LCAP - Allowing ALL Students Access to High Quality Instruction in the Social Studies

Yesterday I met informally with Dr. Guadalupe Solis, Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Tulare County.  Under his direction Educational Resources Services, the curriculum and instructional service arm of the County Office, embraced the Common Core Standards, and collectively became one of the premier expert organizations in the nation.

As a county office of education, one of the primary services offered to districts, particularly to small districts, is assistance to develop plans.  Currently Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE) is working with their fourth cohort of districts to develop the LCAP.  I asked him about using the LCAP to support social studies.  He offered several comments.

First, social studies is part of the LCAP.  Secondly, he stated that most of the social studies people he talked to seemed more interested in money than in what is good for students.  Social studies representatives need to state more than social studies is important because all content areas feel their content is important.  In his opinion social studies needs to hop on the "need for expository text" bandwagon.  He agreed that they need to emphasize the need for ALL students to have access to good social studies teaching, but primarily because all students need to be able to read, and social studies text provides the content of reading.

The point I don't feel that I communicated well was one that I read in an article today about primary and secondary sources.  One of the main reasons to teach children to analyze and read well, is so that they can think and make decisions, and therefore become good citizens.   Just throwing expository texts at students in no particular order does not help them to learn to think critically or learn the skills they need that go beyond reading to clear, logical thinking.  I advocated for a structure in teaching history social studies.  I also advocated for new standards that align with the thinking behind the Common Core movement in language arts and mathematics. Along with that, I mentioned the C3 Framework for Social Studies.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the document with me.

When you talk to your district planners, be prepared as to why social studies is important to students.  This is about more than money, it's about what our children learn in public education in the next few decades.  Common Core Standards are the best advocates for teaching social studies that the content area has had in ten years.  But we stand on a cliff, and we could totter over the edge very easily as I felt that nearly did with my former boss.  We want all students to have access to critical thinking skills, and become empowered to make all our lives better in the future through persuasion and the rule of law rather than violence or corruption.

Initial Reflections on the 53rd Annual CCSS Conference

 President’s Reflection on the 53^rd Annual CCSS Conference

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.

Margaret J. Wheatley

All the statistics from the 53^rd Annual CCSS conference are not yet compiled, so my reflection is not built entirely on hard data. Like the rest of the conference goers, I listen to people as they come and go on the elevator and in the halls.  I engage them in conversation to see how things are going. I received many positive responses, including this typical elevator speech. “If there is one thing I can take back to the classroom, I am happy.”

This year I enjoyed each session I attended, which were mostly keynote sessions and special events, since it is my job to introduce them.  I always attend keynote sessions because these are speakers represent those who endured enough hardship or did enough good to change the world.  Having my time prescribed means that I miss most of the sessions in which teachers connect with teachers.  I found out by reading #CCSS2014, our Twitter hashtag that many of these sessions had standing room only.

We monitored the number of social media interactions during conference.  For the first time, we had an app for the conference program as well as a Twitter hashtag.  This year we only had about 30 users out of nearly 800 attendees using the app, and about the same number tweeting on the hashtag, but I see that changing as more and more teachers step into the social media world. 

Social media kept people informed about what was coming up at the conference.  People responded to our conference notifications.  The best response was 244 views on our FB announcement of Major General Patrick Brady.  We found out that more people viewed our posts if we included posters rather than pictures.  This year we had 11 participatory attendees.  One hundred seventy-nine people noticed Mary Beth Tinker’s poster the first time and 53 the second time compared to 29 views when we posted just her picture.  It’s unclear whether social media determined how many came to each session.  As a result our graphic designer, Frank Espinosa, designed many more posters for our speakers that we have ever had. 

California Council for the Social Studies

Posted by Marsha Ingrao · Tuesday, March 4 at 7:15pm

You will hear this fascinating story of Gen. Brady who is the only living Army veteran of Vietnam to hold both the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, our nation's second highest award as well as many other awards. Brady was awarded a Medal of Honor, presented to him by President Richard Nixon on October 9, 1969.

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  California Council for the Social Studies There have been over total 500 views of this page between CCSS and SJVCSS fan pages! Come early to get your seat! 

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244 people saw this post

On the other hand, simple posts received large numbers of hits as well.  The post about our leadership training drew 98 views.  Last year we had 2 people at that session. The California Task Force public meeting was packed to overflowing – about 150 persons, and yet only about 30 people viewed each of the two posts on Facebook.  We don’t have the data yet to analyze how well attended other advertised sessions were.  The bottom line is that word of mouth influences which sessions people attend more than anything.  We hope that having information to inform viewers ahead of time helped attendees talk about what was available.

Our total connections went from nearly nothing at the beginning of the 2013-2014 year to:
           1.  LinkedIn  1,252

2. Facebook Fan Page 170
3. FB Group A 264
4. FB Group B 42
5. Twitter 94

The Common Core Boot Camp 2.0 remained well attended this year.   The secondary level Boot Camp had standing room only session.  The addition of Common Core has put the subject area of history-social studies into a state of flux, which keeps teachers anxious. Teachers with whom I chatted have two main concerns:  having the time to teach, and knowing what to teach.  Our standards are now nearly 20 years old, and no longer correspond to the direction in which the Common Core standards are driving the assessment vehicle.  Common Core Boot Camp attenders learned how the C3 Framework can help them design effective lessons to meet the demands of the Common Core Standards.  The CCSS conference also gave teachers an effective place to express their opinions about changing California policies.

The conference offered more content scholarship sessions than ever before in the past.  We have not traditionally reached out to the university membership, but we broke that mold this year.  University people bring a different perspective to our typically K-12 attendees.  In addition they invite student teachers, whose membership we need to remain vibrant as an organization.  The presenting scholars are also potential contributors and reviewers to our scholarly journal and occasional papers.  This brain surge, in turn, provides higher quality resources to the K-12 members. 

The conference offers a chance for people to network across the four core disciplines as well as cross grade levels and most importantly from different areas of the state.  This makes the CCSS Annual Conference a dynamic professional development that no one district could provide on its own for social studies teachers.

My humblest and most sincere thanks goes to the hard working Conference Committee and Executive Cabinet, and Executive Secretary and on site volunteers, who worked long, often tense, hours to bring this successful conference to you, our members and friends across the state of California.  We want to see you next year in Oakland.

Marsha Ingrao

2013-2014 President, California Council for the Social Studies

What's Different About a Social Studies Conference?

Large or small, I like social studies conferences.   Teachers starve for social studies professional development because it differs from other subject area conferences.

The social studies include four core subject areas:  geography, economics, history and civics.

• Geography:  Now I ask you who isn't interested in traveling? One of our CCSS exhibitors offers teachers expenses paid trip for two weeks to Germany.  Do they have offers like that in math conferences?

The activity we did at the N. CA conference this weekend had us identifying where and when pictures had been taken.  Each group of 4 had two different pictures. This particular activity showed change over time in Germany.

• Economics:  Do you run out of month or paycheck first?What would happen if we quit shipping the 40% of California's agricultural products overseas, could we save water in drought-ridden California?  Studying economics helps students grapple with historic and current issues, trace the consequences and predict future results from actions we take today.  Conferences bring you face to face with people in the know like Dr. Jim Charkins of the California Council for Economics Education.

• History:  Scholars from near and far engaged us in conversations about WWI, the trenches, the music, the need to enlist before the selective service started, and the propaganda to get people to enlist.

Lora Vogt from the WWI Museum in Kansas City, MO

Now I understand a little piece of my grandfather's life a little better.

Dr. Jennifer Keene from Chapman University compared Ernest Hemingway's life to the average WWI soldier. Sponsored by Gilder Lehrman Institute

At the other conference we Skyped author/scholar, Allyson Hobbs from Stanford, also sponsored by Glider Lehrman Institute who studied the effects of African-Americans who passed for white, and what they missed from their black culture by giving up their identities.  Can you imagine giving up/turning your back on who you are?  She made it personal.

Dr. Allyson Hobbs, sponsored by Gilder Lehrman Institute

• Civics:  We met three speakers involved in landmark Supreme Court cases.  Sylvia Mendez's younger sister never knew the court case happened until  she studied the effect on the Civil Rights movement in high school.  Karen Korematsu spoke about her father, Fred Korematsu's opposition to the federal government, prison, Supreme Court Case.  We met Mary Beth Tinker, Tinker V Des Moines, who wore a black armband to school, to express her views.  She didn't think it was any big deal at the time.  Now she talks to children around the country.  She told us stories of amazing children, and what they can do that adults couldn't.

NCSS President-Elect, Michelle Herczog and Mary Beth Tinker of Tinker v Des Moines

We heard Major General Patrick Brady tell us that people may not have equal opportunities, but we all have access to as much courage as they want.  The more we use, the more we have.

Major General Patrick Brady, Vietnam War hero, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

We met political cartoonist, Lalo Alcaraz who has one of his paintings hanging from the wall of Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor

Lalo Alcarez at the CCSS Conference in Los Angeles

Where else but a social studies conference can you rub elbows with people who played a part in exciting events you read about in the news?

Intensity sparked like electricity during a Power of Democracy Task Force meeting. Where can you get direct contact with legislators, Department of Justice, and Department of Education at the same time?

Student speaker at Power of Democracy/Civic Education meeting

We honored our best and finest social studies teachers at the awards program - AKA Emmys. Twitterers tweeted during the conference.

Brent won a bicycle at the membership booth. Exhibitors gave free stuff to everyone.  Best of all teachers connected with other teachers and shared ideas.

Next March we go to Oakland.  The National Conference will be in Boston in November.  California Council Needs YOU!  If you teach history-social studies in CA, please join us.

Local Control Funding Formula and History Social Science in CA Schools

A Special Alert from CCSS Legislative Analyst Fred Jones to all CCSS Members Social studies educators have a new opportunity to enhance or reclaim the place of social studies education in California. New systems of state funding of public education (the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF) require school districts to show that they are using state money to improve student achievement in all required curriculum areas, one of those being History-Social Science. Teachers, parents, and others who want to promote History-Social Science need to step forward and participate in the new process. According to the new Local Control Funding Formula passed into law last summer, local school districts and county offices are given historic flexibility to spend state resources (including Categorical funding streams) the way they think works best for their students and community needs.  However, the same LCFF law require districts to formulate -- with the input of the public and educational stakeholders -- "Local Control Accountability Plans" (LCAPs) detailing their priorities and how they will be spending these resources; these plans must be submitted to the state by July 1, so districts are busily holding public meetings and doing surveys to gather the input of stakeholders. The LCAP will set the policy and budgetary goals of your district for the next several years; the State Board of Education has provided districts a general template for performance indicators to be included in their LCAPs, (available on the home page of the California Department of Education, http://www.cde.ca.gov) but most of the details will be left to individual districts.  This LCAP moment presents one of the best opportunities to insist that History-Social Science (or if you prefer to use a politically salient term used by politicians, "Civics") instruction and knowledge be included as something all schools should be held accountable for delivering to all K-12 students (at all grade levels). You can help coordinate the active participation of your instructor colleagues, parents and even local civic leaders and business owners in your community.  Inform them when your district will be holding public meetings to get LCAP input; eventually your school district board will have to vote upon the recommended LCAP, at which time this will be another opportunity to make our pitch for HSS education. Additional resources are available at the CCSS home page (http://www.ccss.org)  If you have questions or comments to share, please email Jim Hill, Chair CCSS Government Relations Committee, mailto:jimhill@csusb.edu

Government Relations Committee Members

Fred Jones, Legislative Analyst Jim Hill, Committee Chair Michelle Herczog, Committee Co-Chair Ben Chaika Cricket Kidwell Anthony Zambelli Ruth Luevanos