American Studies section integrates English 11 and 20th Century America

In 2017-18 CJ Hansen, social studies teacher, and Michael Soehl, English teacher, will be implementing a double block course that integrates 11th grade English and U.S. History.  The course is newly designed and thematic based rather than following a strict chronology.  Students will be learning literacy skills in a 20th century history platform starting with a unit on the theme "Democracy".  Both Hansen and Soehl have experimented with personalized learning ideas of voice, choice and learner autonomy and hope to implement these concepts in the new interdisciplinary course.

Action Civics pilot results in two sections in 2017-18

In 2016-17 Jeff Bergstrom piloted his Action Civics authentic learning course in one of his American Institutions classes.  Rather than traditional U.S. government lessons, Mr. Bergstrom implemented several hands on community based activities that allowed students to learn about their government first hand.  This project based pilot was so successful that he now has two Action Civics classes in 2017-18.  Following are just a few of the authentic experiences students engaged in.

• Conducted an evening debate between Republican and Democrat candidates for the 86th Wisconsin assembly.
• Engaged in a month long electronic simulation with grad students at the University of William and Mary to simulate political action groups around the issue of fracking.
• Took students to Madison to job shadow their representatives at the Capital.
• Had students engaged in problem solving projects in the local community!

Dual Credit Current Events in Criminal Justice

John Muraski, who created one of the only Forensic Fundamentals high school courses in Wisconsin has now successfully created a dual enrollment course with North Central Technical College in Wausau titled Current Events in Criminal Justice!  This year he has two sections and is now working diligently to dual enroll his Sociology course!  John works hard to bring authentic real world experiences to the classroom.

Advanced Historians - Senior High APUSH

The social studies department also began experimenting with elements of personalized learning

We began with implementing the Genius Hour project that we learned about from A.J. Juliani.  In 2015-16 we made this year long personal choice project optional in the APUSH classroom.  Then this past year in 2016-17 we required all students to select an American problem that they would present using some form of technology in an 8 minute format during an evening we called APUSH Ted Talks! Parents, teachers and administrations provided an authentic audience for over 100 presentations delivered in 20 different classrooms.

At the Senior High the Advanced Historian model was piloted in the Advanced Placement U.S. History class. During the first quarter, two APUSH instructors identified 9 students who stood out academically in class and displayed independent learning qualities.  Eight students agreed to partake in the pilot during the final three quarters of the course.  These students were given the option of coming to class or working independently on the unit learning targets in the social studies resource center.  Students were given a Moodle website from which to choose resources to meet the learning targets.  These students also added their own favorite websites to the Moodle page.  Students were given the same assessments as those in the regular class.  These students moved through the curriculum and learning targets far faster than the students in regular class and scored much higher on the assessments.  The students did attend class approximately 20% of the time, although some individuals never went to the regular class.  Prior to the APUSH national exam the Advanced Historians led study sessions to prepare their peers for the exam.

8th Grade Advanced Historians

During the past three years the D. C. Everest Social Studies department has brought elements of personalized learning into several of its classrooms 6-12.  After visits to the Chaska, MN middle schools and reading several books on personalized learning by Bray and McCaskey as well as Spencer and Juliani ( put in links to books).  The staff was particularly interested in providing students with more voice and choice in the classroom as well as learner autonomy.

In the junior high, the 8th grade team (Nancy Gajewski, Christian Ammon, Mark Bohlman, and Lori LaPorte) implemented two programs the Voyager program and the Advanced Historians.

The Voyager Program allowed students to have some choice as to how much time they needed to spend in the classroom getting direct instruction. If students felt they could master the material on their own or in a small group they were able to work in the Personalized Learning. Students did the regular curriculum 90 percent of the time with a few special projects thrown in. 

The second year of the program led to the creation of Advanced Historians under the direction of Nancy Gajewski, which was a group of 12 students who were given a "compacted" semester curriculum in four weeks. This allowed each student to develop an approved history project of his/her choice.  The project was non graded and a final grade was based on student self-evaluations, reflections, and written feedback from peers.  Students met regularly with their teacher as well as the Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator and the Assistant Superintendent.  Students presented their final projects in front of parents and administrators during an evening program.