EED-465: A Case Study: The Arizona Department Of Education

GCU: EED – 465
March 13, 2015

In today’s society, private and public schools have paid more attention on education; however, there is abundance of room for the private and public schools to improve on their ways to teach education. What schools need to do is bring in new and appropriate academic class, to maintain control and to make sure that they are teaching on a continuous base and using the current standards provided by their department of education (Colliver, 2011). The teacher that was selected for the interview has been teaching at South Tama County Middle School for 14 years. He is in charge of all the seventh grades when it comes to social studies. The following questions were asked:
1. Do you use a textbook(s)?
Why did you choose to become a social studies teacher?
9. Do you think your students found social studies interesting or boring?
The Arizona Department of Education had a great combination of past, present and future knowledge. In most schools social studies is original introduced in the Kindergarten and it is build on each year after that, this means by the time students reach the seventh grade they should have an awareness of the meanings and directions within this course is going.
According, to the Arizona Department of Education, teachers in Kindergarten will teach his or her students about exploration. Students will be introduced to presidents and country symbols along with ideas, good and cultural exchanges (Arizona Department of Education, 2005). The first grades are taught about diversity in cultural relationships and civilizations. Third grade taught students about North America. By doing this is help provide the groundwork for the fourth and fifth grade teachers to build on. Now, its seventh grade, the teacher should build upon what has already been taught as well as adding what needs to be taught in the seventh grade level. In seventh grade, they will focus on the Civil War all the way through to the Great Depression. Seventh grade also studies Industrial Revolution and world events. Although, there are interesting parts in social studies but when it comes to nineteenth and twentieth century can be boring to students (Lipman,
Therefore, the teacher should be clear with her direction and the way it is being taught. The teacher should have a clear and calm voice, use words that the students would be able to understand and be able to make it interesting in the way it is delivered. The teacher should be able to think outside of the box when it comes to teaching. Is means the teacher should not just focus on the textbook for information. The teacher I interviewed does use two textbooks. The reason for two different textbooks is due to his ancient cultures class. He likes the narrative way the textbook presented many of the topics. Therefore, he keeps a classroom set and they read from the “old books” as a supplement to the current textbook and other resources. When it comes to his teaching style, he uses some Kagan Cooperative, Modeling, journaling and a thing he calls chunk and chew. Chunk and chew is when he breaks things down in chunk and all the students have to demonstrate that they understand. Once they understand it, they can chew it and move on to the next