civil Rights Movement markers throughout the city. Walking to Woolworth’s where the first lunch counter sit-ins took place and stumbling upon a parking lot where the First Baptist Church once stood and used as an organizing location for the sit-ins were both inspiring. And no surprise, spending time at the National Museum of African American Music was so enriching and fun! I’ll definitely need to head back to Music City and explore more! Who will we see next year at the National Council for Social Studies conference in Boston??

The site of Woolworth’s, where the first lunch counter sit-ins took place.

ExcelinEd and a Thanksgiving Reflection

Last week, Thinking Nation’s executive team headed to Atlanta, GA for the 15th Annual National Summit on Education hosted by ExcelinEd. Each year at ExcelinEd, policy makers, nonprofits, and other education organizations get together to talk to and learn from each other on how we can build an education system that prioritizes students over systems. I left feeling both inspired and challenged in and I am looking forward to integrating some of the takeaways into our own work at Thinking Nation. Today, I’d like to highlight two of the keynote addresses from the conference that equally inspired and challenged me.

Jonathan Haidt has been inspiring me with his research and writing for the better part of the last decade. So, as you can imagine, when I learned that he would be at the conference, I was excited for what he would focus on. In the past few years, his book The Righteous Mind gave me a concrete way to understand how people come to different political views. His research is very much aligned to the historian’s chief job: to understand people from a time and place not like our own. In 2018, he and Greg Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind. Once again, I was taken by their findings. This time, he explored “How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas” (chiefly at universities) “Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.” I encourage all of us who work in education to read it.

As you can tell, I’m great with selfies…

For the past couple of years, Haidt has built off that research and explored the specific impact of social media on our younger generations. Thus, in his talk for us, he introduced some of his new findings that will be in her newest book, The Anxious Generation, coming out in Spring 2024. As he’s written elsewhere, he pointed out that social media is producing much more harm than good, especially for younger users, and especially for younger female users. Second, he called on the audience, many of which have the power to introduce corresponding legislation in their states, to “get phones out of school now.” His ExcelinEd presentation provided compelling findings that demonstrate the negative impact of screens in school. Both he, and the next speaker I’ll highlight, Arthur Brooks, noted that at the schools that they teach at (NYU and Harvard Business School, respectively) do not allow devices in their classrooms. If these elite institutions recognize the need for analog classrooms, we all must consider the ramifications of our own technological choices in the classroom.

Of course, as an organization, we have built an entire web-based platform for teacher and student use. This complicates things. At Thinking Nation, we recognize just how much technology can help us shift the paradigm of social studies education. Still, we know that not all classrooms operate the same. This is why all of our resources are available to our teachers both to assign directly on our platform, or to download as PDFs for student use. Technology can expedite growth but we also must be realistic about the times that it is a growth inhibitor.

The second speaker I’ll highlight here is Arthur Brooks. Brooks has become a mainstay in my weekly reading over at The Atlantic with his Thursday “happiness” column: How to Build a Life. Not to be confused with that overly-optimistic friend we all have that secretly makes us want to throw up, Brooks’ columns and research feels both authentic and practical.

Brooks’ talk challenged us at ExcelinEd to think about how we can teach happiness to our students and he gave us very practical approaches to do so. First, he highlighted that happiness is comprised of three things: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.

Arthur Brooks speaking with former congressman, Eric Cantor

While each of these three things are important on their own, it is when they work in concert with each other that we experience happiness. He continued to give us at ExcelinEd practical outlines and activities to promote self-awareness and happiness, many of which can be done with students. But it was his two questions he left for us to answer that stuck with me the most. He said that the mere ability to answer the following two questions are the best indicator to whether you have found meaning in your life. One’s answer to those questions doesn’t matter as much as the sheer ability to answer them. The questions?

Why am I alive?
For what would I be willing to die, today?

Brooks continued to challenge us, but this is a good spot to transition to the other topic of today’s blog: Thanksgiving. Before I do though, whenever I travel for Thinking Nation, I like to prioritize at least one historical landmark. So, thank you ExcelinEd, for giving me the ability to see Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church. MLK was a model for us of how to best be an American and it was special to visit those sites.

MLK’s Birth home

The original Ebenezer Baptist Church

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a special holiday filled with historical tension. While it is worth exploring the tensions of the ethnic roots of some of the holiday traditions, today (as I’ve done in the past), I’d like for us to merely consider the purpose of the day: to give thanks. At the heart of gratitude is humility. We cannot be thankful for anyone or anything without acknowledging that others help us. A humble person gives thanks.

History, with its core purpose to be the understanding of people and places not like our own, is a discipline rooted in humility. As I wrote in the blog linked above:

“With no urgent need to use the past for present benefits, historians can humbly try to understand the past rather than co-opting it for a specific purpose or use. This intellectual humility can lead to an intellectual gratitude.”

This intellectual gratitude is embedded throughout our resources. We challenge students to understand diverse perspectives, identify historical significance, and take on historical empathy. These tools, inherent to our discipline, is why we believe that our curriculum, assessments, and professional development can support teachers in cultivating thinking citizens.

Meeting Teacher Needs through Formative Assessments on Historical Thinking

At the end of last school year, many of the teachers we work with had a common reflection. It went something like this: “While I appreciate seeing the robust data from the Curated Research Papers, I don’t have enough time to do these often. I do really enjoy the formative assessments on historical thinking, though. The ability to assess a student on a particular thinking skill in a short (less than 30 minute) time span is incredibly helpful for gauging student growth. Can you make more?”

Yes, yes, we can.

Over the summer, we gave ourselves the goal of having 4 formative assessments for all 80+ of our current units. This meant that we would have to more than double the amount of formative assessments we offered on our platform. So we did! As a rule of thumb, I often recommend that teachers implement a formative assessment on disciplinary thinking every other week in their classes. With over 40 available for teachers in each of our course offerings, this is now an easy feat to accomplish.

Why formative assessments?

We’ve identified 8 different skills to assess in our formative assessments (We recently added Quantitative Analysis!). Essentially, these assessments are stimulus-based, consist of one “Weighted Multiple Choice” (WMC) question and one “justification” short answer question. Here is a sample for the skill “causation.” Our goal with our formative assessments is to help whole departments shift their own paradigm for how they measure student success.

Usually, formative assessments in social studies classrooms consist of memory-based assessments to ensure that students have retained the information taught. Essentially, success is measured by a student’s ability to retell us what we told them earlier. However, this is not historical thinking.

Our formative assessments on historical thinking allow for teachers to assess how the students approach the information they engage with, rather than simply their ability to remember it. For instance, in the sample linked above, students are presented with historical context and a primary source. The WMC question asks them to use those sources in order to select the two strongest statements that describe why an event happened. Then, the short answer component asks them to defend one of those statements as the stronger cause for the event, citing evidence in their justification.

This simple task on causation emphasizes two key components of the historical thinking skill of causation. First, nothing is monocausal: “select two.” Second, historians make evidence-based arguments about the past. This second part is critical if we want to empower our students with the agency to enter into nuanced conversation, whether about the past or our present.

Vertical Alignment through Historical Thinking

Another critical component of these formative assessments is that whole departments can norm around them. In fact, the idea of building collaboration without losing teacher autonomy was the focus of my California Council for Social Studies session back in February 2023. Social Studies departments have been siloed by content for too long and our formative assessments give teachers a common language for success regardless of the content of their classroom. If teachers of different subjects each gave a formative assessment on causation, they could then come together and have meaningful and productive conversations around student success, as well as create aligned goals across the department. Common assessments transform history departments.

We cannot shift the paradigm of social studies education without a common language for success. Formative assessments on historical thinking can help get us there. That’s why we listened to teacher feedback and more than doubled our offerings of this particular assessment tool.

Redefining Ready – College, Career, and Life

Last week, our Chief Partnership Officer, Liz Connolly, and myself, flew out to Mansfield, Texas. We witnessed the great work being done at Mansfield ISD under the leadership of Superintendent, Dr. Kimberly Cantu. This visit was part of our partnership with AASA, The School Superintendents Association, and the work of their Redefining Ready! Cohort. The multi-day summit was filled with brilliant ideas, great collaboration, and of course, some great Texas BBQ thanks to Mansfield’s own students at Ben Barber Innovation Academy’s Savvy’s Bistro.

Much of our time together was spent visiting different Mansfield ISD schools and witnessing such rich education innovation. From the programs to the classroom layouts to the lesson plans themselves, it was such a special experience to witness such deep learning. I was so impressed with all of the teachers and students I interacted with.

In particular, though, this cohort got together as we rethink how we “redefine ready” for our schools. Much in the same way that Thinking Nation wants to shift the paradigm of social studies education and redefine how we measure success in the discipline, this group of superintendents is seeking to redefine how we measure success as districts, and hopefully, as a nation. The three categories where we worked together as a group to redefine readiness were college, career, and life. Of course, there is great overlap in each of these categories. But, to think of each of those domains separately was a great exercise in thinking through our own priorities for K-12 education.

Ellen Gallinsky leading one of the breakout sessions on “Life Readiness.”

In one of the breakout sessions, I joined the Life Readiness group. I wanted to hear the research and insights that came from Ellen Gallinsky, the executive director of Mind in the Making. Her 2010 book of the same title explores seven life skills that she’s identified as essential for children to grow into flourishing adults. Her next book, which comes out in the spring, continues this research and explores the teen years.

Before her presentation, I had time to talk with her about some of the intersections between our work. Specifically, our historical thinking skills that I addressed last week and her work in life readiness. While I often see the connection between historical thinking and life readiness, Mrs. Gallinsky’s quick ability to see the connection was encouraging. As I say often, historical thinking is a life skill. If more of us applied historical thinking to more parts of our life, society would be grateful. It’s why our vision is that “all students will mature into thinking citizens, equipped with the essential skills to participate in a robust democracy.”

As we move forward with our partnership with the Redefining Ready! Cohort, I’m excited to think alongside such brilliant superintendents who are striving to shift the paradigm of education more largely. We will continue to advocate for a needed paradigm shift in social studies. Because we know that when students are empowered to think historically they are more college, career, and life ready. Thank you to AASA and Mansfield ISD for having us!

What are Historical Thinking Skills?

At Thinking Nation, we’ve consistently stood by the belief that historical thinking empowers students. When students think historically, they are equipped with the skills and dispositions necessary to sustain democracy and carve out a better future. Social Studies, as a discipline, is uniquely set up to equip students in this way, but what these historical thinking skills exactly are can be challenging to define.

One of our first blogs simply asked “What does it mean to think historically?” In the blog, I wrote, “Simply, historical thinking skills are the skills needed to properly interpret documents, events, and their outcomes.” Being able to interpret (and effectively analyze) what is put in front of you in order to make meaning of what you are interpreting is one of life’s most critical skills. It is a skill at the heart of our discipline.

Staying at a 30,000 foot view of the definition of historical thinking skills, I’d also like to add that these are simply the skills that historians employ in their study of the past. While they are by no means natural, as Sam Wineburg points out, they can be learned if students are given adequate instruction and practice.

Historical thinking skills are the historian’s toolbelt. At least that’s how I summed it up when asked by historian John Fea. But these skills, while cultivated in social studies, don’t just remain there. Historical thinking skills are incredibly helpful in navigating everyday life—from the news, to the workplace, even to our relationships. I often tell people how learning to think historically did not just make me a better analyst or writer. It’s made me a better dad, husband, and neighbor.

As I wrote above, historical thinking is empowering. Paradoxically, historical thinking is humbling, too. When students think historically, they have the agency to enter into conversations about complex ideas. They are empowered. But, they also know their limits. They seek to empathize with who they study. They rely on evidence over their own opinion. They’re humbled.

With all of this in mind, as we continue in our goal to shift the paradigm of social studies education in building both teacher’s and student’s capacities to think historically, we wanted to have a simple and clear way to communicate those skills to those who engage with our resources. We needed a visual.

Therefore, as a part of our organization’s rebrand, we worked with the talented design firm, Josh Warren Design, to create visual icons to represent the various skills embedded into our curriculum. Currently, we’ve focused on 10 skills. Below, you can see each of them with their corresponding icon.

Each of these icons will now follow their respective historical thinking skill around our curriculum. Students will see them when they engage in document analysis, formative assessments, or engage in a curated research paper. We hope that these clear visuals, along with their succinct definitions (some examples here!), will help students internalize these thinking skills. We know that the internalization of such skills won’t just be a good way to score well on a history test. Most importantly, it will set up students for success outside of the classroom in creating confident citizens, prepared to think critically about the world they live in.

Hispanic Heritage Month – El Malcriado

September 15th kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month! To celebrate this month, we’re revisiting a blog from two years ago that highlights some pictures and other magazine clips from El Malcriado, a Chicano labor newspaper from 1964-1976, established by Cesar Chavez. Chavez was a core leader in the United Farm Worker’s Movement of the 60s and 70s that advocated for farmworker rights and fair wages. This week was also a great time for me to reflect on such an exciting moment last spring when I was able to go hear Dolores Huerta (pictured below during the movement) speak at California State University, Channel Islands. If you want a way to get students thinking about Huerta’s impact on the broader Chicano Movement, here is a free document analysis resource!

In preparing for one of our CRPs on the Delano Grape Strike, we relied heavily on El Malcriado as it is full of rich documentation of the farmworker’s movement. Here is a brief summary of the strike, excerpted from our CRP:

In 1965, after a successful strike in Coachella Valley, Larry Itliong led the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to Delano to fight for farm worker rights during the grape harvest. Having gained a $1.40/hour wage for farm workers in Coachella, he prepared workers to go on strike in Delano when growers refused to pay more than $1.20/hour. However, while the Filipino workers under Itliong readily joined the strike, Mexican workers were willing to accept $1.20/hour and work in the strikers’ place.
Recognizing that unless they banded together, no one would win, Itliong approached and convinced Cesar Chavez and his union, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), to join the strike. AWOC strikers began on September 8, 1965 and the NFWA joined the strike on September 16. For the next five years, the strike persisted into a global movement of labor strikes and consumer boycotts to fight for fair wages for farmworkers.
In March 1966, Cesar Chavez led a 300 mile march from Delano to Sacramento to pressure the state to answer farm worker demands. Then, after almost a year of striking together, the two unions merged together as the United Farm Workers (UFW) in August 1966. Chavez, Itliong, and Dolores Huerta were its top leaders.

Below are some clips from the Magazine:

Dolores Huerta holding “HUELGA” sign in issue 21 of El Malcriado. ‘Huelga’ means ‘strike.’

More protesters holding “HUELGA” signs from issue 21 of *El Malcriado*.

A powerful essay on unity in the strike from issue 23 of *El Malcriado*.

The cover from issue 26 of *El Malcriado*.

Scenes of farmworkers from the August 22, 1966 issue of El Malcriado.

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!

Thinking Historically About: Our New Podcast

Well, another week, another podcast. Though, this time it’s our own: Thinking Historically About.

As many of you know, we continually try to be a bridge between secondary education and the university. Rather than thinking how we can put a historical thinking “twist” on traditional classroom narratives in social studies, we look at how professional historians define their discipline and then think through how to scaffold those approaches for younger learners.

Another way we try to be that bridge is by seeking out the expertise of scholars as we construct our own units. Thanks to the generosity of so many historians offering their expertise, Thinking Nation students have access to high level thinking about complex historical events through our materials. I appreciate historians like Carol Berkin, who helped shape our unit on Women and the American Revolution, Manisha Sinha, who guided our unit on Slave Resistance, John Fea, who made sure students can think historically about Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and James Walvin who thought deeply about the Haitian Revolution with me and how to best get students thinking about its consequences. These scholars, among many others, have made our curriculum so much stronger.

One of the next stages of incorporating the expertise of scholars into our resources is through our new Youtube Series and Podcast: Thinking Historically About. In this series, we interview scholars specifically about the inquiry questions that students engage with in our units. Our goal with these is that students can hear how an expert in the field wrestles with the same question they will wrestle with and potentially write about through our Curated Research Papers. We’ve been quietly uploading some on our Youtube channel, but starting this month, we will release one interview a month via podcast. We hope that this gives teachers multiple methods for allowing students to engage with these quick conversations either before or during their own engagement with the historical events they study in their classes.

Our first episode, Thinking Historically About Ancient Rome can be found on Apple Podcasts here (Or Spotify). Or, if you want to play the video interview for your students, you can find it on Youtube. We are grateful to Ancient Rome scholar, Nadya Williams, for sharing her own expertise in both the crafting of the unit and in her reflection in the interview. We hope these interviews become useful for your classroom!

Lastly, to contribute to the funding of these interviews and other collaborations with scholars You can donate here.

Enjoy!

Thinking Nation’s Podcast Interview!

As a teacher, I thought I had found the ultimate historical thinking podcast to listen to back in January 2016. In just some of the first few episodes, guests included Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association; Sam Wineburg, founder of the Stanford History Education Group, and Annette Gordon Reed, Pulitzer Prize (and National Humanities Medal and Macarthur genius) winning historian. (Gordon-Reed has also been the subject of one of our past blogs). Since I already looked up to these three scholars, it was special to find a place where they were all being interviewed was such a treat. It felt like a special corner of the growing podcast sphere that I got to be a part of as a listener.

The podcast, hosted by historian John Fea, is entitled “The Way of Improvement Leads Home,” after his first book, which explored the American Enlightenment. Dr. Fea has long been a champion of historical thinking at both the college level and in K-12 education. He has a track record of working with K-12 teachers to help them refine their own pedagogy when it comes to incorporating historical thinking skills into their classroom, and has personally inspired me greatly over the years. His work with the Gilder Lehrman Institute is especially notable. He taught graduate level history courses for teachers looking to get their Master’s degrees and led week-long institutes at historical locations for history teachers looking to gain more content expertise.

Dr. Fea has also graciously helped us refine one of our own units. His expertise strengthened our unit on Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson’s competing visions for government. With all of this in mind, you might imagine how honored I felt when he asked me to join him on his podcast late last month! I felt so fortunate to be interviewed by John and share more about our vision for teaching and assessing historical thinking in K-12 education.

From the podcast’s episode description:

“If you’ve listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion “historical thinking” as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director of THINKING NATION, a non-profit organization devoted to helping K-12 social studies students mature into citizens who are empowered to analyze information effectively, think historically, and write persuasively in order to build a better democratic future. If you are a school superintendent, principal, or history teacher you are not going to miss this episode!”

With that, we’d love for you to listen! I’m thankful to John for hosting me and excited to continue to share the ways in which we want to shift the paradigm of history education. I’ve linked the podcast here through Apple podcasts, but it is available across all podcast directories.

Thinking Nation’s New Look

For those of you who have followed along with the last couple of blogs, you’ve seen that we’ve changed and added things over summer (more to come!). Today, we want to explain what is really at the core of these exciting shifts: our new brand identity!

If you go to our website right now, you will see that we have a new logo and colors to define who we are. We are really excited about our new brand identity and especially excited to explain why! (If you’re a partner school who has already had beginning of the year PD with us, this is probably just a review!).

First, why change? As Thinking Nation has grown into more schools across the United States, we’ve also had so many more conversations with people from different contexts. Throughout these conversations, we’ve learned a couple things about how people see us.

First, people assumed that we only covered Civics and American History. With the red, white, and blue, and Lady Liberty as our identity, who could blame them? However, like calling our essays “DBQs” took an extra layer of explanation, we’d have to take extra time to explain that we focus on social studies more broadly and that we really want to emphasize the disciplinary thinking that is inherent to good study in our field.

Second, many people saw our organization as partisan. However, a crucial aspect of our nonprofit mission is to be nonpartisan. We believe that good history and social studies education transcends political ideologies and can encompass both sides of the aisle, even if our current culture wars think otherwise. By focusing on the “why” of our discipline as the chief aim (rather than the “what”) we are proud to work with schools in a variety of political contexts. After all, the two largest states we work in are California and Texas. Historical thinking is for everyone, even if we disagree come election day.

As expressed on our website, we want to shift the paradigm of history education. This is our purpose. We believe that when students learn how to think historically, they are better equipped as citizens. They can lean into the tension produced by listening to multiple perspectives. They can take the time to contextualize the stories they come across. They can empathize with others in an attempt to understand rather than judge. If we can shift the way we see social studies away from a memory-based education and into a thinking-focused education, our students are better served. We wanted a brand to represent this.

Our new brand, designed for us by Lunour, gets to this vision. With two dialogue bubbles, we stress the importance of nuance. There is never only one historical narrative, but history is filled with multiple perspectives. Dialogue bubbles illustrate that. Similarly, when our students engage in disciplinary study, they have to recognize that what they study is not stagnant. Scholars are in constant dialogue about the subjects they study. In fact, historiography, this study of historical writing, demonstrate that the discipline of history is one big dialogue about the past.

Not only do dialogue bubbles get to the heart of how we should teach and learn in social studies, they also get to the heart of our vision: “that all students will mature into thinking citizens, equipped with the essential skills to participate in a robust democracy.” If we want to sustain a pluralistic society governed through democracy, we have to learn to talk with one another. Through our work, we hope to equip educators to empower students for that future, a future where empathetic conversation dominates the public square, not bitter polarization. We’re excited for a logo that captures all of this!

Oh, and it’s pretty cool (in case you haven’t noticed yet) that the two dialogue bubbles make a “T” and the negative space makes an “N.” A Thinking Nation is built on dialogue.

To wrap up this lengthy post, we want to acknowledge some logistics. Thinking Nation is a small nonprofit, so this new brand identity will come out in waves. We will update our website, platform, and social media first. We are currently working on updating our curricular resources to fit the new brand, but this will take some time! So, if you see some materials in our old brand and some in our new, know that we are working hard at bringing everything over to our new and exciting brand! Our mission hasn’t changed, but we’re excited for an identity that better reflects who we are as an organization.

Happy beginning of the school year!

The Curated Research Paper

The Thinking Nation team has been hard at work this summer preparing for the 23-24 school year. We will roll out various changes, updates, curriculum, and more in the coming weeks; but, today, I want to address our summative assessment: the Curated Research Paper.

As you will see, our summative assessments have not changed in structure. They contain an inquiry question, context activities such as vocabulary, relevance to the present, and historical context, and a document set made up of primary and secondary sources. Students take all of this information and construct an argumentative essay that addresses the inquiry question and incorporates the analysis they did of the abovementioned components. In short, they complete a curated research paper.

Most people call this process a “DBQ,” or Document Based Question. This name has its origin in AP (Advanced Placement) Exams, put out by the College Board. The College Board, of course, has received a ton of attention in the past few years with many universities foregoing SAT requirements, the new African American Studies course, and the particularly low AP U.S. History scores that came out about a month ago. For much of High School history education in the United States, the College Board serves as an anchor for teachers and schools to compare what they do too. Thus, it has made sense for us and others to use “DBQ” as a term to describe what it is we do.

However, we have decided to break away from this terminology and call our assessments what they actually are. I want to take today’s blog to briefly explain our rationale for this change in hopes of continuing the dialogue for our organization’s ultimate goal: to shift the paradigm of history education. We hope to bring a new dialogue in social studies.

The term “Document Based Question” does not accurately describe what we are asking students and teachers to do. In fact, I can recall dozens of instances when I told someone we did DBQs and they told me that they did too. Then, they began to explain what, essentially, was a textbook reading assignment. Read a short excerpt of a document, and answer one or more questions about it. Sometimes these questions never even broke the DOK 1 threshold. Clearly, we had a different definition!
A part of growing up is making decisions because you thought through them, not simply because that’s what your parents did. For sometime, most of us have used the term DBQ because it’s what the “parent” (College Board) used. Those of us in that circle knew exactly what we meant, but the broader public (and most new teachers) had no idea, unless of course, they took an AP history class. This means that every time we talk about DBQs with a new audience, we have to add an extra layer of explanation. We believe that this extra layer can be removed and we can make a more evidence-based conclusion about what to name the process we are asking students to engage in. Thus we have the Curated Research Paper, or “CRP.”

To recap, we believe that Curated Research Paper is the best way to articulate the summative tasks within Thinking Nation’s curriculum. Using CRP with both the professional community and the wider public will more clearly articulate for all stakeholders what exactly the expectations are.

We are looking forward to engaging in CRPs with our partner schools this year! In the weeks to come, I’m excited to draw attention to more exciting things coming out of Thinking Nation!

Building Thinking (Social Studies) Classrooms

Keep Indiana Learning and Building Thinking Classrooms

The last two days of June some of the Thinking Nation team was able to join hundreds of educators from around the country in Franklin, IN for the Building Thinking Classrooms Conference hosted by Keep Indiana Learning. This was a great conference to end a hectic two months of travel for the team.

Dr. Peter Liljedahl, Professor of Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University, published Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics in 2020, quickly garnering recognition for his research. As the title suggests, Dr. Liljedahl presents new and innovative strategies and mindsets that teachers can incorporate into their classrooms to make them thinking classrooms. While his work specifies the math classroom, there is so much that social studies teachers can glean from his book.

I was fortunate to be able to present at the conference, taking a deeper look into how some of the strategies could be realized in social studies classrooms. As our own organization’s name implies, we believe it is essential to build thinking classrooms. In fact, my session was simply titled: Building Thinking (Social Studies) Classrooms.

I specifically wanted to explore the intersection of Liljedahl’s work and the role of assessment in social studies classrooms. As I’ve often written about, if we truly want to shift the paradigm of history education, we must rethink how we measure success in the classroom. In Building Thinking Classrooms, Liljedahl rightfully reminds us that “we evaluate what we value” (BTC Practice 12). I took the time to challenge the room to think about what types of messages we send when all we evaluate in social studies is content acquisition. As I’ve noted before, it is not our job to create walking encyclopedias, but thinking citizens.

Thinking Nation really focuses on this work through our formative assessments on disciplinary thinking and our summative assessments, which we call Curated Research Papers (more on that term perhaps next week!) If we as teachers take backwards planning seriously and backward plan from assessments on thinking rather than solely content knowledge, we demonstrate to our students that deep thought is what is valued most by us. This is essential if we truly want to shift the paradigm of social studies education.

Juneteenth at the National Charter Schools Conference

June was a busy travel month for Thinking Nation. On any given day, a Thinking Nation team member could have been in any of the three time zones across the continental U.S. While July has its own business, its lack of travel allows us to reflect a little on June.

Our last blog featured Tiana Day’s experience at the Black Minds Matter Summit in Washington DC. The very next weekend, she and other Thinking Nation team members were in Austin, Texas for the National Charter Schools Conference. NCSC is the largest gathering of charter schools and their stakeholders each year, and it is always an exciting thing to be a part of.

This year, the National Alliance for Charter Schools reached out to Thinking Nation to help coordinate a Juneteenth celebration, given that the conference fell on the national holiday. Excitedly, we brainstormed several ways to commemorate and celebrate this profound holiday of freedom. In past years on Juneteenth, our blog addressed why this newest national holiday must be seen as America’s holiday and not merely a celebration for Black Americans. We also took a dive into Annette Gordon-Reed’s moving memoir-meets-monograph, On Juneteenth. Today’s reflective post covers how we were able to celebrate Juneteenth in Austin!

The top 3 student art pieces and the judges at the pop up exhibit in Austin, TX.

Tiana orchestrated a nationwide student art competition, which she named “Liberation in the Lens of Artivism.” Thinking Nation provided a historical analysis activity to go with the contest, and our friends at the National Liberty Museum provided students with an artwork analysis activity. The top student submissions were featured at the National Charter Schools Conference, and the National Alliance for Charter Schools generously sponsored the cash prizes for the top three students in the contest.

Our first and third place winners came from Mastery East Camden Middle School in Camden, NJ. East Camden is a part of the Mastery Schools network, with schools in Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ. Our 2nd place winner came from Stella High Charter Academy in Los Angeles, CA. SHCA is a part of Bright Star Schools. All of the student art work was inspiring. The National Alliance for Charter Schools really showcased the student work in the pop up exhibit.

One of the components of Black Minds Matter’s exhibit “We are Self-Determined.”

We were also able to incorporate the expertise of some of our new friends into building out a pop up exhibit for the attendees of NCSC. Black Minds Matter provided a compelling history of education freedom for Black communities throughout American history, demonstrating a link between the freedom from slavery recognized in Juneteenth to the freedom to receive an education shown in the ingenuity of Black communities both past and present. The Black Minds Matter exhibit contained inspiring videos of movers and shakers showcasing the inspiring work of Black school founders since the 19th century.

Go support the National Juneteenth Museum!

Lastly, we were able to highlight the work of the forthcoming National Juneteenth Museum, which is set to open to the public in 2025 in Fort Worth, TX. NJM provided attendees with an origin story of the holiday, as well as its future plans to commemorate it as a museum. I am so excited to go to the museum when it opens!

It was truly an honor to work with such talented people to make the exhibit a reality for conference attendees. Just to reemphasize the collaborative nature of this project, I want to end with thanking all of the hands that went into what attendees engaged with. The Juneteenth exhibit would never have happened if it weren’t for the generosity of the National Alliance for Charter Schools and their trust in Thinking Nation for organizing the exhibit.

The art contest would have never got off the ground if it weren’t for Tiana, her own nonprofit, Youth Advocates for Change, and the dedicated artists that judged the contest. The students could not have engaged with the art effectively if it wasn’t for the scaffolds created by the National Liberty Museum. The holiday could not have been contextualized without the National Juneteenth Museum. Lastly, if it weren’t for Black Minds Matter, attendees would not have been able to see the direct connection of Juneteenth to education freedom, the premise that guides charter schools in their daily work. We were so grateful to be a part of this! Till Boston in 2024!

The rest of the winners for the student art contest.

The Importance of Bipartisan Ed Reform: Reflecting on RISE

Last week, some of the Thinking Nation team was able to attend the Reagan Institute’s Summit on Education (RISE) in Washington DC. The day was jam packed with thoughtful panels, fireside chats, and discussions among some of the nation’s leading thinkers on education and ed policy. Most importantly, these leaders adhere to diverse political persuasions. This context meant that there was fruitful (and sometimes tense) conversations about how we can truly make education better for all children in the United States. As Thinking Nation spends most of its time in social studies and civics spaces, this was a very special event to engage with even broader bipartisan ed reform and ed policy.

I wanted to take some time to highlight some of the panels and speakers here as we reflect on how essential these bipartisan summits are if we really want to enact systemic change.

The Panelists on “The Imperative for Education Reform.

To start the morning, the first panel, “The Imperative for Education Reform,” engaged conversation among Arnie Duncan (Sec. of Education under President Obama), Rick Hess (Ed. Policy Fellow at American Enterprise Institute), Bill Kristol (Founder, Defending Democracy Together), Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone. I personally remember the documentary Waiting for Superman, which highlighted Canada’s work being very transformational in my own journey into education. Needless to say, I was excited to learn.

Thinking Nation’s Chief Partnership Officer, Liz Connolly and Executive Director, Zachary Cote hanging out on at the Reagan Institute.

The conversation among the panelists was robust as they reflected on the political context that has led to the many crossroads we are at in public education. But for the sake of brevity, I’d like to highlight something Canada said: “Often education has been a political cudgel.” He said this as he reflected his own journey in education and how at some points he was praised by progressives and at other times he was praised by conservatives. As he noted, he was simply trying to do what was best for kids. But he remarked how political allegiances clouded both sides’ ability to do the same. Canada’s focus on the needs of children was a breath of fresh air.

Later in the morning, a panel entitled, “Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI,” was incredibly apropos for our current moment. While I felt that the panel leaned more optimistic without really wrestling with ramifications for rigorous learning, I was struck by something that Mary Snapp, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Microsoft, stated. In ensuring that developers build out resources that don’t undermine democracy, she noted that “engineers need to learn history too.” Absolutely, Mary. Absolutely.

Remarks by the First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden.

After lunch, we were fortunate enough to hear from our First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden. Biden remarked that the last time she came to RISE, she was late because she had to rush over after teaching her class at a local community college, a good reminder that FLOTUS has quite a bit of first hand experience in education. Her address consistently thanked the Reagan Institute for hosting a bipartisan ed reform forum, and while she reminded the audience often of the President’s plan for education, she took quite a bit of time emphasizing the need for stakeholders of different persuasions to seek out commonality to effect real change. I hope we make real waves to push for such consensus.

NBC’s Chuck Todd interviewing Maryland Governor, Wes Moore.

In the afternoon, we were able to hear from former Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, who recently announced his candidacy for President, followed directly by the new Governor for Maryland, Wes Moore. These two men of opposing political persuasions did not emphasize those areas of opposition. They healthily staked their claims while advocating for as much bipartisan legislation as possible to initiate change. Moore reminded the audience that even though he could have passed state legislation with just the Democratic Party’s support, he pushed for legislation to be written in ways that would garner bipartisan support, because he knew that “it simply won’t work” if only one party is behind it. I hope that wisdom around bipartisan ed reform transcends his state boundaries and enters the Capitol that was just a couple miles down the road from us at the time.

In all, the summit was a day to both challenge and bring hope for public education in the United States. We are grateful to the Reagan Institute for having us.

Oped: Our Response to the NAEP Scores

Last week, Education Week published my response to the recent NAEP scores which showed a decline in students’ understanding of both American History and Civics. They summarized my article succinctly: History Teachers Deserve Respect. I’d like to nuance this slightly to say that “The Discipline of History Demands Respect.” Please read an excerpt below, and then head over to Education Week to read the full article.

Trend in eighth-grade U.S. history average scores (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/)

“The National Assessment of Educational Progress released the 2022 scores in history and civics for 8th graders earlier this month. I cannot say I was surprised by the decline. As others have noted, decreased time spent on social studies, a lack of funding, and recent state legislation prohibiting the teaching of a full and honest history were likely contributing factors.

I’d like to make the case that each of those causes represent a larger issue worth addressing: the lack of respect or attention to history education. This lack of respect permeates school buildings in how tests are built, professional development is allotted, teacher bonuses are awarded, and teaching assignments are given.

…

Most people do not actually see history as a discipline. They see it as a content. This distinction is crucial. When we only see history as a content of stories to be told, we get lost in the weeds of which stories to choose. The ongoing culture wars over what we can teach in history classrooms illustrates how this quickly spirals out of control. Rather than having constructive conversations about competing interpretations of the past, many people have become dogmatic about particular narratives, distracting us from the disciplinary practices inherent to the study of history.

…

If we truly care about equipping the next generation of citizens to be proficient in history and civics, we need to start by redefining what it is we do as history teachers. Of course, as I often tell the teachers I coach, this does not mean that we get rid of content in favor of skills, but it does mean that content becomes a means to an end—to the loftier goal of empowering our students to think historically.

…

We must… cultivate historical thinkers, empowered to engage with the diversity of ideas that they encounter both in and out of our classrooms.

To do this effectively, we need to build a common language around how we think about history so that social studies teachers don’t just have surface-level conversations about student progress within their content silos. We also need to provide common assessments on historical thinking that facilitate the use of that common language.

…

We can bring legitimacy back to what we do. Focusing on the discipline rather than the content allows us to rise above the culture wars, redeem ourselves as teachers of literacy so that we can properly collaborate with other content areas, and, most importantly, empower our students with the skills and dispositions to reinvigorate a visibly injured democracy.

As a bonus? Yeah, the NAEP scores will increase, too.”

Teacher Appreciation Week!

On our social media this week for Teacher Appreciation Week, we featured teachers at some of our partner schools around the country who are absolutely CRUSHING IT! We are so grateful to work with such inspiring teachers and want to take some time to honor them here, too.

Following each teacher introduction, we will highlight some of their thoughts on history education through a mini Q+A.

First up for Teacher Appreciation Week: Dr. Carlo Aaron Purther. Dr. Purther currently is the department head at Birmingham Community Charter High School and has been teaching for 21 years. This year teaches US History, US History EL, AP Euro, and Government. To add to that he also teaches at Cal State University, Northridge. We love how we constantly integrates historical writing and analysis into his classes. We appreciate you, Dr. Purther!

Dr. Carlo Aaron Purther, Birmingham Community Charter School, Van Nuys, CA.

Q: Why do you think it is important to teach your students to think historically?

A: The mission is to help students become responsible democratic citizens. In addition to the number of skills one needs to be an effective citizen such as supporting an argument with textual evidence like they do with DBQs, one should also be able to think historically. That is, students should be able to understand the context and contingency of situations to better understand their place in the present and future. Additionally, students should be able to identify the cause and effect of events, how things change over time, and be able to comprehend the complexities of situations. All of this leads to students becoming responsible democratic citizens.

Q: Where would you like to see history education go in the future?

A: I would like to see (1) more cross-curriculum skill-based work with other subjects (2) students being service focused (3) focus on depth of historical events based on interests and/or needs of a local community.

Q: Share with us a bright spot of student thinking from your classroom!

A: Because of our school’s work with Thinking Nation, students have improved in (1) summarizing documents (2) being able to explain how textual evidence supports a thesis (3) and connecting what they learned from the writing an essay to event in another historical era.

Moving across the country to Michigan, we want to highlight the work of Uplift Michigan Online High School teacher, Jenifer Gould! Mrs. Gould is an incredibly reflective educator who continuously pushes her students to think deeply about the past. We appreciate you, Mrs. Gould!

Jenifer Gould, Uplift Michigan Online School

Q: Why do you think it is important to teach your students to think historically?

A: Teaching students to think historically is so important as it teaches them lifelong skills of analyzing, thinking objectively, and making sure they have evidence to support their position. Especially in the current climate we live in, it is more important than ever that students have these skills.

Q: Where would you like to see history education go in the future?

My hope is that history education would start focusing much more on primary sources, analysis, and critical thinking, versus memorization and multiple-choice answers. Teaching history using primary sources is so rewarding as students see historical events in an entirely new light.

Q: Share with us a bright spot of student thinking from your classroom!

It has been so fun, rewarding, and worth the effort to incorporate and use primary source documents in class as I have seen “light bulb” moments in several students as they have learned about historical events that they previously learned about, but now are seeing it from a totally different perspective.

From the Mitten State to the Lone Star State, we are going to the classroom of Gabriel Hernandez at Idea Public Schools in Weslaco, TX. Mr. Hernandez is a go-getter and risk taker that cares deeply for his students. We appreciate you, Mr. Hernandez!

Mr. Hernandez reviewing for the AP exam with all of his students at Weslaco IDEA Pike College Prep!

Q: Why do you think it is important to teach your students to think historically?

A: It is important for our students to think historically and view concepts through a historical lens to ensure we grasp it through the interpretation of then and now. To make sure history does not repeat itself, since history is a generation away from being lost.

Q: Where would you like to see history education go in the future?

A: History in the future should be something we all carry with us, and be showcased through multiple platforms, topics and not just what is required, but special topics, narratives, and interpretation from scholars and others that will bring more attention to History education.

Q: Share with us a bright spot of student thinking from your classroom!

A: A bright spot of student thinking in my classroom consists of peer feedback, pair shares and a WATCHA wall (oh look at this work/Spanish translation) that showcases student work and achievement. The photo that I attached is one of our last days of review, we build Key Concept hats and students were to showcase all day to other staff and students! I apologize for the walls being covered, since it was right before exams, we are not allowed to have any work up (timelines, anchor charts and such).

Finally, for Teacher Appreciation Week, we’d like to (again) highlight the work of Abraham Martinez at Stella Middle Charter Academy in Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Martinez has been teaching for 7 years and continuously reflects on how to best empower his students to think historically. We appreciate you, Mr. Martinez!

Mr. Martinez going over a Thinking Nation Formative Assessment with his 8th graders.

Q: Why do you think it is important to teach your students to think historically?

A: Teaching students to think historically is important as it gives them a framework and thought process to approach primary sources in an academic setting. I also believe that this framework can be applied outside of the history classroom into other content areas and beyond. Ultimately, it helps them become better people and gives them the problem solving skills that they will need throughout their entire lives.

Q: Where would you like to see history education go in the future?

A: This is a tough one. I believe that history education has moved into the right direction in the last 20 years by focusing on the historical thinking aspect of the discipline in addition to the names, dates, and facts. However, I don’t think that everyone in education seems to see this importance. I would like for education leaders to highlight and recognize the importance that history education plays in the role of developing the “whole student”. Perhaps this may be a reflection of my thoughts on education as a whole, but we need to make sure that we are developing better humans that are able to think for themselves, not just for academic purposes.

Q: Share with us a bright spot of student thinking from your classroom!

A: One of the brightest moments that I witnessed this year was when we had a socratic seminar on the Monroe Doctrine. Students were so excited to discuss what would normally be a rather “boring” topic according to an 8th grader. My 4th period class was so engaged in the conversation that they chose to stay in during lunch to continue the discussion. It was amazing to see their excitement and passion.

Take some time today to celebrate the teachers in your life for Teacher Appreciation Week. And all the teachers out there: Know that we see you and appreciate how much you do for the students in your room.

AAPI Heritage Month: Students Can Explore Resilience

[This blog was adapted from a previous Thinking Nation blog on May 28, 2021]

The month of May is AAPI Heritage Month, or Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We want to take this week’s blog to honor those who resisted injustice and persisted toward equality within the AAPI community. This week’s blog will highlight three instances where Asian Americans called the United States to live up to its founding ideas of liberty and justice for all. Each of these stories come from our curriculum’s library of DBQs and we hope that as you engage with their heroism today, students will engage with their stories in the classroom.

Our first story of resistance and persistence comes from San Francisco in 1886. Chinese men Yick Wo and Wo Lee were denied permits to operate their laundry businesses under a new discriminatory law in San Francisco. While the law did not mention race at all, after the city council passed it, only white laundry business owners could obtain permits to legally operate in the city. Yick Wo and Wong Lee challenged this discrimination on the basis of the relatively new (passed in 1868) 14th Amendment, which states, “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” To put the amendment to the test, they continued to operate their businesses without permits, and then when threatened by the city, made their case in the U.S. legal system. Despite the new city law not explicitly referencing Chinese San Franciscans, Wo and Lee took their case (Yick Wo v. Hopkins) all the way to the Supreme Court to argue that the city’s laws violated their 14th amendment rights. The court unanimously sided with Wo and Lee and set a profound precedent in U.S. legal history. The court argued that just because a law is not racist on its face doesn’t mean it can’t violate a citizen’s 14th Amendment rights. Their resistance and persistence led to an important change in our justice system. (Here is a free document analysis activity highlighting the court case).

Our second story to highlight during AAPI Heritage Month comes during the American tragedy of Japanese internment. During World War II, the American government forced Japanese Americans out of their homes, rounded them up, and forced them to live for almost three years in concentration camps in remote areas mostly in the Western United States. Resisting this unjust internment, Fred Korematsu hid in Oakland. He was later arrested and jailed for refusing to be taken from his home to one of these camps. The ACLU used his arrest as an opportunity to test the legality of Executive Order 9066, which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed to intern Japanese Americans, arguing that it was in the interest of national security. Sadly, the U.S. Supreme Court did not uphold the 14th Amendment rights like it did in 1886 and ruled 6-3 in favor of Korematsu’s conviction. Still, Korematsu paved the way for America’s apology for this atrocious act against Japanese Americans. In 1982 a federal commission found that the Executive Order was shaped by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” In 1988, the government paid $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee. Korematsu’s resistance set the foundation for justice.

Our third story takes place in 1965. Thousands of Filipino farmworkers in California were working underpaid and in inhumane conditions in California farms. Filipino-native Larry Itliong, who led the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led a successful strike in Coachella to raise the wages and working conditions of Filipino farmworkers. From there, the workers followed the grape crops to Delano, CA. When refused the same wages they were granted in Coachella, they planned another strike. But to avoid Mexican workers taking the jobs once the Filipinos went on strike, Itliong approached Cesar Chavez, the leader of the association that primarily served Mexican farmworkers. Initially hesitant, Chavez agreed to help Itliong and join the strike. This became the great Delano Grape Strike that lasted 5 years and became an international movement to advocate farmworker rights. If it were not for the resistance and persistence of Larry Itliong, the movement would have never come about.

During AAPI Heritage Month, may we remember the contributions of the above three men and so many more within the AAPI community who resisted injustice and persisted toward equality on behalf of Asian Americans throughout the United States.

Oped: Primary sources allow teachers to continue the National Week of Conversation

We shipped this week’s blog elsewhere thanks to The Fulcrum, “a platform where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives.”

In it, I address how we can continue the National Week of Conversation in our classrooms by giving our students ample opportunities to read primary sources.

The primary source the student in that classroom analyzed.

Here is a taste:

As seen in the classroom that day, listening to the past through the analysis of primary sources can be a powerful act of empathy for students. When we incorporate student discussions into that analysis, we only deepen empathy. Students model a listening process for their analysis of past documents as a way to set them up to listen in the contemporary conversations they engage with every day.

It is my hope that we continue the themes of #NWOC [ National Week of Conversation ] far beyond this week. Let’s support teachers around the country as they pause and look for opportunities to have students listen to the past and engage in empathetic conversations about its significance. Not only will students grow in their intellectual capacity through these conversations, such conversations are foundational for the preservation of our constitutional democracy.

Head over to the full article to read the rest.

Our Juneteenth Art Contest!

Teachers and high school students! For the month of April, we are collaborating with the National Liberty Museum and Youth Advocates for Change to host a Juneteenth art contest!

This year’s National Charter School Conference takes place in Austin, Texas. This is the weekend of our nation’s newest national holiday: Juneteenth. As a way to celebrate a holiday defined by liberation, our art competition challenges students to imagine and envision a Black leader or artist and their contributions to liberation. The top 20 students will be featured in a pop up exhibit at the National Charter School Conference. Then the top 3 students will even win cash prizes of $1000, $500, and $250 respectively.

The National Alliance for Charter Schools is sponsoring this contest. This means it is only open to HS charter school students, so if you teach at any charter school in the U.S. WE’D LOVE FOR YOUR STUDENTS TO SUBMIT THEIR ART WORK! This is a really great fourth quarter activity to stretch students beyond the traditional scope and sequence and demonstrate civic participation.

Teachers: We’ve also collaborated with the National Liberty Museum on two introductory activities, linked here. The first has students read General Granger’s Order NO. 3, dubbed the Juneteenth orders, which declared the Emancipation Proclamation to the wrongfully enslaved communities in Texas. The second has students analyze art work to help them plan out their own art submission. Please use these activities in your classrooms to situate your students before they begin on their submission for the Juneteenth art contest.

We can’t wait to see what students come up with! If you have any questions, please contact Thinking Nation’s Community Outreach Manager, Tiana Day (tiana.day@thinkingnation.org)

Here is our flyer! (Also linked here in PDF form). We cannot wait to see all of the talented submissions by your students!

The Juneteenth Art Contest Flyer (pdf linked above)

How We Can Shift and Shape School Culture

I was visiting one of our partner schools in Los Angeles recently and I happily saw that the 8th grade teacher, Mr. Martinez, had student writing on the wall in the hallway outside his classroom. His school, Stella Middle Charter Academy, has partnered with Thinking Nation for a few years now and it has been so rewarding to watch the students grow.

student writing on hallway wall — Mr. Martinez’s Wall

My initial reaction was admittedly a little proud. It’s always cool to see Thinking Nation out and about. But as I reflected, I recognized that what Mr. Martinez was doing was both shifting and shaping the culture of learning at his campus.

Most times that we put up student work, it is the work that has immediate visual appeal. Artwork, maps, pamphlets, etc. This work does indeed look nice, but it often does not showcase student thinking. In fact, many of these assignments require the same amount of DOK 1 knowledge that most content-based multiple choice questions require. In a way, these pieces of student work reward students for restating the information that we or a textbook or website gave them at an earlier date. By putting them up, we are sending a message of what we reward in our class.

In the case of much (not all!) student art work, we are sending the message that what is valued by us (and at our school) is visually appealing work that demonstrates content knowledge. But this isn’t history.

History is the study of the past and we have to employ historical thinking in order to do that well. What Mr. Martinez was doing was demonstrating to students and passing staff and parents that he was rewarding something deeper. He was showcasing student writing that couldn’t simply be taken in by quickly walking by. It encouraged the passerby to stop, read samples of student work, look at a rubric that assessed higher order thinking and writing skills, and engage with a variety of arguments. Mr. Martinez was rewarding historical thinking.

This may seem small, but in this simple way he was setting a tone for the type of work that was celebrated in his class. He was shifting the culture from “this looks nice, let’s post it,” to “this is deep work, let’s celebrate it!” If we want to cultivate thinking citizens and shift the paradigm of history education, this is the school culture shift we need. If we shape our culture to reward deep thinking and complex writing, guess what? Students will begin to showcase their deep thinking and push to become better writers. From there, the paradigm will shift.

As we reflect on what we reward at our schools, I hope that Mr. Martinez’s example can serve as an inspiration for us all.

Elizabeth Keckley and Women’s History Month

For our last blog, we talked about the special occasion of listening to Dolores Huerta speak on International Women’s Day. Today, we want to continue to celebrate Women’s History Month by honoring a lesser known, but incredibly important voice: Elizabeth Keckley.

If you’ll recall our last blog post of 2022, I highlighted my top 5 history books of 2022, one of them being Keckley’s autobiography. Her story is incredible. From that blog:

“Wow. Keckley’s experience as an enslaved, then free, seamstress was riveting. Put simply, there needs to be a movie about her. A seamstress for Jefferson Davis’s wife before the Civil War, she refused to go with them once the war began. Through her own grit, she became Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress during Lincoln’s tenure in the White House. She was a confidant for Mrs. Lincoln and was often “in the room” with President Lincoln at critical personal moments. I could not put her book down.”

Keckley’s life story is truly incredible. I was blown away by her story and how she was able to be such a crucial part of the Lincoln family’s life while they were in the White House. She witnessed so much! She spent so much time in the presence of the first lady and her husband, the president, that she offered such fascinating insights into the inner workings of Lincoln. For instance, read her perspective on his integrity and trust in others:

OFTEN Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln discussed the relations of Cabinet officers, and gentlemen prominent in politics, in my presence. I soon learned that the wife of the President had no love for Mr. Salmon P. Chase, at that time Secretary of the Treasury. She was well versed in human character, was somewhat suspicious of those by whom she was surrounded, and often her judgment was correct. Her intuition about the sincerity of individuals was more accurate than that of her husband. She looked beyond, and read the reflection of action in the future. Her hostility to Mr. Chase was very bitter. She claimed that he was a selfish politician instead of a true patriot, and warned Mr. Lincoln not to trust him too far. The daughter of the Secretary was quite a belle in Washington, and Mrs. Lincoln, who was jealous of the popularity of others, had no desire to build up her social position through political favor to her father. Miss Chase, now Mrs. Senator Sprague, was a lovely woman, and was worthy of all the admiration she received. Mr. Lincoln was more confiding than his wife. He never suspected the fidelity of those who claimed to be his friends. Honest to the very core himself, and frank as a child, he never dreamed of questioning the sincerity of others.

Elizabeth Keckley in many ways was an American hero. The stability and restraint that she brought to the White House flies flat in the face of the “get ahead however you can” culture that often runs our world. Her empathy for others is worth emulating.

In our middle school Civil War DBQ, students are asked to look at the various experiences of women during the Civil War, one of whom is Elizabeth Keckley. Teachers, if you would like to introduce Keckley’s story and efforts to your students, please download this document analysis worksheet that highlights her efforts during the Civil War.

Happy Women’s History Month!