People, Places, and Environment
3) Social Studies teachers should possess the knowledge, capabilities, and dispositions to organize and provide instruction at the appropriate school level for the study of People, Places, and Environment.
This theme is one that I have struggled with. NCSS defines it as the interaction between the physical environment and the people living there. While this is helpful in a geography sense and in a few key times in a history classroom, I think is so much more than that. To me, the relationship between people and their environment is the relationship between people and the norm in their society. I utilized both of these interpretations during my time at the high school.
We discussed the relationship between people and their physical environment a few times, but the best examples occurred during lessons about political parties, both past and present. During a lesson about the history of political parties we talked about how the resources led to a separation in industry in the North and South. While this difference would lead to the Civil War it would also lead to the separation of the Republicans in the North and the Democrats in the South. We also talked about this with the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. We talked about how Andrew Johnson was impeached because there were very few Democrats in Congress due to the secession of the South. While he stayed loyal he was hopelessly a minority in the Union. The second example that showed me utilizing this theme was in concept maps about liberalism and conservatism. In this lesson we talked about things that were always present and things that were not. In this discussion we talked about where rural and urban populations would tend to land on the spectrum. We also talked about how Iran was a prime example of conservatism because of the conservative religion that is prominent in the religion and rules the country.
I also used this theme in the sense of a non-physical environment in my introduction of the legislative branch. On my first day teaching we did a simulation about the origins of the American political system with an emphasis on the legislative branch. The answer was parliament and the big change was that our Congress has much more power than the English parliament had at the time. I, the king, was able to control the parliament through adding members, bribery, and threats. While there was technically a Parliament the king had all the power. After this lesson, I made my point that we are a product of the environment we were born from. The Founding Fathers had their experiences and knowledge of the parliamentary system, and decided that it was not for us in the United States. This change was a great example of how people are products of their political environments.
This theme was one of my weaker ones. While I think I still did a fairly good job at addressing the theme, it was not one that fit well into the subject matter that I was teaching on a daily basis. The lesson plan linked below is a good example of the potential to teach this well, but again I did not have many opportunities for improvement. As far as looking forward, this is a theme that is very important especially in history. I think that it is an easy theme to forget about, however, it is one of the most important to teach students. It is one of the few things that will almost always make sense to students and will help them to make connections throughout history. I think that I will add this theme to my lesson plan cheat sheet in order to ensure that I do not forget about it in the chaos that is curriculum.