I was really worried coming in to this class that it would be along the lines of the way I learned Social Studies growing up. I hated social studies until I made it to high school and had a teacher that refused to teach to the SOLs in the way that we had been taught before. She brought history to life for our class and helped us make personal connections to it that deepened our understanding of the content. That was the only year I came one question away from getting a perfect score on any SOL test. (You probably know Mrs. Canipe, Lynne, so this shouldn’t surprise you.) I was really glad to come into this class and discover that we would be learning to keep kids engaged in a way similar to the way that Mrs. Canipe taught. I don’t remember any specific things we did in her class as far as strategies go, but I would not be surprised to find that we did a few of the activities that we learned about this semester in her class 13 years ago. To me, Mrs. Canipe is my Social Studies teacher role model/goals and coming out of this class with the strategies and activities we learned about this semester, I feel like I am on the right track to becoming a teacher who teaches social studies like Mrs. Canipe.