Teaching History with Mrs. Byars

Why I Picked Up This Book:  It is only my third year teaching and being fresh out of a credential program and having two-years of BTSA/Induction you would think that I would be relatively confident in my grading methods. When I taught at a Middle School I thought the issue with grades was "the system" and not me. Students would move onto the next year even if they failed and I thought this was the problem that made grades seem so irrelevant in my classroom. Then I moved to a high school and I truly wanted to believe that things would be different because students now had real consequence if they failed but I found the same issues and concerns in my high school classrooms and it got me thinking about the purpose of grades and how they can best serve our students. It is a hard conversation to have, and a hard one to inspire in others because grading is such a personal part of how a teacher runs their classroom. So I was incredibly grateful when a colleague of mine c...

Inquiry, literacy, and civic engagement were the main themes of "An Exploration in History and Social Science: A 21st Century Shift." This past week I attended this Professional Development day hosted by the San Bernardino Superintendent of Schools and the Riverside County Office of Education  and I wanted to share some of the key takeaways from my day there. The Four Worlds Teresa Hudock of USC  In the first session I attended, Teresa Hudock of USC introduced a the Four Worlds Framework . This is a great tool to help students think about concepts in class in different ways and allows for students to visually see the connections between the "Four Worlds" (economic world, social world, political world, and cultural world.) The USC website has pre-made worksheets for a large variety of different concepts you can review using this framework and even has the presentations they use when teaching the framework.   Teresa has created an easy to use an...

Instagram is my go to social media account because I love being able to visually tell the story of my class and easily share student work and student accomplishments It’s all About the Pictures Instagram is the perfect place for visual storytelling. You upload pictures, crop them, and add filters that can change the coloring or how the picture looks. You can write a caption as well but since people scroll through multiple Instagram Accounts at the same time they will often miss the caption making the focus the picture. This allows you to tell an impactful story with just photos alone. While it is always good practice to caption the photo so if someone does stop, they know what is going on, the goal is rich and interesting pictures that offer a window in your classroom. You don’t have to post selfies. Ever. While Instagram can seem like a world full of selfies (or photos you take of yourself) you can get away with never posting a single one! I post student wor...