The Social Studies Lesson That Inspired Me

From early on I always had a fascination with history that developed from watching historical movies, playing historical games, and diving into history books all of which occupied a large amount of my free time outside of school. However in school I often times found myself disinterested and disengaged in my social studies lessons as I was confronted with lecture after lecture where I had to sit for an hour and listen about material that I had already learned myself at that point. 

That was until my European History class in my first year of high school. I was blown away by the comprehensiveness of the content and also the engaging ways in which we were presented the knowledge from being able to do our own research into historical documents or having class discussions on why historical events played out the way they did. But my favorite lesson in that class and probably the most engaging social studies lesson I had in my K-12 experience was when our class conducted our own mock version of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that ended World War 1. 

In this activity groups in my class were assigned a nation who had fought in World War 1 and we were expected to do our own research on what this nation wanted at the peace conference in the textbook and primary source documents. The nation my group was assigned was the recently created Soviet Union who despite having fought on the side of the Allies at the start of the war did not have many friends at the peace conference towards the end of the war. We were given one class session to prepare our research and positions and then the next class session would be a mock procedure of the peace conference with all the groups representing their nations as delegates. 

I was thrilled during this lesson as it felt like a live action roleplay of the many historical strategy games I played outside of school. I immediately felt engaged and enthusiastic as I tried to read all I could about the history of that time period and the role of the country we were assigned in order to prepare. I even read about the nations the other groups were assigned and their backgrounds so I could go around to the other groups before the mock peace conference to propose secret deals and alliances. I felt excited to participate in the lesson and couldn't wait show up for school the next day for our next part. It was one of the first times I had felt in charge of my own learning and I enjoyed the interactivity and being given that freedom.

Despite all my backdoor scheming however the mock peace conference did not go well for myself and my fellow Soviet delegate classmates. During their research the other groups had learned how distrusted the Soviet Union was by the other nations at that time and so our group was consistently undermined and shut out of the proceedings. It really drove home to me the position faced by the Soviet Union at that time which might have been hard to describe in an abstract way through a lecture or textbook passage. But through the ways we were engaged and immersed into the activity I felt like I learned even more about the complex political maneuverings after World War 1 but in a way that was fun and exciting.  

While every student has their own specific needs and interests that teachers should take into account I think as a general rule it always helps students learn more when they are given engaging lessons that draw them into the learning. When students are an active part of learning instead of merely being presented information they are more likely to retain it and also to enjoy the process of learning therefore making them want to learn even more. It is these lessons and inspirations from past experiences that I hope to take into my future classroom as a social studies teacher.