NCSS II: Time, Continuity, and Change

 

     Time, Continuity, and Change is an important topic for social studies teachers to address in their classroom. It is important to look at how nations, cultural groups, and other societies have changed over time. There is importance in also looking at how these nations, group, or societies have remained the same over time. It is important to study the impacts on the world of these changes in nations, groups, and societies over time or their continuity over time. There is also importance in looking at time, continuity, and change at the local level. Personally, the rural community I am originally from has changed greatly from a century ago. However, there are aspects of my community like its religious faith and love of baseball that remain the same in the early twenty-first century; as it was in the early twentieth century that impacts my community today.

     During my student teaching I was able to address Time, Continuity, and Change on a couple of different occasions. When I was a blocking student in a 10th Grade World History and Geography 1500-Present class during the Fall, I did a short five minute activity on oligarchy (see Evidence 1 and 2). In this activity I was able explain to students what an oligarchy was back during the Renaissance Period in Italy and how there are still some oligarchies in the world today like Russia. During the Spring my lessons on the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage movement were able to address Time, Continuity, and Change (see Evidence 3). Students were able to see that in mid-nineteenth America, most white men thought that blacks, women, and other minorities were inferior. Through the lesson students were able to see the progress America has made in treating blacks, women, and other minorities equally. Students were also able to see the mindset of how many Americans through about people different from them. However, students were able to see even today there is still debate in this country, like during the nineteenth century, in terms of whether women and blacks are still discriminated against in some circumstances in the present.

     Time, Continuity, and Change is an important aspect of social studies I will continue to have to address in the future. I need to make students more aware of the changes and continuity that takes place within a nation, region, or even local community over time. Students need to be made more aware of from me the impacts of these changes or continuity on society. I will also need to make sure that students are aware that society can change very quickly, as I have seen in just my short lifetime views on terrorism and gay marriage begin to change. Students will also need to know that society in the future will continue to change from what it is today, but also in certain cases will continue to remain the same.

 

Evidence