1. Thank you for joining us today! Tell us a little about yourself and your motivations for becoming an educator.

It has been said that “Little girls who dream, become women with vision.”  I can’t say that I spent my entire life dreaming of becoming a teacher. But, what I can tell you is that since the day I decided to become a social studies teacher, I have dedicated myself to being a great one.

Fall of 1992, I transferred to Elmira College as a junior. I had been at the satellite campus of Syracuse University and decided to come back home. My parents had moved to Elmira, NY after I graduated high school and so Elmira became home. I had been majoring in Public Relations but wound up declaring Business Management as a major since they were closely related in terms of their coursework. And so, I began my Business program and was doing well in everything, except Accounting. It was that struggle that changed my life. While I was not doing well with Accounting, I was excelling in Economics. The rest of my classmates, not so much. Everyone was so amazed at how I could get A’s on the most impossible of tests. Subsequently, they began asking me for help. Tutoring at the College Library became a regular past time for me and the reoccurring theme wound up being “I don’t understand why the professor makes no sense to me in class, but when you explain it, I get it!  – you should be a teacher. “ So, we kind of just found one another.  At the end of that fall semester having failed miserably at Accounting, but with an“ A”  Economics, I now had a renewed sense of purpose, I decided that it was time to explore changing my major to education.

I made an appointment with Dr. Mark J. Tierno, Dean of Education at the time. Let’s just say he wasn’t as enthusiastic about my decision to change majors in the middle of my junior year as I was. Actually, he dismissed me by telling me “ I did not want to do this because I was going to be here forever.” I was a little discouraged and very surprised at his response, but I left and went home replaying that conversation in my mind over and over for the next 24 hours.

It brought me back to sitting on the steps of the Education House at 7:30 a.m. the following morning, now more determined than ever. As he walked up the stairs, in his hat, trench coat and with his cup of coffee he looked up at me in surprise. “Oh, …  it’s you” he said. I stood up to meet him and said: “ I want to be a teacher”. He smiled and said, “ Welcome to the Education Department”. And, as they say, the rest is history.

2. After being awarded the Middle-Level Social Studies Teacher of the Year award, you presented at the 99th NCSS Annual Conference in Austin, Texas. Tell us a little about your presentation.

         Cracking the Social Studies Code: Enduring the Issues With Middle Schoolers

The presentation was a natural outgrowth of all of the work I had done for about 2 years with infusing the C3 Framework and Inquiry-based learning standards into my regular instructional pedagogy. When New York State rolled out its new Regents Exams, it naturally had a trickle-down effect into the middle school. So, I began with the question” What is it that kids in middle school really need to know in order to be successful combating the rigor of the new standards?”  And so I developed the first "Hacking the Middle School Social Studies Tool Kit," a creative, comprehensive skills-based approach emphasizing “how to” frame student thinking within the social studies disciplines including a Social Studies Reference Table, Puzzle Piece Issue Organizer, Formulaic Approach (Document Analysis), Formulaic Approach to Essay Writing, SPECulaTing SPECulaToRs Analysis Acronym. After walking through the fundamental processes, students are prepared to structure any type of enduring argument using their best-supporting evidence.

“Cracking the Social Studies Code: Enduring Issues for Middle Schoolers” and its sister presentation “Hacking the Middle School Social Studies Code: Enduring Issues, Ethical Questions and Historical Thinking “ both introduce creative, innovative approaches on how to engage all students in fun, relatable, activities transforming inquiry-based thinking into task-orientated learning. Students become familiar with the process of how to identify, analyze, and evaluate documents through various critical lenses in order to determine underlying Enduring Issues. Combining knowledge and skills with technology, like HyperDocs, students gain further insight adding targeted research producing a myriad of individualized, highly articulate, and evidence-based conclusions. These innovative and technological approaches provide historical thinking parameters that promise to effectively guide student progress and maximize teacher effectiveness.

3. What is your favorite teaching memory from your career?

That is so hard! There are so many memorable stories as a teacher. To pay tribute to as many as I have, I would have to simply say that I have a “LOVE STORY” with just physically being back in my classroom with my students. That might sound sort of cliché, but if walls could talk, there would be thousands of stories to tell - from relationships created, to obstacles overcome to major accomplishments achieved!  That wonderful human condition that we all share that can only be created by the bond between teachers and their students. There are no technological substitutes than can ever replace active teacher presence. The subsequent emotional bonds forged through the humanity experienced in classrooms across America will be essential to our next generation continuing to grow & thrive and progress socially and emotionally as well as academically.

4. How are you addressing the challenges of distance teaching and learning?

Simplicity and Familiarity- Virtual classroom structure designed to be simple and familiar, so that it would be easily adaptable for distance learning needs of all students. Students in every one of my sections were working utilizing both my personal website and Google Classroom ( tech-based platforms)  prior to the school closure, therefore they were familiar with how to both access & complete their work within them.

It is not enough to have students simply acquire historical information, they need opportunities to be able to apply it seeing how it is relevant in the real world. From day one, I took a duel approach to my social studies pedagogy for the rest of the year centering on exactly that idea - students acquiring knowledge of history and subsequently, then providing multiple opportunities of choice and practical application of it. The key to the approach's success lies in its simple structure. First, Students are asked to complete content-driven tasks through using traditional on-line resources, like audio, video, and Google and HyperDocs, but only as a measure of acquiring background information ( like doing research).

Subsequently, they are asked to complete a series of skills-related activities applying that historical background knowledge in practice to what is currently happening now. It essentially becomes primary source “Living Through History” story-telling, but with an empathetical twist!

Tasks include analyzing newscasts for current and reliable information

• MindShift Monday - Establishing trends and patters between the present and the past through engaging with primary sources
• Primary Tuesday - conducting personal interviews with immediate family and friends (facetime) discussing the pertinent issues for our present vs their connection to past events gaining valuable insight from multiple perspectives (Wednesday Reflect and Connect Opinion Interview)
• Initiate and Innovate Thursday - establishing empathy through an on-going ”Salute to HEROES” letter-writing campaign to thank first responders, local & state officials, community members, municipal organizations and members of the armed forces for their tireless devotion, loyalty and service to each of us, community and country during this unprecedented time. ( This portion was expanded upon to include a comprehensive letter-writing campaign to the military with the help of Brigadier General Vincent E. Buggs, out of Fort Sam Huston, Texas)

Courtesy of: SURVIVOR: QUARANTINE EDITION SALUTE TO HEROES

Courtesy of: SURVIVOR: QUARANTINE EDITION SALUTE TO HEROES

Gameboard #1 from  SPECIAL EDITION: “SALUTE TO HEROES”

• Garden Party! Friday - where students submit their Issue of the Week into an AnswerGarden.ch chat room, so everyone can see, identify with, and appreciate others' viewpoints on the week in review.
• This is the ultimate connection between knowledge, history, and humanity. Students receive “credit” for every task they complete. Each task is work 20 points. Their goal is to earn 100 points of credit for the week, but there is flexibility.

Sample Gameboard Week #2 Above.

Tasks are completed in Google Forms/Suite

Sample Gameboard Week #7 Above.

Tasks are completed in Google Forms/Suite

(NOTE: Civic Action Projects were dedicated to helping students stay connected to their families, neighborhoods and making a difference in their communities at large)

• Students can also complete Weekend Warrior activities in lieu of doing 2 activities during the week. Weekend Warrior Activities further promote interconnectedness between friends, family, and community service.

Sample Weekend Warrior Tile Slide Above.

The demands of Distance learning and its subsequent assessment promise to be an on-going challenge for educators. And as such, they reminded us that deadlines need to be viewed more as “guidelines” for students. Assessment needs to be progressive, continuous, and more of a measure of personal student growth in order to be truly effective. These should be our guiding principles more than “the grade”. The grade needs to be more of a cumulative numeric measure or reflection of all of these elements. When kids are able to see, identify, and appreciate what connects their curriculum and study to their own lives, that is where we ultimately see student success. I will be looking for their individual growth patterns, based on these criteria and their work submitted. Having evidence that my students feel capable and confident enough to thrive in this strange, new digital world, that is success to me.

Quick Link: http://jingold.weebly.com/survivor-quarantine-edition-new.html

5. Do you have advice for someone trying to incorporate inquiry-based learning into their Middle School classroom?

Be Creative and Always be thinking “Outside of the Box”.  Embrace the challenges and Never get discouraged. Inspiration may come in the strangest of places. But, most of all, accept that on any given day that your best is good enough. Be comforted by knowing that tomorrow will present you with another opportunity to try again.  Education is an evolutionary process. I think “normal” is going to become more of a subjective term in the days and weeks to come and that we will be redefining what this “new normal” means, together. Our daily lives at the moment are more filled with questions than answers. Being immersed in inquiry gives us all an opportunity to be innovators and subsequently to really help the next generation to embrace the idea of what it means to be a change maker. I think that we all have not just an opportunity, but a responsibility to help make our future brighter and our world a better place. I, for one, continue to look forward to contributing by helping every student to realize that although we all share the same history, it is our unique ability to make a difference that will ultimately wind up defining who we are. And those successes will belong to each one of us.

I was invited by John Lee to become a Lead Blogger/Expert for C3Teachers.org. If anyone is interested in reading more how I am incorporating the C3 Framework, find some practical strategies or just learn more about my personal approach to inquiry (IDM), they can check out my blog: http://www.c3teachers.org/author/jingold/