Social Studies Education
The Social Studies Education Department at Manhattanville College prepares undergraduate and graduate students to work with secondary students in middle school or high school as future teachers of grades 5-12. The social studies include several disciplines as its content: history, economics, political science, geography, and anthropology. Grades five and six are added to the traditional secondary 7-12 because our students enjoy the flexibility that duel certification offers for the middle and high school levels.
The Social Studies department recognizes the intellectual and emotional components of teaching as mutually supporting. Teachers have the potential to act as the responsible adults to challenge and support the learning and well being of their students.
Classroom Community
Dr. Rick Heckendorn is chair of the Social Studies Education Department. The general approach in Dr. Heckendorn’s courses is to put forth the proposition that every teacher has the opportunity to create a classroom community where each student in the class is involved and participates. This classroom community is founded upon mutual respect and trust. There needs to be emotional and physical safety in order for students’ voices to ring out. Each student’s success will be more likely to occur if the teacher continually addresses four key components: planning, content, pedagogy, and caring.
Planning
Each teacher will discover that planning the lesson will take worthwhile thinking time in order to find one’s individual creativity and productivity. A teacher has to have identified what to teach and how to go about teaching it before entering the classroom. Students deserve this preparation. Although this planning process is often exhausting for first year teachers, it is the first prerequisite towards delivering a successful lesson.
Content
Each teacher must be conversant in the subject area to feel secure, gain students’ respect, and be able to think on one’s feet during the delivery of a lesson. Because the length and breadth of knowledge comes only after years of reading, studying, and rethinking, each teacher should continue reading in the subject area.
Pedagogy
Since teaching is both an art and a science, there are strategies that a teacher can learn to make his/her attempts to interest the students more likely to succeed. However, flexibility is crucial, as each professional teacher seeks his/her own personal path to help students make connections with the subject matter and other students in class to enrich the curriculum.
Caring
Students can tell whether or not you care about them and their development. Learning students’ names, the seating arrangement in the classroom, the amount of teacher talk versus student talk, how the teacher responds to students’ comments, questions, and answers all indicate the degree to which the teacher focuses on the students. It is not enough to teach the material. The teacher has to be cognizant of the degree to which the students can construct connections with the material and demonstrate that they understand it. Since students learn differently, it is imperative that teachers offer them choices, to be viewed as opportunities to become involved.
Choice
Individual choice empowers people, including students of all ages, and is an important part of our American democratic heritage in the United States. Some kind of student choice should be a part of every classroom if possible. Since students’ learning styles and interests differ, their input regarding assignments can enrich the individual and collaborative experiences of all members of the classroom community.
Choice is an important part of the Social Studies methods course. Students have options among several presentation opportunities to demonstrate both their knowledge and enthusiasm for the social studies content. This also serves as an outlet for students’ personal creativity as they prepare to involve their own students actively. The varied experiences utilized in social studies methods courses include:
singing original songs, writing and acting out historical dialogues, making floor-sized maps that are kinesthetically appealing, showing visuals to inspire intensive discussion and debate through the use of open-ended questions, and working collaboratively to create station lessons involving a variety of audio and visual materials and computer technology. No one person does it all, but the eyes and ears of all in the classroom are opened and expanded as the creativity of new teachers is unleashed and shared.
Choice also exists as an important component of the middle school course, Fundamentals of the Middle School. Since student-centered middle schools have fortunately replaced the former content-only junior high schools in most school districts, new social studies teachers are expected to be able to teach grades 5-12. Students exercise individual choice as they create their own interdisciplinary teacher teams from among the students in the class. Each team determines what kind of collaborative team assignment they will complete as a further example of student choice. The student-centered middle school is a welcome development since the potential to focus on both content and students makes the formation of student connections more likely. Interdisciplinary lessons and units are feasible under this organizational setup.
Final Welcome and Encouragement
You might be just the person who would like to make a difference in young people’s lives as a teacher. You might be the person who is willing to take the challenge of finding a rewarding career that offers individual cognitive work and collaborative possibilities. You might be the person who will be able to become the link between young people and your subject matter. Come join our quest and find out more about Mahattanville College and our undergraduate and graduate programs leading to teacher certification.
Certification Options
Chairperson - Dr. Rick Heckendorn