Great Conversations... Take Time

We're in the midst of building knowledge about explorers. In particular, we're looking at European Explorers as this is the foundation for colonization (and ultimately government). We're aiming at the Social Studies History standard that there are eras in history. One of those eras is when Europeans encountered native people, colonized and brought about devastation. The end product is going to be a "something" that kids create where they evaluate information pertaining to these explorers.

Today was the second day of whole group class discussion on this topic. We need some sort of system to evaluate them. If you were going to choose between two cars, you'd probably look at a variety of factors- some that are good and some that are bad. As an adult we don't make that system clear and evident (usually). That was step one in this process: create a rubric. I asked them to create a 4, 3, 2, 1 rubric for the actions of explorers. They are familiar with the 4 through 1 scale as that is the same system we use for grading. Creating the rubric was relatively easy and painless in groups of 3-5. Moving into the whole class discussion... slightly different tone in the room.

The kids did a fantastic job. We started on the fringe- the 4s and the 1s, because those are the easiest things to work on. We can agree that killing the natives is a Level 1... it is the in-between descriptors that caused us the most trouble. We had some great ethics conversations, about slavery, about what should happen to natives, taking land, etc. Should putting natives as slaves be a 2 or a 1? It was difficult to grapple with, but important for my kids. I pulled sticks to get kids to share, called on volunteers as well as had them passing to someone else. It wasn't a conversation between 4 or 5 of the 25. It was beautiful to see.

Admittedly, as a teacher, the hardest part is allotting time to make this work. They need the time to grapple with the ideas, and the put them into a level. They need time to discuss with their peers, and to think. When it bogs down, the natural inclination is to punt and say "We'll finish later" or "I'll put in the rest." That wasn't my reaction this time. Instead, we sat in the uncomfortable-ness of not knowing. We argued our points back and forth, and we voted to solve problems. It was a beautiful thing, and incredibly worthwhile. It will make the project significantly easier, and promote much more buy in.