Tough situation. This may not help at the exact moment but just try to organically incorporate those different perspectives as you move through the different historical periods. For every unit you plan, just make sure you discuss the different perspectives in some way. You can't completely forsake the male perspective. They still need to know those figures and the fundmental facts of these events and periods, which often indeed are male centric.
I do agree that sectioning off the discussions of each perspective into their own thing is not the best way to go about it.
My advice: Hand the topic back to the students. Give them mini-research projects and ask them to find the representation that they desire. Teach them how to do history not just what it is.
This is the answer. Overtime, incorporating multiple perspectives should be the goal. Make them do the work of addressing their own criticisms and assign a flipped classroom research and presentation project.
Not sure about this idea of creating a subsection of a class or what that looks like, but I might recommend that instead of a focus on a specific sub group (for lack of a better term), you make a instead consider looking at "unheard voices". Depending of what era or idea of history you are teaching, make a point of bringing out some of those voices. Instead of splintering history, just a reminder to make it more inclusive, while looking for unintended (and intended) consequences, as well as the impact on those "unheard voices".
Frankly, you got yourself in a tricky situation here.
First, stop accommodating and changing your curriculum from the demands of a bunch of 12 year-olds. I hate to break it to you, they will always complain about something. It's great to "hear them out" but at the end of the day, their opinions and perspective shouldn't change what you do.
I'd seek advice from your colleagues, and look at your state/district curriculum and then start from there.
I teach U.S. History from Reconstruction onward, and after 6 years, I have gotten to the point where with most of my content, I am almost always having students compare perspectives from women, black Americans, and 'typical' white Americans. If I am really good I also have them comparing Native Americans, and other immigrant groups as well.
For example - With Western Expansion - I will have different groups, comparing Chinese, Irish, Black, Native Americans and Women.
For WWII again, looking at how life at home changed from all of those groups, etc.
I do teach I Civil Rights unit at the end of the year, where we look at Latino Americans, LGBTQ, and other less common issues, but those things are harder to incorporate on a day to day basis.
Usually during Black History Month I will have students complain that they aren't learning about black history on that day, and then I will explain that its been incorporated "remember when we did this and this and this?
Indigenous peoples are not immigrants, and white lives are not “typical”. If your class covers the reconstruction period to the present day, why is Indigenous history incorporated only if your students are especially lucky? Wounded Knee, the Dawes act, and the termination period are each essential to an understanding of the current geography/sociopolitical climate of the United States.
To pretend that these events are somehow bonus incidents in American life, and to mislabel Indigenous nations as immigrant groups, shows that you haven’t been listening to your students enough.
Honestly I do teach those things, but my students are almost all black and when I am in a time crunch and need to speed through things - I’d rather spend time on black codes than the Dawes Ac, if I can only focus in depth on one or the other.
If you have a magic curriculum that allows you teach 300 years of US History equally comparing all groups of Americans, that a 10th grader with really bad ADHD, a 5th grade reading level and a cellphone addiction, can process - I’ll buy it from you.
I understand that your job is difficult and that you have to meet the diverse needs of your students—that’s not what I’m criticizing. I’m also not criticizing the quality of the advice that you gave; this, to me, is clearly a troll post, and your insight doesn’t matter to this person. I’m saying that by representing Indigenous nations as groups of immigrants and white historical experiences as typical American ones, you’re already establishing a biased narrative that will affect the way your students see these issues later on.
I taught for a little over 4 years and did the same.
I was American history before reconstruction.
I put very little focus on individuals and instead focused on societal aspects and issues that propelled the country in the direction it went. This led to naturally including the "forgotten" groups.
When talking about settling Virginia, violence between the natives and English is a natural place to talk about what the natives are experiencing and the responses they are likely to have to the different western pushes that continue as the English presence grows from Roanoke to california.
On these same talks about settling Virginia are discussions of the treatment of the poor as indentured servants and the need for labor and desire to increase profits leading to creating a slave class.
The types of laws being passed to control black people are applied in some similar manners as the laws put in place to control women.
That touches on the experience and worldview of poor white men, black men, women and natives. In the discussion of passing laws, we hit wealthy white men. No names mentioned. No focus on individuals. The book may call this section "Bacon's Rebellion" but I don't have to teach it focused on Bacon.
Looking at how the groups interact is where I think the important lessons and interesting conversations can happen. It builds a more complete understanding of how that totally different world operated.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people
School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.
Yeah I’m trying to wrap my head around what type of history they were previously teaching where there were no important women being mentioned. I don’t remember any period like that from my own middle school education, and that was 25 years ago.
Are you ignoring social history? It’s very boring for the children if you only talk about leaders and the actions the government takes, you should be actively talking about how the era and the customs of the time impacted the lives of women, immigrants, any group in this country was impacted heavily by the policies of the era. Help them visualize what life was like in that era if they were to live there.
+1
My college history teacher was a social historian and this really made a huge difference in terms of making the material relatable. It has a few advantages:
* there is a scholarly basis (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_history)
* by definition, everyone is included, so you can integrate a variety of perspectives rather than siloing.
I’ve had the opposite experience. No one ever questions what I’m doing when I discuss politics, kings, and war, but there’s a subset of students that will get bored when I talk about, say, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. I can tell from the students which go apeshit over the subjects that I’m not teaching them badly, but there are simply some students for whom history is only politics.
That’s why you need a balance! If you focus only on politics or only on social life then you can lose people. Spend a day talking about the politics of the era and government policies, political figures, etc. and then the next day you talk about what it was like to live in that place and the struggles of the common person.
Some students have different interests than others, you won’t keep everybody entertained every day but if you can try to meet their interests here and there it will be a better experience for everybody
Don't forget that politics is informed by those movements and politics is often the driving force that leads to those movements, making the connections between the actions of the leaders and the fall out of those political decisions crucial.
Don't break it out as separate things, but make sure you discuss the impact, experiences, and history of all marginalized groups that are relevant.
[OERProject.com](https://OERProject.com) does a pretty solid job of having articles and sources that hit on multiple regions and groups.
So I don't know how this would go over well, and I'm going to say upfront that I'm only a student teacher who got into education late in the game. I've been wondering how to confront similar issues in my class (Though incorporate a great deal of diversity as much as I can regardless of the subject). If a student were to tell me that they can't relate to the content because they don't see themselves in it, I would tell them that they are misunderstanding a fundamental reason why we study history, it's not because we need comforting stories where we can easily see ourselves as the protagonists, it is to gain a sense of empathy and understand people who aren't like us. That being said, I do always hit my EDI goals in my lessons, by force if necessary.
>I would tell them that they are misunderstanding a fundamental reason why we study history, it's not because we need comforting stories where we can easily see ourselves as the protagonists, it is to gain a sense of empathy and understand people who aren't like us.
Exactly this. Nothing taught me to see things from others' perspectives like history. And the more different eras and parts of the world I studied, the more the things we share as humans became evident.
Going to take a positive spin on this- your students are actually asking to learn. Contrast this with most classes of apathetic students most teachers face. Run with it. If they want to know, teach them.
I think the best way to deal with this would be to present it less from an "identity" based lens and more from a social history lens. So talk about the main political and economic events while also integrating a social history angle focusing on the social movements of the period. Depending on the age and level of the students this could be a great chance to integrate some research skills - have them pick an issue they care about and research that issue during the time period and present to the class.
Not a history teacher, just an amateur historian, but like others I would recommend finding organic ways to teach about these different sub-sections of history between political/military/social/economical/etc.
Idk what era of history you’re teaching but for focusing on women, for every Caesar there’s a Cleopatra. Focusing on minority or black representation for every Napoleon there’s an Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. There’s plenty of examples of LGBTQ peoples in ancient and modern history/mythology. As far as trans that may be a little more limited but my own info on that is also limited.
Start each lesson the way you normally would and branch off to these other sections of that historical event/time to get the full scope of that era.
You’re working too hard. Let them do the research and work on the kinds of figures that interest them; for an end of unit project, give them some options to focus their research on, including women, people of color, etc. have them do one pagers, playing cards, zines, and so forth.
I’m going to agree with your students here. There’s much to be explored about women’s history beyond “important women.” Virtually every polity in history in every time period has focused on and grappled with how to control or deal with women, some more explicitly than others.
Instead of focusing on important women, focus on how the state and society viewed women during different time periods. Include that when you talk about social systems. Maybe this summer is a good time to deepen yourself in that
Is it “disgusting” to talk about reality and truth? I don’t agree with it. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I also don’t agree with scientific racism, but it would be a disservice to my students if I didn’t include it in my lessons on imperialism. All of the notable women in history overcame social systems intended to relegate them to a subordinate position. Even women who did not make our history books often found small ways to assert themselves. It might interest you and your students to talk about that.
If you want to learn more about women finding small (and big) ways into power, might I suggest *The Imperial Harem* by Leslie Peirce.
Poor reading comprehension.
Nobody is saying it's a good thing.
He's talking about examining social systems instead of trying to do lazy half-assed "great woman" history.
I'm calling you lazy and half-assed. Teaching women's history by throwing a few names around is lazy and shows your complete disregard for the discipline in general.
Your students are shortchanged by having such a dumb teacher.
I'm reporting you for personal attacks, this is completely unacceptable. I hope you don't expect your students or colleagues to talk you like this. Have some real, deep shame.
Take a note from your downvotes and read the other comments.
They're all calling you out for the same lazy teaching.
Sorry you got offended by it. You'd be better off just listening to it and growing professionally. Can't be this thin skinned.
The problem is that you are teaching women’s history as separate from men’s history. You need to incorporate it into every unit as it deserves. Women are 50% of the population. Obviously they did some important things. Maybe they weren’t heads of state or generals, but they were doing stuff that matters.
If you teach solely teach history that focuses on politics and military, you are going to end up focusing on men more than is appropriate (or accurate). Instead of choosing token females and squeezing them into a special portion of your curriculum, focus on women in every unit. This will often mean you are teaching social history - focusing on what a large group of people were doing and experiencing.
The same goes for BIPOC.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about or how to do this, then it’s time to learn more. Take some classes on women’s history, African American history, or whatever is relevant to your subject matter.
This is IMPORTANT and worth the effort. Learning about your people and their history can be truly transformative. You owe it to your students.
If the students are learning about colonial Virginia, the types of representation there alone run from the role of men, women, Black people, Native Americans, different religions, and more. If a student is wanting you to make up the idea that trans rights were a major part of 1607 Jamestown colonists’ history, then your job is to teach them that that’s just simply not correct.
The unfortunate truth about history is that it was not balanced. Men did dominate history for a long time in many areas of the world. Anyone looking for a balanced perspective on anything, even today, is going to be disappointed. It’s better to teach young people how to grapple with that and how to work toward a better future.
I’m not a history teacher, but I do teach MS. I would incorporate this as a research project. Kids who want to learn more about representative history can go find out about it! If they give you a hard time, say that you have to stick to the district-provided curriculum. I always encourage the kids to send curriculum complaints in the form of a strongly worded email to the board of ed (I don’t think they ever take me up on it).
Identity politics, wheter you like it or not, is not a good organizative principle for teaching history. Tell them some history basics: before 1960', no anticonceptives, and very few women hygiene options available, and both very rudimentary. Before 1900', life expectancy at 35-40 years for most of the word.
So yes, most of histoy is about men, and specially young men. Fortunately, **nowadays this is different, but it was not so in the past**. Teaching history with mostly men is not biased, just the contrary.
This means that we also need to teach about human rights, equality and feminism. Fortunately, times change. Humanity lives so comfortably nowadays.
I would disagree that history is mostly about men. That would only be true if your focus is primarily on military and political history. (And even then, excluding the role of the queen mother in the Ottoman Empire would be an incomplete picture of the empire).
Capacity to action refers to guns and the government, as well as any activity you'd imagine as typically done by women. Women have had an unfair past. Negating this is highly anti-feminist. Today, fortunately, the world is a different place and women have much higher capacity to action.
We aren’t saying to ignore the sexism of the past that limited women’s action in certain activities. We are saying that there are ways women influenced history that are important (and even critical) that are often ignored by those who focus on government, business, military parts of history.
Please go take a women’s history class or social history class. You are lacking crucial perspective.
This thread is about focusing whole K-12 curriculum using a feminist perspective, or black history perspective. This would be a bad decision. K-12 history class is about history, general history. It's not about black history nor about gender studies. Those are other classes!
>So yes, most of histoy is about men, and specially young men. Fortunately,
>
>nowadays this is different, but it was not so in the past
>
>. Teaching history with mostly men is not biased, just the contrary.
Not really - this isn't a good argument. Different life expectancies (Do you think those don't apply to men?) or the emergence of the pill (there were many contraceptives around before the 1960s) doesn't mean you can't teach about the ways women lived their lives and the ways they influenced historical events. Yes, a lot of traditional historiography focuses almost exclusively on men, but thankfully that has changed in recent decades. Women existed, they occupied roles in the societies they lived in and sometimes massively influenced events. It shouldn't be controversial to teach this (or the way sex and gender were viewed and constructed in ages past), it should be seen as an opportunity.
Teaching the role of women in history is not controversial. That a radical focus on gender for all of history is needed, is \*very\* controversial (aka: radical feminism).
I do wonder what you mean by a "radical focus on gender".
Regardless, it's false to claim that "most of history is about men, and specially young men" - it's only if you ignore other perspectives.
We always learn about the systems/concepts in my history class- so crisis, revolution, culture for example :)
We do not really cover singular men or only talk about what happened - ofc when you are talking about the French revolution you have to talk about for example Napoleon Bonaparte
(Mostly there is only a single 10 minute thing about gender roles back then)
We talk about specific groups such as bipoc, women, queer people etc. in our politics class or when it is important to understand the context of the situation we are discussing used as an example for the concepts/ systems (like for revolution we had the Russian and American revolution as examples)
+ there are always projects going on at my school
Nobody has ever argued that what we are learning is unnecessary or too little/ male centric
I hope this helps (as I don’t really know what your curriculum is) :)
maybe take a week and have one day focusing on the history of different groups, then offer books and documentaries and stuff that dive more into each subject, so each group of students can feel supported outside of the limited class time as well. monday is women’s history, tuesday is black history, Wednesday is LGBTQ+ history, etc etc. You could do that this year, and then take time to incorporate it more thoroughly into future years’ curriculums. Just an idea. I agree that sectioning things off into their own categories isn’t the best idea overall, and it shouldn’t be that way long term, but as an improvised way to address these issues now, it’s probably the quickest and easiest way to do it and make sure these students get this information before they move onto the next year.
I’m a trans woman and I would have loved to learn more trans history, but frankly there’s not much as we’ve been so erased. One good place to start as a teacher looking for information is with is the book “Before We Were Trans” by Kit Heyam. Very informative overview and talks about gender nonconformity all over the world throughout history. In a middle school history class you can’t go too in depth into anything, but that gives a good overview, and you can easily condense it down into a lesson that’s accessible to children.
Let them research and learn about their own topics and interests. You can do it through project based learning or jigsaws. You provide the theme or guiding topic (WW2 or Industrialization) you can give them the standards as a guide but then allow them to research who they want that fits the theme
LMAO. I would go full malicious compliance. Every day for the rest of the year I would focus on one member of a different demographic group. Then I'd give a comprehensive final exam...
I 100% agree we should all be including women and minorities in our curriculum. I've been actively trying to do this for 20 years, and get better every year. But when kids are programmed by social justice influencers, it doesn't matter. My honors 20th Century World History curriculum is 1/3 Latin American history, 1/3 European, 1/6 African and 1/6 Asian (my school is approx 20% Hispanic, 10% black, 10% Asian, 60% white). Last year at an Equity/ Social Justice Assembly, a Hispanic student leader gave a speech in front of the whole school accusing our history department in general and my class in particular of Eurocentrism. He had never taken my class.
Sigh.
>"A curriculum might be representative of works produced in a given time period, in a given genre, or on a given topic; but representation of the cultural backgrounds of a diverse student body as an organizing principle in general education necessarily leads to incoherence, essentialism, and tokenism."
Roosevelt Montás, professor of English and American Studies at Columbia University, *Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation,* (Princeton University Press 2021), pg. 111.
Be honest and tell them that you don’t really know about that subject. But you’re open to the subject, then ask a social worker or someone in your school with experience in this matter to help you. You can’t have special quest teachers?
I would teach the circumlm and not worry about this at middle school level.
Hs level, can be a bit more fun.
Blacks, Underground Railroad depending on your area, teach them about what happen in their area or abolition movement in their area again I am a border state so it’s good.
Trans, good luck with that one, as you will find medival and reminanse time they are there. And the French sun kings brother is another example as he would cross dress but still had kids with women. I wouldn’t touch this until hs or college
Do cross-integration, just include women of history and black history in normal history. Don’t create some separate unit/subunit about it because then a lot of students would just be annoyed. Remember though that you can’t please everyone, so just try your best. God bless
This is clearly a troll post and needs to be removed u/Cruel-Tea
All of the comments from OP are deeply unserious and this adds nothing of value to this community
Sounds like a research topic to get them to help you. Also, ask AI to help you. I’ve been in a similar situation (for different reasons) and it can be a good help in pointing you in the right direction. DM me if you want to chat.
No, but she and other "math leaders" have argued that focusing on "the right answer" promotes white supremacy culture. It was a big thing for a year or so. They've walked it back a bit recently after massive pushback and mocking online.
I don't pretend to be knowledgeable in mathematics and at my age I've forgotten all the stuff I learned when I was in to reading about physics. But I've always thought this: the math didnt hold up when applied to the universe so they said there must be dark matter; and the math dont add up so they say there must be multiple dimensions. Maybe we've got the math wrong?
Time is finite. If they want a trans history class or a black history class then they can lobby the administration to hire another teacher, either to teach it themselves or ta take over one of your other classes to free up time do tgat you can teach it. Then they can choose to take the supplemental history course as one of their electives.
Nobody said it was.
But there are devoted courses to those subjects that one could take too. But second reading I misread. I read section as another prep, not as a segment within the class. But even so. There's just not enough time to cover everything about everything so if some students want a more in depth class, that will necessitate a selected topics course.
Check out the Document Bank of Virginia on the library of Virginia’s website. You can use various primary sources to organically talk about the experience of different groups of people.
Trans history is tough. You could check some advocacy places and see if they have a curriculum built. Maybe assign those students a project if you can work it into your lesson plan. Have them educate ate the class for a day on something they think is important that isn’t covered in the material.
History teacher.
If the perspectives of black people, women, etc. are so lacking in your everyday curriculum that you feel like you have to create a special segment for them, you're a bad history teacher.
They should already be integral to what you're doing. What the hell are you actually teaching?
Either initial post or OP’s responses are not conducive to a respectful discussion
Tough situation. This may not help at the exact moment but just try to organically incorporate those different perspectives as you move through the different historical periods. For every unit you plan, just make sure you discuss the different perspectives in some way. You can't completely forsake the male perspective. They still need to know those figures and the fundmental facts of these events and periods, which often indeed are male centric. I do agree that sectioning off the discussions of each perspective into their own thing is not the best way to go about it.
My advice: Hand the topic back to the students. Give them mini-research projects and ask them to find the representation that they desire. Teach them how to do history not just what it is.
This is the answer. Overtime, incorporating multiple perspectives should be the goal. Make them do the work of addressing their own criticisms and assign a flipped classroom research and presentation project.
Love it
Not sure about this idea of creating a subsection of a class or what that looks like, but I might recommend that instead of a focus on a specific sub group (for lack of a better term), you make a instead consider looking at "unheard voices". Depending of what era or idea of history you are teaching, make a point of bringing out some of those voices. Instead of splintering history, just a reminder to make it more inclusive, while looking for unintended (and intended) consequences, as well as the impact on those "unheard voices".
I can't really say this was too helpful but I appreciated the reply
This was more helpful than most of the replies. That’s a pro move and he’s putting you on game.
Yeah, I agree this seemed like good advice.
Frankly, you got yourself in a tricky situation here. First, stop accommodating and changing your curriculum from the demands of a bunch of 12 year-olds. I hate to break it to you, they will always complain about something. It's great to "hear them out" but at the end of the day, their opinions and perspective shouldn't change what you do. I'd seek advice from your colleagues, and look at your state/district curriculum and then start from there. I teach U.S. History from Reconstruction onward, and after 6 years, I have gotten to the point where with most of my content, I am almost always having students compare perspectives from women, black Americans, and 'typical' white Americans. If I am really good I also have them comparing Native Americans, and other immigrant groups as well. For example - With Western Expansion - I will have different groups, comparing Chinese, Irish, Black, Native Americans and Women. For WWII again, looking at how life at home changed from all of those groups, etc. I do teach I Civil Rights unit at the end of the year, where we look at Latino Americans, LGBTQ, and other less common issues, but those things are harder to incorporate on a day to day basis. Usually during Black History Month I will have students complain that they aren't learning about black history on that day, and then I will explain that its been incorporated "remember when we did this and this and this?
Indigenous peoples are not immigrants, and white lives are not “typical”. If your class covers the reconstruction period to the present day, why is Indigenous history incorporated only if your students are especially lucky? Wounded Knee, the Dawes act, and the termination period are each essential to an understanding of the current geography/sociopolitical climate of the United States. To pretend that these events are somehow bonus incidents in American life, and to mislabel Indigenous nations as immigrant groups, shows that you haven’t been listening to your students enough.
Honestly I do teach those things, but my students are almost all black and when I am in a time crunch and need to speed through things - I’d rather spend time on black codes than the Dawes Ac, if I can only focus in depth on one or the other. If you have a magic curriculum that allows you teach 300 years of US History equally comparing all groups of Americans, that a 10th grader with really bad ADHD, a 5th grade reading level and a cellphone addiction, can process - I’ll buy it from you.
I understand that your job is difficult and that you have to meet the diverse needs of your students—that’s not what I’m criticizing. I’m also not criticizing the quality of the advice that you gave; this, to me, is clearly a troll post, and your insight doesn’t matter to this person. I’m saying that by representing Indigenous nations as groups of immigrants and white historical experiences as typical American ones, you’re already establishing a biased narrative that will affect the way your students see these issues later on.
Are you a history teacher?
I taught for a little over 4 years and did the same. I was American history before reconstruction. I put very little focus on individuals and instead focused on societal aspects and issues that propelled the country in the direction it went. This led to naturally including the "forgotten" groups. When talking about settling Virginia, violence between the natives and English is a natural place to talk about what the natives are experiencing and the responses they are likely to have to the different western pushes that continue as the English presence grows from Roanoke to california. On these same talks about settling Virginia are discussions of the treatment of the poor as indentured servants and the need for labor and desire to increase profits leading to creating a slave class. The types of laws being passed to control black people are applied in some similar manners as the laws put in place to control women. That touches on the experience and worldview of poor white men, black men, women and natives. In the discussion of passing laws, we hit wealthy white men. No names mentioned. No focus on individuals. The book may call this section "Bacon's Rebellion" but I don't have to teach it focused on Bacon. Looking at how the groups interact is where I think the important lessons and interesting conversations can happen. It builds a more complete understanding of how that totally different world operated. Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.
What is the content for the middle school class? World history? US history to the Civil War?
Yeah I’m trying to wrap my head around what type of history they were previously teaching where there were no important women being mentioned. I don’t remember any period like that from my own middle school education, and that was 25 years ago.
Are you ignoring social history? It’s very boring for the children if you only talk about leaders and the actions the government takes, you should be actively talking about how the era and the customs of the time impacted the lives of women, immigrants, any group in this country was impacted heavily by the policies of the era. Help them visualize what life was like in that era if they were to live there.
+1 My college history teacher was a social historian and this really made a huge difference in terms of making the material relatable. It has a few advantages: * there is a scholarly basis (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_history) * by definition, everyone is included, so you can integrate a variety of perspectives rather than siloing.
I’ve had the opposite experience. No one ever questions what I’m doing when I discuss politics, kings, and war, but there’s a subset of students that will get bored when I talk about, say, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. I can tell from the students which go apeshit over the subjects that I’m not teaching them badly, but there are simply some students for whom history is only politics.
That’s why you need a balance! If you focus only on politics or only on social life then you can lose people. Spend a day talking about the politics of the era and government policies, political figures, etc. and then the next day you talk about what it was like to live in that place and the struggles of the common person. Some students have different interests than others, you won’t keep everybody entertained every day but if you can try to meet their interests here and there it will be a better experience for everybody
Don't forget that politics is informed by those movements and politics is often the driving force that leads to those movements, making the connections between the actions of the leaders and the fall out of those political decisions crucial.
Don't break it out as separate things, but make sure you discuss the impact, experiences, and history of all marginalized groups that are relevant. [OERProject.com](https://OERProject.com) does a pretty solid job of having articles and sources that hit on multiple regions and groups.
So I don't know how this would go over well, and I'm going to say upfront that I'm only a student teacher who got into education late in the game. I've been wondering how to confront similar issues in my class (Though incorporate a great deal of diversity as much as I can regardless of the subject). If a student were to tell me that they can't relate to the content because they don't see themselves in it, I would tell them that they are misunderstanding a fundamental reason why we study history, it's not because we need comforting stories where we can easily see ourselves as the protagonists, it is to gain a sense of empathy and understand people who aren't like us. That being said, I do always hit my EDI goals in my lessons, by force if necessary.
>I would tell them that they are misunderstanding a fundamental reason why we study history, it's not because we need comforting stories where we can easily see ourselves as the protagonists, it is to gain a sense of empathy and understand people who aren't like us. Exactly this. Nothing taught me to see things from others' perspectives like history. And the more different eras and parts of the world I studied, the more the things we share as humans became evident.
Going to take a positive spin on this- your students are actually asking to learn. Contrast this with most classes of apathetic students most teachers face. Run with it. If they want to know, teach them.
I think the best way to deal with this would be to present it less from an "identity" based lens and more from a social history lens. So talk about the main political and economic events while also integrating a social history angle focusing on the social movements of the period. Depending on the age and level of the students this could be a great chance to integrate some research skills - have them pick an issue they care about and research that issue during the time period and present to the class.
Not a history teacher, just an amateur historian, but like others I would recommend finding organic ways to teach about these different sub-sections of history between political/military/social/economical/etc. Idk what era of history you’re teaching but for focusing on women, for every Caesar there’s a Cleopatra. Focusing on minority or black representation for every Napoleon there’s an Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. There’s plenty of examples of LGBTQ peoples in ancient and modern history/mythology. As far as trans that may be a little more limited but my own info on that is also limited. Start each lesson the way you normally would and branch off to these other sections of that historical event/time to get the full scope of that era.
You’re working too hard. Let them do the research and work on the kinds of figures that interest them; for an end of unit project, give them some options to focus their research on, including women, people of color, etc. have them do one pagers, playing cards, zines, and so forth.
Why make dumb fake posts?
I’m going to agree with your students here. There’s much to be explored about women’s history beyond “important women.” Virtually every polity in history in every time period has focused on and grappled with how to control or deal with women, some more explicitly than others. Instead of focusing on important women, focus on how the state and society viewed women during different time periods. Include that when you talk about social systems. Maybe this summer is a good time to deepen yourself in that
I think "controlling women" is part of the problem, take a long look at yourself in the mirror, this is disgusting tbh
Is it “disgusting” to talk about reality and truth? I don’t agree with it. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I also don’t agree with scientific racism, but it would be a disservice to my students if I didn’t include it in my lessons on imperialism. All of the notable women in history overcame social systems intended to relegate them to a subordinate position. Even women who did not make our history books often found small ways to assert themselves. It might interest you and your students to talk about that. If you want to learn more about women finding small (and big) ways into power, might I suggest *The Imperial Harem* by Leslie Peirce.
At this point you are speaking to me as if I am a student and not as if I am a colleague, and I don't appreciate it.
Because you're a subpar colleague. Listen up and learn.
I'd eat you up for breakfast intellectually, know your place.
Sure thing kid. Glad my students never have to beg to see themselves represented in the curriculum since I know how to already have it built in.
🤓🤓🤓
At first I thought you were just a poor teacher. Now it seems like you're also a poor historian to go with it....
Wtf do you mean? I think controlling women is a BAD thing
Poor reading comprehension. Nobody is saying it's a good thing. He's talking about examining social systems instead of trying to do lazy half-assed "great woman" history.
Calling the great women of our history lazy or half-assed is despicable. Be glad I don't teach at your school or you'd have an earful
I'm calling you lazy and half-assed. Teaching women's history by throwing a few names around is lazy and shows your complete disregard for the discipline in general. Your students are shortchanged by having such a dumb teacher.
I'm reporting you for personal attacks, this is completely unacceptable. I hope you don't expect your students or colleagues to talk you like this. Have some real, deep shame.
Take a note from your downvotes and read the other comments. They're all calling you out for the same lazy teaching. Sorry you got offended by it. You'd be better off just listening to it and growing professionally. Can't be this thin skinned.
Thank you for your apology, that's very mature of you
Ah yes the three genders, male female and black
The problem is that you are teaching women’s history as separate from men’s history. You need to incorporate it into every unit as it deserves. Women are 50% of the population. Obviously they did some important things. Maybe they weren’t heads of state or generals, but they were doing stuff that matters. If you teach solely teach history that focuses on politics and military, you are going to end up focusing on men more than is appropriate (or accurate). Instead of choosing token females and squeezing them into a special portion of your curriculum, focus on women in every unit. This will often mean you are teaching social history - focusing on what a large group of people were doing and experiencing. The same goes for BIPOC. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or how to do this, then it’s time to learn more. Take some classes on women’s history, African American history, or whatever is relevant to your subject matter. This is IMPORTANT and worth the effort. Learning about your people and their history can be truly transformative. You owe it to your students.
If the students are learning about colonial Virginia, the types of representation there alone run from the role of men, women, Black people, Native Americans, different religions, and more. If a student is wanting you to make up the idea that trans rights were a major part of 1607 Jamestown colonists’ history, then your job is to teach them that that’s just simply not correct. The unfortunate truth about history is that it was not balanced. Men did dominate history for a long time in many areas of the world. Anyone looking for a balanced perspective on anything, even today, is going to be disappointed. It’s better to teach young people how to grapple with that and how to work toward a better future.
I’m not a history teacher, but I do teach MS. I would incorporate this as a research project. Kids who want to learn more about representative history can go find out about it! If they give you a hard time, say that you have to stick to the district-provided curriculum. I always encourage the kids to send curriculum complaints in the form of a strongly worded email to the board of ed (I don’t think they ever take me up on it).
I think this is a good way to teach them self-advocacy as well
Identity politics, wheter you like it or not, is not a good organizative principle for teaching history. Tell them some history basics: before 1960', no anticonceptives, and very few women hygiene options available, and both very rudimentary. Before 1900', life expectancy at 35-40 years for most of the word. So yes, most of histoy is about men, and specially young men. Fortunately, **nowadays this is different, but it was not so in the past**. Teaching history with mostly men is not biased, just the contrary. This means that we also need to teach about human rights, equality and feminism. Fortunately, times change. Humanity lives so comfortably nowadays.
I would disagree that history is mostly about men. That would only be true if your focus is primarily on military and political history. (And even then, excluding the role of the queen mother in the Ottoman Empire would be an incomplete picture of the empire).
Historically, men have had much more capacity to action (aka: agency) than women. Today this is fortunatelly different.
This is, again, true if you start and stop your historical analysis at guns and the government. History is more than that.
Capacity to action refers to guns and the government, as well as any activity you'd imagine as typically done by women. Women have had an unfair past. Negating this is highly anti-feminist. Today, fortunately, the world is a different place and women have much higher capacity to action.
We aren’t saying to ignore the sexism of the past that limited women’s action in certain activities. We are saying that there are ways women influenced history that are important (and even critical) that are often ignored by those who focus on government, business, military parts of history. Please go take a women’s history class or social history class. You are lacking crucial perspective.
This thread is about focusing whole K-12 curriculum using a feminist perspective, or black history perspective. This would be a bad decision. K-12 history class is about history, general history. It's not about black history nor about gender studies. Those are other classes!
Women’s history, black history, other BIPOC history IS GENERAL HISTORY
Everything is general history, but you cannot teach general history while focusing on everything.
You've got a funny misconception about what history is...
>So yes, most of histoy is about men, and specially young men. Fortunately, > >nowadays this is different, but it was not so in the past > >. Teaching history with mostly men is not biased, just the contrary. Not really - this isn't a good argument. Different life expectancies (Do you think those don't apply to men?) or the emergence of the pill (there were many contraceptives around before the 1960s) doesn't mean you can't teach about the ways women lived their lives and the ways they influenced historical events. Yes, a lot of traditional historiography focuses almost exclusively on men, but thankfully that has changed in recent decades. Women existed, they occupied roles in the societies they lived in and sometimes massively influenced events. It shouldn't be controversial to teach this (or the way sex and gender were viewed and constructed in ages past), it should be seen as an opportunity.
Teaching the role of women in history is not controversial. That a radical focus on gender for all of history is needed, is \*very\* controversial (aka: radical feminism).
I do wonder what you mean by a "radical focus on gender". Regardless, it's false to claim that "most of history is about men, and specially young men" - it's only if you ignore other perspectives.
We always learn about the systems/concepts in my history class- so crisis, revolution, culture for example :) We do not really cover singular men or only talk about what happened - ofc when you are talking about the French revolution you have to talk about for example Napoleon Bonaparte (Mostly there is only a single 10 minute thing about gender roles back then) We talk about specific groups such as bipoc, women, queer people etc. in our politics class or when it is important to understand the context of the situation we are discussing used as an example for the concepts/ systems (like for revolution we had the Russian and American revolution as examples) + there are always projects going on at my school Nobody has ever argued that what we are learning is unnecessary or too little/ male centric I hope this helps (as I don’t really know what your curriculum is) :)
maybe take a week and have one day focusing on the history of different groups, then offer books and documentaries and stuff that dive more into each subject, so each group of students can feel supported outside of the limited class time as well. monday is women’s history, tuesday is black history, Wednesday is LGBTQ+ history, etc etc. You could do that this year, and then take time to incorporate it more thoroughly into future years’ curriculums. Just an idea. I agree that sectioning things off into their own categories isn’t the best idea overall, and it shouldn’t be that way long term, but as an improvised way to address these issues now, it’s probably the quickest and easiest way to do it and make sure these students get this information before they move onto the next year. I’m a trans woman and I would have loved to learn more trans history, but frankly there’s not much as we’ve been so erased. One good place to start as a teacher looking for information is with is the book “Before We Were Trans” by Kit Heyam. Very informative overview and talks about gender nonconformity all over the world throughout history. In a middle school history class you can’t go too in depth into anything, but that gives a good overview, and you can easily condense it down into a lesson that’s accessible to children.
Let them research and learn about their own topics and interests. You can do it through project based learning or jigsaws. You provide the theme or guiding topic (WW2 or Industrialization) you can give them the standards as a guide but then allow them to research who they want that fits the theme
LMAO. I would go full malicious compliance. Every day for the rest of the year I would focus on one member of a different demographic group. Then I'd give a comprehensive final exam... I 100% agree we should all be including women and minorities in our curriculum. I've been actively trying to do this for 20 years, and get better every year. But when kids are programmed by social justice influencers, it doesn't matter. My honors 20th Century World History curriculum is 1/3 Latin American history, 1/3 European, 1/6 African and 1/6 Asian (my school is approx 20% Hispanic, 10% black, 10% Asian, 60% white). Last year at an Equity/ Social Justice Assembly, a Hispanic student leader gave a speech in front of the whole school accusing our history department in general and my class in particular of Eurocentrism. He had never taken my class. Sigh.
Are you at an institute of higher learning?
No, high school. But I teach a dual credit class through my local community college.
>"A curriculum might be representative of works produced in a given time period, in a given genre, or on a given topic; but representation of the cultural backgrounds of a diverse student body as an organizing principle in general education necessarily leads to incoherence, essentialism, and tokenism." Roosevelt Montás, professor of English and American Studies at Columbia University, *Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation,* (Princeton University Press 2021), pg. 111.
Be honest and tell them that you don’t really know about that subject. But you’re open to the subject, then ask a social worker or someone in your school with experience in this matter to help you. You can’t have special quest teachers?
This kind of stuff is why my dream of teaching died.
don't worry my freind we all live in a yellow submarine :)
I would teach the circumlm and not worry about this at middle school level. Hs level, can be a bit more fun. Blacks, Underground Railroad depending on your area, teach them about what happen in their area or abolition movement in their area again I am a border state so it’s good. Trans, good luck with that one, as you will find medival and reminanse time they are there. And the French sun kings brother is another example as he would cross dress but still had kids with women. I wouldn’t touch this until hs or college
February, can you come here, please?
Sounds like you goofed. Now focus for every set aside month or day. Or you’re showing favoritism.
Do cross-integration, just include women of history and black history in normal history. Don’t create some separate unit/subunit about it because then a lot of students would just be annoyed. Remember though that you can’t please everyone, so just try your best. God bless
This is clearly a troll post and needs to be removed u/Cruel-Tea All of the comments from OP are deeply unserious and this adds nothing of value to this community
Sounds like a research topic to get them to help you. Also, ask AI to help you. I’ve been in a similar situation (for different reasons) and it can be a good help in pointing you in the right direction. DM me if you want to chat.
Start teaching math. There are no opinions in math, it is not a subjective subject.
You must not be familiar with the work of Jo Boaler.
No. Did she prove that the answer to 2 plus 2 was subjective?
No, but she and other "math leaders" have argued that focusing on "the right answer" promotes white supremacy culture. It was a big thing for a year or so. They've walked it back a bit recently after massive pushback and mocking online.
I don't pretend to be knowledgeable in mathematics and at my age I've forgotten all the stuff I learned when I was in to reading about physics. But I've always thought this: the math didnt hold up when applied to the universe so they said there must be dark matter; and the math dont add up so they say there must be multiple dimensions. Maybe we've got the math wrong?
Is that real? are you Serious?
Yes. Google math equity project
Time is finite. If they want a trans history class or a black history class then they can lobby the administration to hire another teacher, either to teach it themselves or ta take over one of your other classes to free up time do tgat you can teach it. Then they can choose to take the supplemental history course as one of their electives.
Why is black history or women's history supplemental instead of integral to the human experience in your opinion?
Nobody said it was. But there are devoted courses to those subjects that one could take too. But second reading I misread. I read section as another prep, not as a segment within the class. But even so. There's just not enough time to cover everything about everything so if some students want a more in depth class, that will necessitate a selected topics course.
I mean, it sounds like this teacher is doing a pretty horrible job at making sure their lessons include that information in their general class.
If it falls within the standards, sure why not.
Check out the Document Bank of Virginia on the library of Virginia’s website. You can use various primary sources to organically talk about the experience of different groups of people. Trans history is tough. You could check some advocacy places and see if they have a curriculum built. Maybe assign those students a project if you can work it into your lesson plan. Have them educate ate the class for a day on something they think is important that isn’t covered in the material.
History teacher. If the perspectives of black people, women, etc. are so lacking in your everyday curriculum that you feel like you have to create a special segment for them, you're a bad history teacher. They should already be integral to what you're doing. What the hell are you actually teaching?
Excuse me? Where do you get off on talking to me like that? I include all kinds of genders and colors in my curriculum, even Latino ones.
>I include all kinds of genders and colors in my curriculum, even Latino ones. You have to be a troll.
Because it's in your damn post. You shoehorned it in to the point where your students can obviously call it out. Lazy teaching. "Even Latino ones!"
Then why am I the teacher and they're the students? They have their place and I have mine.