(u03a1) Blog on the Synthesizing Mind

My focuses is usually concentrated purely on Social Studies, as I supervise a staff of 65 online Social Studies teachers.  It is sometimes difficult to coordinate with teachers in other departments especially when teachers are separated by distance and time zones.  However, I and the teachers in my department recognize the importance of cross content teaching  in ensuring that students experience concepts from a variety of approaches and perspectives.  In the course that I currently teach, AP US History, it is especially important that students experience American history in a synthesized way.  This because the College Board has long recognized the importance of cross content learning and have designed their AP exams to reflect this. 
In my experience as a history teacher I have always striven to include learning concepts that include perspective from the various content areas.  I have always believed that History is best learned when students can relate  to the culture in which the events occurred.  I have done this in my courses by presenting example of the music, art, literature, science and technology of the period which we are studying, and their direct and indirect impact on the events of history. 
One unit that allows a great deal of cross content material to be presented is that of the 1920's.In my brick and mortar school I coordinated with the language arts teacher so that students were reading the Great Gatsby during the same time we were studying this unit. We coordinated to also show the film to students in segments.  In my online class I provide links for my students to listen to samples of music from Billie Holiday and to read the Poetry of Langston Hughes to understand not all of the country was enjoying the progress of the "progressive era"..  Students are directed to a video of the Ford motor company to understand the impact the new technology of mass production had on the country's economy and the attitude of its people.  I use images of people, especially women to demonstrate not only how fashioned changed, by morals changed with the length of woman's skirts.
I try to cover these aspects of culture in each unit of study so that students can track changes and their impact on creating historical events and also in reaction to them.  It has become such a part of my method for teaching history that I find it hard to pull the various content areas apart from one another.  Having the ability to pull digital media off the Internet has made the integration of different content areas easier.  There are a myriad of resources available on the web including, Discovery Education, The Smithsonian, The History Channel and many others.
For me, as a student, I fell in love with history in sixth grade after my teacher came to school in a Continental soldier's uniform that he wore in reenactments.  It was the first time that I really understood the War part of the Revolutionary war.  he demonstrated how he loaded his weapon and how the troops fired in volleys.  We watched a Disney Movie, "Johnny Tremain" about a fictional young man in Boston at the the time of the American Revolution.  That summer my family visited Colonial Williamsburg and I learned how folks lived at the time, what they wore, what they did for fun and what was important to them.  Now I can have my students watch reenactments of American Revolutionary battles online.  "Johnny Tremain" can be streamed through technology right into my classroom and my students can tour Colonial Williamsburg and see demonstrations of daily colonial living right from the classrooms, their home computer or their local wi-fi hot spot.