Dec. 17, 2024

Jennifer Bell on Connecting Students to History

Show Notes
Transcript

Jennifer Bell, an inspiring educator from Houston County Schools, joins us on Spotlight for Success to share her incredible journey and teaching methods. With 11 years of experience teaching fourth and fifth graders, Jennifer is passionate about integrating social studies with Language Arts to create an engaging, inquiry-based learning environment. Discover how she brings history to life through the use of primary sources, encouraging students to explore, ask questions, and develop critical thinking skills. Her approach ensures that every student, regardless of ability, can connect with the material in a meaningful way.

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This podcast, Spotlight for Success, is our way of highlighting the incredible success stories happening in education right here in our home state of Georgia.

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Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Jennifer Bell, who has made a significant impact in the field of social studies education.

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We'll explore her journey, insights and positive changes she's creating for students and teachers.

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So let's get started.

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J Jennifer, so tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Okay, so I am a teacher in Houston County Schools.

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I've been teaching for 11 years.

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I have only taught fourth and fifth grade, so that's been my primary.

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Age is fourth and fifth, and I love social studies and ELA.

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I'm very passionate about the integration of the two, of the possibilities of how, like, language arts can be brought to life through social studies and not in isolation, and so, I'm passionate about kids being involved in the learning of social studies, not just setting and getting, but like this is their history, like being involved in that process of learning.

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Wonderful Jennifer.

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Can you tell us a little bit about how you acquired the interest in social studies and decided that would be your career path?

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Yes, absolutely so.

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When I first started teaching, I only taught ELA and social studies and Gretna Sulsis, who is here, one of the coordinators, was our county coordinator at the time and she introduced me to the DBQ process and I went through a training and it was all about inquiry work in social studies around like a question and like you analyze documents and it was so engaging.

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I was so engaged.

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I was like this is fun.

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I did not do social studies like this growing up.

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Like we sat, we took notes.

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They would put notes on the board, you copied the notes, you memorized the notes, you took a test and that was it.

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That was not what we were doing with inquiry work.

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We had documents that we analyzed, that we asked questions, like our curiosity was able to come out and we were able to seek answers to questions that were interesting and I wanted to be involved in it.

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So I was like, if I want to be involved in this, my students are going to want to be involved in this so I took what I learned and took it back to my classroom and from there just hit the ground running.

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I teach a wide range of needs.

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I mean I have students with IEPs, I have students with early intervention plans, I have students that have been gifted.

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I have students who, like all the wide range of abilities, can learn the same things through this inquiry process, through the fun, engaging activities.

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And so I felt like social studies for a long time was only for certain kids, certain kids that learned a very certain way, that could memorize, that could get information, hold on to it and regurgitate it.

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Now all learners can be involved in this process, and so it's fun for them.

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That's wonderful.

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Can you give us a couple examples of this inquiry-based education that you found like wow, that was a wow or a milestone moment for your students?

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Sure, yeah, so the the big thing is the primary sources, like we have to get primary sources in their hands.

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It's more relative to them than just a passage about the secondary source, which is information about it, and so whatever primary sources you can get your hands on, whether it be photographs or journal entries or maps, even that show specific things that were documented the kids can relate to that and so they can connect to it in a more meaningful way.

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And you can build off that with the information from passages and from books.

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But that foundational background knowledge they're going to get from what they can connect to, what they can relate to, hooks their interest so that they'll want to read.

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Oftentimes, when we start an inquiry project, they're so curious.

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They're like Ms Bell, there are more books about this.

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Where can I get a book about this?

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Where can I go to learn more about this topic?

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And so it just launches them into that interest Oftentimes we start with a question like if there's a photograph, what do you notice, what do you wonder?

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What other information would you like to have?

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We look at bias a lot like is this source bias in any way?

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They often are.

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Even if it's a primary source, you can see the perspective of the photograph or the painting and things like that, which is a real-life skill that we need to learn today, because all information has a bias of some kind.

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And so just teaching them that, how to corroborate information and find contradictions into that high-level vocabulary that they're exposed to, and then, ultimately, we want that to help them as a writer as well.

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That is great.

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Yes, you talked about that blend of the disciplines of language arts and social studies.

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Yes, so how does that exactly work?

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Yeah, it can work in a lot of different ways.

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It should work in all social studies.

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Instruction has literacy components, but also in your literature time block.

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Social studies should also be reinforcing those skills.

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You should be using those skills with the content knowledge, because they have that built on their background knowledge and so writing is always a part of our social studies instruction.

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The end result like we want to be able to, through inquiry, learn, clarify our thinking through debates, through discussions, but then ultimately that turned into writing of some kind.

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Oh, wow.

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We use a lot of books too.

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We love books.

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Like we're presenting tomorrow, actually, on how you can use children's literature picture books to help teach instruction but also hit literacy standards.

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Wonderful, what a great thing to share with the community here, and I was going to ask you what kind of things were you hoping to take away.

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So you are giving in terms of presenting, but what are your takeaways from the GCSS conference so far and what are you hoping to bring out of it this year?

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Yes, I'm also inspired when I come here by all the people that are just so passionate about social studies.

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I feel like social studies is just getting pushed to the back burner because of time.

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I mean, there's been years where you get 15, 20 minutes to teach social studies.

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It's just not enough time.

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So when you come somewhere like this that everybody is passionate about the social studies instruction, it just kind of lights a fire in you and you're ready to go back and pass that on to your colleagues and the people that you work with and help inspire them.

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That is wonderful.

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Is there anything else you'd like to share about your work?

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Any things that you do, Jennifer?

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I mean just that if you can keep the kids wanting to learn about history, then they're going to be lifelong learners, and we know that history does.

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It's like we're living history right now, that they're a part of history, and so we want that to be like a foundational thing for them.

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But we also want them to be good citizens of this world, and history helps us to be good citizens of this world; like how do we contribute to this world in a way that is meaningful and we can learn from the people of our past, and so you know just develop those lifelong learners in them

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That's great.

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Well, thank you so much, Jennifer bell.

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Um, again, this is brought to you by u Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.

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Uh, we look forward, Jennifer, to hear more about you, and hope your presentation goes well this weekend and hopefully you'll be back next year to GCSS.

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I sure will.

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Thank you.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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You're welcome.

Jennifer Bell on Connecting Students to History

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