The Process of Updating History

Beth Slutsky will provide a presentation about how the content of the Framework was updated.  Charged with overhauling the document, the CHSSP had to create a consensus document that would be helpful to educators at all levels, be historically accurate and engaging, and satisfy the requests of many interested and oppositional parties in the state.  Beth will use examples from the document to demonstrate how the CHSSP attempted to create such a document.  Re-orienting each grade level around open-ended investigative questions of historical significance, K-12 teachers are now encouraged to focus their instruction around questioning and investigating the past, a practice that has been usurped in the state’s recent past by voluminous content memorization to ready students for the state’s standardized tests.  The document names and describes excerpts from hundreds of age-appropriate primary sources, around which teachers are encouraged to construct lessons.  In this time of limitless online resources for K-12 teachers, and very expensive textbooks, the Framework aims to support teachers’ efforts to create their own materials grounded in the Framework.  Moreover, threaded throughout the Framework are number of vignettes, or classroom examples that detail how a teacher works to impart content, literacy, skills, and citizenship in their daily instruction.  Beth will also point to similarities and differences with this document in a national perspectives, and point to the implications this could have on a broader scale with history education preparation.