{"id":5427,"date":"2014-11-07T03:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T11:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=5427"},"modified":"2014-11-04T16:14:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T00:14:33","slug":"facing-history-and-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/facing-history-and-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing History and Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facing History and Ourselves, the latest Educator Innovator\u00a0<\/em>partner,\u00a0believes that the lifeblood of democracy is the ability of every rising generation to be active, responsible decision-makers.<\/p>\n

We believe that inspired teachers and innovative methods are the key to this work. We work with educators around the world and throughout their careers to improve their effectiveness in the classroom, as well as their students\u2019 academic performance, historical understanding, and civic learning. In fact, we\u2019ve already led two webinars with Educator Innovator<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00b7 I Write To Know What I Think<\/a>
\n\u00b7 What Happens When Young People Take Action: A Webinar on the Freedom Riders<\/a><\/p>\n

“Powerful learning occurs when youth, driven by their own interests, are supported in being creators and not just consumers of knowledge.” We agree. And, it brings to mind\u00a0a young group of “makers” we worked with several years ago.<\/p>\n

Facing History began its work with one teacher at a time: providing resources, coaching, and developing pedagogy that would engage and amplify student voices. A few years ago, the Los Angeles region began working with five schools in a pilot program to see what the impact would be on school culture if instead of just working with one or two teachers, we sought to embed the ideas of Facing History in multiple grade levels and across the curriculum. That Spring, we offered a special opportunity for students from the five schools to come together to make things using digital media. We partnered with MetaFour Productionsto<\/a> help on the digital side of things since we were still pretty new to it.<\/p>\n

After a few smaller projects, they launched into a digital creation of an animated, non-verbal video. The brainstorming commenced. What should they make? There were students from three different schools. What they had in common was that all had taken Facing History classes. Not getting to consensus, the adults finally left the room, leaving the students to talk about it further by themselves.<\/p>\n

The adults returned to an active conversation among the students putting their story line together. They had quickly come to the consensus that the concept of “universe of obligation” was so central to their understanding of Facing History, that is what they wanted to represent. Here is their video.<\/p>\n