Internship 2/7 - Off to a Great Start!

My second time in my 7^th grade classroom went well! They had an adjusted schedule again, so I still haven’t seen a “normal” day for them, but it was beneficial and fun all the same! The whole 7^th grade is currently working on a travel agency project where pairs of students have been assigned real-life clients and are working for them as their “travel agents” planning overseas trips for them! This not only teaches them how to plan a trip and communication skills, but also geography, math, and other valuable life skills! When I heard about this project I was ecstatic and all for it because it teaches students real-life skills along with their regular core subject skills in a fun and unique way for them!

They spent 45min working with their partners on this travel agency project as a whole grade and then they proceeded to their 8^th and 9^th hour classes, which is the two social studies classes I usually observe.

Once regular class began, I learned that their teacher starts off every Friday's class in a fun way by a kind of share-and-tell time. First, the teacher goes over their agenda for the hour, and then anyone can raise their hand and share out either an Applause (something good that happened to you or sharing something good you observed someone else doing) OR an Apology (something you want to get off your chest in general or to someone/something specific in the room). The students really enjoyed this, and I thought this was a great, fun Friday activity! The rest of the hour they spent researching the specific requirements it takes to travel to and enter another country (ex: exchange rates on currency, passports, visas, travel warnings, cultural customs, vaccinations, and even different outlet plugs!). This lesson was separate from their current unit on Bleeding Kansas and was related to their travel agency project. I thought at first that this wouldn’t be beneficial to the students because I assumed they already knew these all these things, but I was shocked to find that most students knew nothing about any of these aspects of overseas travel! When I observed this I immediately knew that this would be a very important lesson because this would be knowledge they would actually need and use in everyday life! I think I assumed falsely what these students knew based off of what I remember already knowing at that age. When I was in 7^th grade I had already traveled overseas a few times and was accustomed to these changes, but I know now I shouldn’t assume the same for every student because not every student is like me; we are all different.

The other thing I also took away from observing this lesson is that the most beneficial lessons tie into and have real-life applications. So many students complain about social studies because they don’t think it’s applicable to the real-world or their lives, yet here is an instance where it was!  I think the way to get more students engaged with history and social studies is to relate it back to their lives and the modern world. I am really looking forward to trying to tie in real-world applications into my future history lesson plans instead of just relaying historical events and dates to my students.