Abby Secamiglio Week 1

With taking this course, I hope to gain skills, knowledge, and strategies to successfully instruct social studies to my future students. Social studies has always been a topic that grasps my interest least throughout my academic career unfortunately. Thus, I am quite intimidated by the thought of social studies instruction. In my own experience as a student taking social studies, I often found myself bored and unengaged in the subject. Much of this might be due to the fact that instruction was often reading the textbook or listening to powerpoint lectures. Therefore, one of my biggest goals for social studies instruction (as well as a teacher in general), is to make the curriculum interesting and engaging for all students. I want all types of learners to have an opportunity to learn in a way that best meets their needs and helps fuel their passion for learning. On the other hand, the most memorable parts of social studies instruction for me were the field trips and interactive learning. Although most of my memories of social studies are quite negative and dull, the field trips are something I have kept long in my memory because they were the only interesting parts of the class for me. Consequently, much of my passion for teaching comes from the experiences I had as a student and how I would change or use these experiences in my own classroom. All in all, my one hope for this class is to find ways to instruct that are relevant and engaging for my students as well as gain confidence in instructing a class that was always dull for myself.