Learning Process 2

I really like the concept of Takaki's book, providing history and details about minority groups of people that are often overlooked in our social studies curriculum, or looked at in passing. Too often in our classrooms, we do not integrate the history of these peoples into our daily instruction. We might include these groups in the curriculum, but as an afterthought, such as "Black History Month." Takaki's book puts many of these different races and ethnicities on the forefront. Each chapter focuses on the history of a different group or people. I think this is both a strength and weakness of the book. One of the issues I'm gathering that Takaki has with current social studies instruction is that these groups are not integrated into the curriculum and he brings that to our attention by providing us with a book that provides a synopsis/timeline of important historical facts regarding the history of these different groups of people. At the same time, I view this concept as its own weakness too. This is because Takaki takes each of these groups separately and provides the history separately, not integrated into true American history, which seems to be what he wants educators to do. So what does this mean for educators? It means that Takaki's book is supposed to be used as a supplement. It is great that it provides us with an organized background of these different groups. To effectively use this in the classroom, as our units progress, we need to incorporate the histories of these peoples into daily instruction. If we are teaching a sequential history, we use Takaki's book as a guide for recalling what happened to various groups during that particular period in history and integrate it during that lesson, rather than go back to it later. If we teach our students about these groups of people as afterthoughts to the curriculum, that's exactly how they are going to view them, as unimportant side stories to the development of American culture.

I wish I could include something about what I am learning in the classroom with regards to social studies, but we still have not begun social studies in my classroom. The farthest we have gotten is giving the students their textbooks.