Doug Johnson

Going Beyond the Textbook [Resource-based teaching]
St. Peter School Hilites, January 1991

 I have a confession to make. I was well past high school age before I ever understood some things like:

• the way a bill becomes law
• that history can be as exciting as any novel
• that geography has an impact on culture and economics
• that what was on the six o’clock news had any bearing on my life

Then again I was never a model student. I often daydreamed during lectures and rarely read the textbook or anything but the funnies in the newspaper.

While it is extremely doubtful that St. Peter Schools have any students with my poor scholarly habits, our social studies teachers are taking no chances. By bringing in outside resources to supplement the textbook/lecture/test teaching method, instructors are reaching reluctant learners more easily, and every student finds history, government and geography more exciting and meaningful.

In education-ese, supplementing the text with outside materials is called “resource-based” teaching. Here are just four ways the St. Peter Social Studies faculty uses resources beyond the textbook:

Decisions, Decisions
How does a legislator get a bill through congress? What factions have a say in the decision? What should a legislator’s first priority be - to get a bill passed, to gain national recognition, or to get re-elected?

Mr. Strey uses a computer simulation called Decisions, Decisions: The Budget Process to help his senior government students realize not only the factual steps, but also human dynamics which are involved in the legislative process.

Students role-play a member of the House of Representatives who attempts to get his/her budget bill passed. After making several informed decisions, the program tells the students whether the bill has passed or failed, and how well they met the other goals they had established at the beginning of the simulation.

The Agony and the Ecstasy
When several students come into the media center all requesting the same book, I know that a teacher has been reading aloud in class again. More often than not, that teacher is Mr. Aanonsen.

Mr. Aanonsen’s theory is that one way of looking at history is that it is one long fascinating story. He emphasizes that theory by reading parts of historical novels to his World History classes, such as Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. The carefully selected cuttings are usually just enough to whet a student’s appetite and make them want to read the rest of the book.

Both Mr. Aanonsen and Mr. Bidelman give credit to students reading historical fiction, posting or distributing lists of novels the media center has which relate to the curriculum. Mr. Kautt’s American history students have also read Johnny Tremain in class, to get a taste of life during Colonial America.

While our teachers may not be making historians of every student, they are developing citizens who will read history and maintain a life-long appreciation of the subject’s importance.

Where in the World?
Mr. Boe’s junior-high geography students can’t wait to get to the media center to use the atlas. The atlas? That book of maps with the long difficult index of places and coordinates in the back?

These kids are using is PCGlobe, a computerized atlas. Maps of the world, continents, regions, and 177 countries can be accessed using simple menus. On command, cities, geographic features, or elevations are displayed on the screen’s map. The program also contains a huge database of facts and figures about the countries. Want to know the birth rate of Senegal? Major ethnic groups of the Philippines? The current form of government in Brazil? Junior high students can use a simple search to locate any of this information.

Data of different countries can be compared and analyzed. Figures can be graphically represented on maps. Why does one area of the world have a shorter life expectancy? Why does one country have a higher per person income than its neighbor? Is there a relationship between literacy and a country’s gross national product? These higher-level thinking skills are not only more important, but more enjoyable than the “memorize all the countries and their capitols” activities traditionally associated with geography.

All the News That’s Fit to Watch

• Who’s Saddam Hussein?
• Why did Gorbachev win the Nobel Peace Prize?
• Are we entering a recession?

No textbook can help students answer questions like these, yet the discussion and understanding of current events is vital to the informed citizen. All St. Peter students watch and discuss a short news program each day. At the beginning of each day’s social studies class, students watch a 7 minute, commerical-free newscast recorded that morning. Discussion follows, and some teachers give a short quiz each week on the issues to highlight the importance of current happenings. While teachers encourage students to go beyond the television newscast, St. Peter students are better informed than those young adults who are left to understand current events themselves.

The Future?
As we move into our new media center and upgrade the materials and equipment available to our teachers and students, resource-based teaching opportunities for all teachers will increase. Activities in social studies which other schools in Minnesota are currently using include:

• creating self-made databases from original research
• using on-line information sources to get current facts
• publishing computer-generated mock historical newsletters
• programming hyper-card stacks which link pictures, text, sound, and graphs to create term paper-like projects which can be watched and listened to, as well as read
• filming videotaped presentations, including documentaries on social issues, historical reenactments, and public service programming

I’m excited about the future.

Media Postscript
The August 1990 issue of Changing Times (p30) reports on a new service called SchoolMatch which helps families who are moving to a new area find good schools. After collecting massive amounts of data, SchoolMatch research indicates that “the most important measures of a school district’s success are not its tax base or property values but the education level of parents and the amount of money spent on library and media services.” (italtics mine)

David Thornberg from the University of California is excited about laptop computers for every student. These “electronic notebooks” contain word processors and spell checkers, and will sell at such a low price that “hypothetically, every child in the United States could have a word processor in his or her hands for one percent of what it will cost to finance the S&L bailout”. (T.H.E. Journal , December 1990, p10.)

A palm-sized player for reading books recorded on a three-inch compact disk was introduced in Japan by Sony this fall. The player is called Data Diskman, will have a liquid crystal screen, and sell for about $380. Each disk will hold about 100,000 pages of information. Who says you can’t cuddle up with a computer?