History and Social Studies Update

With Thanksgiving having just passed, I want to say that I am thankful for trimesters.  Social studies classes ended the term with some taking traditional finals and some completing projects.  Kodi Dixon has a popular and meaningful project that caps the work of the seventh and eighth graders.  They create a biography of a famous person and then, in costume, portray their subject in a living museum in the Commons.  The seventh graders must depict someone in U.S. history and the eighth graders are free to choose anyone that has made an impact on global history.  The project is also one that is cross curricular.  The students create a 3D artifact using skills that they acquired in their Innovation and Technology class.  Everyone enjoys the living museum and the students have a lasting memory because they got to act out their newly gained knowledge.

I am also thankful for Trinity's willingness to offer a plethora of trimester classes for our sophomores over the course of the year.  This allows students to dig a little deeper into a subject than they might otherwise.  In the second trimester, Michael Midkiff begins a study of World Wars I&II, Todd Freese will start a class on the American Presidents and I will begin a new offering.  Our new class is the History of Inventions and Innovations.  It will cover inventions and innovations from ancient China and the Middle East until the fast paced discoveries of the 

present.  It should be fun!

The end of the trimester also lends itself to our staff getting to take advantage of the school’s generosity in allowing and encouraging faculty to pursue professional development.  We sent four from the Social Studies department, Karley Keener, Kodi Dixon, Michael Midkiff and Todd Freese, to Boston for the National Council of the Social Studies 104th annual conference.  They have not been able to share much about the events, but were excited to have attended sessions on historical podcasts, using movies in the classroom, annotating maps, the impacts of WWI, curriculum looping and the Westward Expansion.  They also expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the “inspiring” presentation by Ken Burns regarding his new documentary on the American Revolution that comes out in 2025.   The group also posted visual evidence of a tour of the USS Constitution in the Boston Harbor.  All of the information garnered on this trip will be shared with colleagues and we will try to transfer the knowledge gained to improve the classroom experiences of our students.  We have a lot of exciting information to be put to use in the classroom and with finals behind us, I hope we can enjoy the Christmas season and all of the activities that it brings.