1. Thank you for agreeing to this interview! Could you tell us about yourselves?

Dr. Jeremiah Clabough is an Associate Professor of Social Science Education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he trains pre-service teachers to be middle and high school social studies teachers. He earned his PhD at The University of Tennessee in Spring 2012. Before this, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher. His research interests center on strengthening middle and high school students’ civic thinking skills as outlined by the indicators in the C3 Framework. Additionally, his scholarship looks at how to utilize different types of trade books, such as graphic novels and content-area picture books.

Dr. Caroline Sheffield is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Louisville in Louisville, KY. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of South Florida in 2009. Prior to her move to higher education, she taught middle school social studies in Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.  She is currently the co-editor for the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies relaunched journal, Social Studies Teaching and Learning. Her research interests include multimodal literacy and the social studies, using trade books in social studies education, and technology integration within social studies education.

Katie Rowland Ellis is in her eleventh year as a secondary social studies teacher. She has taught world history, U.S. history, sociology, and geography. She has a Bachelor's Degree from Mississippi College and a Master’s Degree from William Carey University. She was awarded teacher of the year at Simmons Middle School in 2016. This is her first year at I3 Academy where she was a founding member of the middle school.

2. Tell us about your time and involvement with NCSS.

Dr. Clabough attended his first NCSS conference in Washington D.C. in 2011 and have become more active over the last 11 years within the organization. He has served on the NCSS Archives Committee. During his time on the NCSS Archives Committee, we worked to explore digitizing parts of the collection of documents for the organization housed in Austin, Texas and did several presentations about the history of NCSS at the yearly conferences. Dr. Rozella Clyde and Dr. Clabough did a series of articles in Social Education during 2021 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of NCSS that examined the organization’s role in promoting best teaching practices in social studies education over the last century. Most recently Dr. Clabough had the honor and privilege of co-moderating two panel discussions in February of this year where former NCSS presidents shared their reflections on their presidencies as well as thoughts on issues in contemporary social studies education at the virtual NCSS conference to celebrate the organization’s centennial anniversary.

Dr. Sheffield first joined NCSS as an early career social studies teacher in 2000. She has multiple manuscripts published in all three of the NCSS journals and serves as a peer reviewer for both Social Education and Social Studies and the Young Learner. She is a regular presenter at the NCSS annual conference and represented CUFA in the House of Delegates for four years.  She also serves as a member of the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies Executive Board.

3. Can you explain your project with I3 Academy?

The project at the I3 Academy grew out of a practitioner article that Dr. Clabough did during the summer of 2020 for The Social Studies. In this article, he explored how to thematically teach civil rights issues using trade books. The power of thematically teaching civil rights issues just kept appealing more and more to him as he was writing this manuscript while seeing the fallout from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Our project at the I3 Academy took the concept of thematic teaching and greatly expanded upon it by using trade books.

We are working with the sixth-grade social studies teacher at the I3 Academy, Katie Rowland Ellis. Katie teaches U.S. history from Reconstruction to modern day. For our project, we are developing instructional sequences for each curriculum unit focused on how different civil rights activists challenged racial discrimination. For example, we are in the middle of an instructional sequence examining how the Tuskegee Airmen challenged racial stereotypes of African Americans during World War II. Our next sequence will explore how Thurgood Marshall advocated for civil rights issues through the U.S. court system and successfully won the Brown V. Board of Education that led to the desegregation of U.S. public schools. Each instructional sequence is driven by a trade book about civil rights issues and/or activists. We pair each trade book with easily accessible primary sources. Following the class read aloud of the focus trade book, students engage in close readings of excerpts from the trade books in combination with primary sources. Students answer analysis prompts designed to build their disciplinary literacy skills as well as their ability to make thematic connections among civil rights activists. For example, we asked students to compare the challenges faced by the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I to those experienced by the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. The sixth graders have consistently improved in making thematic connections among civil rights activists as we have moved through our different instructional sequences this academic year. Each of our units is designed to highlight the achievements and contributions of African Americans in U.S. history, but we have also tried with thematic teaching to stress the constant presence of racial discrimination in African Americans’ daily lives.

4. How did I3 Academy students grow and develop from this project?

Through this project, students have grown to have a deeper understanding of U.S. history. They have made personal connections to the stories in our selected trade books. Students have developed their own emotional connection to civil rights activists by learning the historical events from the point of view of people who have experienced them. It has been exciting to see the students to become passionate about these topics and activists as we study them.

5. Are there any plans to continue this work at I3 Academy? Other schools?

We are excited to continue our work at the I3 Academy in the 2022-2023 academic year. Our plan for the second year of our project is to focus on the use of picture books to highlight the achievements of individuals who affected positive changes within their community. A special emphasis will be placed on the struggle for civil rights. We will utilize text sets comprising three picture books exploring three different individuals, or groups of people, in four different eras: Reconstruction (Robert Smalls, John Roy Lynch, and Frederick Douglass), the Progressive Era (Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, and Clara Lemlich), the Harlem Renaissance (Florence Mills, Duke Ellington, and Langston Hughes), and the 1950s/60s Civil Rights Era (Children’s’ March participants, Thurgood Marshall, and Fannie Lou Hammer). The focus on these individuals is tied to the I3 Academy’s mission for their students to become agents of change in their own community. We selected both well-known and lesser-known individuals to highlight in the project for the 2022-2023 academic year. We want students to see that they do not have to be famous to enact change.

The shift to a focus on picture books stems from the students’ response to the trade books used in the current year’s project. They have overwhelmingly preferred the picture books over the longer, more text-focused, chapter books. Although there is agreement that picture books are powerful tools for middle and secondary social studies instruction, there is little research exploring the topic. We hope that our project for the 2022-2023 school year will help to address this deficit.

6. If others were interested in replicating this project, what advice would you give them?

We think the power of this project is that social studies teachers can use a lot of high-quality and award-winning trade books to replicate our project. The trade books do not necessarily have to be the ones we used. The key is to make sure that trade books selected connect around enduring issues that centered on a central topic. For example, Ida B. Wells and Tulsa Race Massacre both allowed us to talk about how violence has been used as a political tool to maintain white hegemony. The social studies teacher needs to design analysis prompts for students to answer that allows them to articulate the thematic connections among historical figures and events. It is important that the teacher be intentional when addressing the thematic connections. Do not assume that the students will naturally make the connections that you want them to make. Instead, design analysis prompts that help students articulate the connections and discuss the theme during class read alouds and debriefings of the analysis prompts. It will take students time and practice to be comfortable with making thematic connections across time. We think pressure by school administration and having too much content material to cover cause some teachers to expect for students to automatically grasp complex historical analysis skills. As Sam Wineburg (2001) reminds us, historical thinking is an “unnatural act” for K-12 students. We need to be patient as teachers and constantly work in opportunities for students to practice making thematic connections. With practice, students will gradually make the connections that we want them to with little prompting from us.

The beauty of thematic teaching is that social studies teachers are not confined to only the trade books we used. Our year-long project will end with the Birmingham’s Children March. We wanted to close on topics connected to Birmingham’s rich civil rights history. Our recommendation would be to encourage teachers wanting to replicate this project to consider trade books that bring in local history of their community. The use of the local history adds even more relevance to the project and sets up possibilities of involving the community in your classroom. We are working with the founder of the non-profit group, Kids in Birmingham 1963, to invite people who participated in the Birmingham’s Children’s Crusade to Mrs. Rowland Ellis’s class to discuss why they participated in the protest. Mrs. Rowland Ellis is also working with her students’ grandparents who were involved in the Birmingham’s Children’s Crusade to speak with her students. Focusing on civil rights in the Birmingham community adds a layer of meaning and relevance by connecting the content to students’ lives, families, and community.

References

Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of

teaching the past. Temple University Press.