Blog

by Jennifer Elemen, Stephanie Enriquez, Olivia Santillan, and Beth Slutsky

Editor's note:  this guest blog post is one in a series focused on our new HSS Framework Conference series, which opens September 10 at UC Irvine.  For more information about this workshop and to register for the conference, visit:  https://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/framework

According to historian Douglas C.

Editor's Note:  As we travel around California, one of the most frequent concerns we hear from teachers is that they don’t feel prepared to teach students about the history of California Indians.  Elementary teachers have explained that they don’t know enough about pre-contact California, especially the history of indigenous people in their local area.  Eighth-grade teachers reflect that their current resources are incomplete and don’t fully document the perspective of native peoples during the 19th Century.  And high school teachers often remark they don’t have

Two-and-a-half years ago, the State Board of Education adopted one of the most ambitious History-Social Science Frameworks of any state.  Its adoption certainly had an impact – it highlighted California as a bellwether in history education; it earned the 

Last week I received a very thoughtful and intelligent email from a 7th grade teacher, who asked the CHSSP, as the authors of the framework, why we added content to the already overloaded Grade 7 curriculum.  In philosophical and practical terms, she explained the incompatibility between the inquiry method and a curriculum packed with content.  She drew on her 30 years of experience in the classroom to argue for less content and more inquiry, which she and her team had already implemented.  Since I was the principal author of the Grade 7 chapter of the framework, I was t

Touring the Port of Los Angeles, engineering transportation corridor models, investigating the environmental impact of the war in Vietnam, and designing a student webpage to highlight the effects of climate change and globalization on endangered species were a few of the ways that teachers recently explored classroom applications for California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) through the California History–Social Science Project workshops and teacher research groups.

2019 started with a bang for us last week, as many of my CHSSP colleagues and I, along with our friends from the California Department of Education, traveled east to attend the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) at their annual meeting in Chicago.  We travelled to Chicago to accept the 

In last week’s blog post, I wrote about the new federal lawsuit charging the state of Rhode Island with preventing people from exercising their constitutional rights because the state’s educational system failed to prepare their neediest students to assume their responsibilities as citizens.  Since that post went online, I’ve gotten a number of questions from teachers and sc

“…a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated.  Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can only be created by education.  But […a] democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.” -- John Dewey (1916)

The recent federal report outlining the short and long-term social, economic, and environmental costs of climate change is particularly relevant to our students, whose lifetimes will encompass so many of the predicted challenges. Students likely have many questions and concerns, some of which are well-suited to discussions in the History-Social Science classroom. When and how did climate change become an issue? How are droughts and fires related to climate change and settlement locations?

You may have caught it the first time around when Nancy McTygue, our executive director, said enough with  mission projects already in a 2012 edition of The Source. Or, you may have read it in the newly adopted History-Social Science Framework, in which we were lead authors and explained, “Building missions from sugar cubes or popsicle sticks does not help students understand

The United States, by virtue of the size and history of its economy, is a leading contributor to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. In recognition of the United States’ responsibility in climate change, and the importance of creating a healthier environment here at home, President Obama has called for significant steps to reduce the United States’ carbon footprint.

Last January, I wrote about the massacre of Charlie Hebdo journalists and police officers in Paris in a forum article published in the Sacramento Bee.  I suggested that students might benefit from extended conversation about the topic, as well as additional information to help them put the attack in historical context, and in particular, the importance of free expression.  I had not thought about that essay for a number of months, and then Pari

*The following post is excerpted from an opening address by CHSSP Executive Director Nancy McTygue at the opening session of the Teaching the Past for Tomorrow Conference, held November 6-7, 2015, at UCLA. 

With so much in the news about global refugees (see our classroom resource), students have probably already explored their own opinions regarding the plight of these refugees. In class, students can examine resources emerging from both sides of the European debate on whether to welcome or reject the surging numbers of people looking for relief from war-torn countries.