I found this class period to be extremely helpful because it forced me to confront something I have been afraid of when it comes to teaching, bias. In my personal experience learning social studies, I feel as though my teachers taught the way that the book and most of American education wants them to. The great American heroes were perfect and without any professional or social flaw or discrepancy. It was not until I became older and looked at events from a critical perspective that I learned this was not the case. I would like to prevent my own students from starting off with the single perspective view of history that I started my learning with. However, I find it hard to strike a balance between the two. After class I explored the website briefly mentioned in class (www.americanindiansinchildrensliterature.org) and I think I now understand how to find that balance. I see that it is important to teach from the traditional angle but not neglect diversity of opinion and contradicting facts. The students should be able to make their minds up for themselves and as a teacher I want to use resources to provide a wide range of ideas for my students to formulate their ideas from. The other thing we talked about in class that I found really interesting was the idea of a hero/ face of propaganda versus a change agent. As I was saying before, we never hear the bad things our heroes have done. I think it is important for students to study these change agents because they are ordinary people who make mistakes but also make a difference. I think students in my classroom could have things like a weekly change agent presentation where one student starts the week by telling us about what they have read and learned about a change maker they have studied. This would probably be for 5-6 grade. I also like the idea of introducing the “bad” of our heroes as a follow up to a typical biography to look at both sides and humanize these names.