Emerson Avery EDUC 540

Domain 3

It’s probably worth mentioning, at the outset of this reflection on my performance in Domain
3, that the lesson under discussion—concerning Christopher Columbus—to some degree
reflects a failure in Domain 1. As originally conceived, the lesson on Columbus included both a
perusal of secondary as well as primary sources on Christopher Columbus. As ultimately
delivered, however, only the former sort were considered. (The primary sources, meanwhile, I
reserved for a second lesson.) The excision of the primary sources was a deliberate choice—
conversations with my mentor convinced me that I was including too much for a single
period—but was also the result of circumstance. During the planning of this lesson,
extracurricular responsibilities intervened to limit the amount of time I had to curate
selections from the primary sources.

As a result, the denouement I had originally conceived—a comparison of secondary

perspectives with the primary sources themselves, and the concomitant opportunity for the
students to formulate their own view of Columbus—was deferred to a subsequent lesson.
Instead, we spent the entirety of our time with the secondary sources. The aim of this was
two-fold. First, to illustrate for the students the degree to which popular notions of Columbus
are constructed. And second, to introduce them to the ways in which these notions are
founded in circumstances pertaining more to the author, or authorial circumstances, than to
the history they purport to describe. As this lesson shortly preceded another on historical
thinking skills, including on the difference between secondary and primary sources, this
seemed appropriate.

First, however, it was necessary to determine what, if anything, the students already knew
about Columbus. This was achieved by means of the Do Now, which asked the question quite
straightforwardly. I was somewhat surprised by the range of responses, which, in addition to a
healthy proportion of “who?”, tilted in two directions. Some students described him as an
explorer—and, in several cases, the discoverer of America—whereas others called him a
murderer. Those espousing the latter idea, I explained, did not have the full story; but they
were rather ahead of the game. Over the course of the following thirty-five minutes, give or
take, I introduced the students to two very different depictions of Columbus, beginning with
the very positive one I heard in the school and the much more negative version which has
recently gained currency (and with which some of my students were already familiar). This
portion of the lesson was designed as an interactive lecture—a pedagogical technique I had
recently learned about in my class on Methods in Secondary Social Studies and wanted to try.
In specific terms, this entailed the regular interruption of the lecture for purposes of a student
“check-in”. These check-ins consisted in a series of questions presented on a Google Doc the
students were to complete for the purpose. After doing so, students could volunteer to share
their reflections. In this way I hoped to achieve both total participation as well as to inspire a
(limited) dialogue on the questions posed. Both sorts of responses—the (universal) written and
the (volitional) oral—were conceived as formative assessments. How well were the students
absorbing the material?

The subsequent forty-five minutes put the ball more firmly in the students’ court. Student
groups were given one of three secondary texts, each of which presented a different “version”
of Columbus, and asked to read them. Each group was responsible for reading one of the three
texts more closely, and answering, at the level of the group, how the text depicted Columbus’
character and accomplishments. Students shared these reflections with the class, and, in so
doing, were able to compare them. This discussion served, at least in principle, as a sort of
summative assessment of student understanding, specifically of the range of different
depictions, and the incommensurability of some of their particulars, of a single historical
figure. The class concluded with a second sort of summative assessment, this time of a more
straightforward sort. In an echo of the Do Now, students were to list three things they had
learned about Columbus during the course of the lesson.

My experience running the lesson over the course of two days—as I have mentioned before,
KCAPA runs on a block schedule—point to positive and negative aspects of its design. As an
example of (preliminary) assessment, the Do Now was well conceived. It both gave me a sense
for where people’s prior knowledge was, and the sorts of notions I’d either choose to confirm
or undermine. So, too, was the first half of the class. The interactive lecture format proved an
effective means of communicating to students the ideas I wished them to absorb, without,
importantly, allowing myself to drone on so long that I lost their attention. (The inclusion of an
entertaining video helped, in this regard, and was seemingly well-received by all of our
classes.) I judge this success on the basis of the check-ins, which showed that students were,
indeed, engaging with the secondary source depictions of Columbus. A majority of the
students were able to answer the questions posed them during check-ins. A minority of these,
however, were able to tell me why the representations took the form that they did (the
second part of Check-In 2). The latter is obviously a higher-order question—understanding that
the circumstances in which history is written inform the nature of that history is a more
complicated affair, I think, than simply identifying the contours of that history—but this is not
sufficient excuse. A better-designed PowerPoint, and a fuller explanation of the ways I which
different periods received the Columbus they deserved, are desiderata for a second iteration
of this lesson.

The second part of the lesson—the discussion of independently-considered secondary texts—

was rather less successful. Although students were able to read, and in some measure absorb,
the texts assigned them, they evinced little interest in discussing them. By this I do not mean
that they were unable to share their impressions; indeed, most groups had something to say.
But they almost invariably spoke with me, rather than directly with one another. My efforts to
facilitate a conversation between student groups were mostly unsuccessful. (In which regard, I
suppose, I did not do so well in Component 3b; my questioning techniques were adequate to
communicate the lesson objective expressed at the outset, but my efforts to promote
discussion were somewhat less so). I spoke with my mentor teacher about this fact, and he
explained to me that discussion of the sort I was (somewhat naively) expecting needed
stronger scaffolding. Our students are accustomed to responding to the teacher, and many will
do so with only a little prompting. But responding to one another, particularly students with
whom they do not otherwise socialize—even in so small a school as KCAPA—is a heavier lift. In
specific terms, it needed to be incentivized, and not in the abstract. Menschner suggested
that, in future, I make peer-to-peer interventions count for points, with the discussion as a
whole valuing some pre-established amount. (I would later incorporate this insight into a
lesson plan I prepared for my Secondary Social Studies Methods class, designed around a
fishbowl discussion.)

With regard to the final component of Domain 3, Demonstrating Flexibility and

Responsiveness, I made one significant change. As originally designed, the lecture apparently
left some doubt as to the period during which Washington Irving was writing—a fact I was able
to ascertain due to the fact my second check-in question, concerning Irving’s motives for
writing, occasioned several responses to the effect that it was to curry favor with Columbus.
(The value of total participation techniques!) In order to head off this misunderstanding, I
altered the slides, as well as my delivery thereof, to make quite clear that Irving was writing
much after his subject’s death, and that his motives must necessarily have been other. This
seemed have the desired effect.

On the whole, I account it a positive experience. I see, having reflected here, the ways in which
the lesson could be improved. Next time will be better.