COMMITTEE MEMBERS PREP FOR REVIEW OF TEXTBOOK
Panel learns about county standards before assessing ‘U.S. History’
Ramona Unified School District curriculum committee members had a daylong lesson Jan. 25 on the state’s content standards, framework and Education Code to prepare them for reviewing the “U.S. History” textbook for accuracy and what they determine is political bias.
The History/Social Science Ad Hoc Committee’s role is to recommend a textbook to the Ramona district’s Board of Education. The board will then consider the book to replace “The Americans” textbook that has been used by teachers in the district since it was adopted in 2005.
The book is being replaced to give students access to information about recent historical events, said Leslie Wilson, Ramona Unified assistant superintendent of education services.
Trustee Daryn Drum, a committee member, told the 13 school board members, teachers, administrators and community residents serving on the committee that the textbook review process is intended to give students the tools to help them form their own opinions.
“When our kids walk out the door, we’re already moving them in a direction politically in subtle ways,” said Drum, who is a parent to a sixth-grader, high school senior and graduate. “That’s not our job to give students a political slant, but to give them the tools and facts to make their own political decisions.”
Matthew Hayes, a history-social science coordinator for the San Diego County Office of Education, led the discussions and hands-on exercises to familiarize the group with the state’s educational resources.
The content standards define the knowledge, concepts and skills that students should acquire at each grade level, Hayes said. The framework, written in 1998, guides educators on how to implement the standards as they design and teach their courses. The Education Code consists of laws directly related to California’s kindergarten through grade 12 public
schools.
The three areas are integrated. For example, Hayes said the Education Code requires that all students have equal access to standardsaligned instructional materials.
U.S. history courses are taught in the third through fifth grades in addition to eighth and 11th grades. The committee’s focus is on instructional materials for 11th-graders who learn about history from the 1880s to modern times.
“There are things occurring at the close of the 20th century that impact our world and kids need to talk about these things,” Hayes said.
To illustrate how teachers translate standards into instruction, Hayes showed the group a picture titled, “Graduating Class of Santa Ana High School in 1942.” Some of the students in the photograph were wearing military uniforms. The group discussed how the picture related to WWII and themes such as patriotism and feelings of pride.
Then committee members considered to what extent Americans felt obligated
to enter WWII — similar to the way students would grapple with historical issues during their lessons, Hayes said. The point was to evaluate how a piece of evidence can raise historical questions or show different perspectives from a certain time period.
After that lesson, Hayes said teachers often elaborate on textbooks by assigning students to read related documents or watch a video. The textbooks themselves sometimes offer additional resources to help students dig deeper into the topic, too, he said.
Committee member Robin Brainard, a Ramona High School social science
teacher and department chair, said she tells students at the beginning of a school year that textbooks are not the “golden nugget,” or complete resource. Supplemental materials such as documents, videos, podcasts and Google searches are used to develop their historic knowledge, she said.
“I tell students to recognize there are different resources out there,” Brainard said. “Like a stew, there are lots of different ingredients and that should be part of their rich learning. I tell them, ‘How you feel today may not be the same as the way you feel at age 25 or when you become a parent or grandparent, because life
changes and you can change.’”
Later in the meeting, committee members became familiar with the content standards by selecting themes from the standards’ grade-level description. The selected themes were “educated citizenry,” “U.S. as a world power,” “U.S. as a model for other nations,” and “equal rights.”
“We’ll look at these four themes as we read through the standards,” Hayes told the committee members. “It’s a strategy to help read through long text and keep you focused.”
Committee member Raul Barron, a Ramona High teacher, said he likes to make historical connections to what is happening in the world today to help students understand how history is relevant to their lives.
His takeaway from the meeting was that a textbook and other resources could be used as tools to help students understand and synthesize the content of what they are learning. He said it’s “daunting yet invigorating” to use his knowledge and skill as a teacher to disseminate information.
“We need to reach these kids,” said Barron, adding that teachers have to figure out the best strategies for informing students. “We have to have trust among stakeholders — board members, teachers, the community — because we’re doing it for the kids, for them to be good citizens.”
Brainard said finding ways to support English language learners and students with individualized education programs (IEPs) will be an important part of the historical content review process, too.
Wilson, the district’s assistant superintendent of education services, said the district expects the History/ Social Science Ad Hoc Committee will have at least two more meetings, although the meetings have not been scheduled yet.
The district is in the midst of arranging a training session with the “U.S. History” textbook publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Wilson said. Once the training is approved, a date will be scheduled for the next committee meeting, she said.
Wilson noted that the process of incorporating new instructional materials could be lengthy, beginning with the school board’s approval followed by a trial period of “piloting” the book in the classroom, then collecting supplemental learning materials that engage students to fill the gaps.
“It’s a long process when you’re talking about introducing curriculum and learning materials,” she said.