Social Studies Reflection

When starting this course, I was introduced to the main questions surrounding the field of Social Studies Education: What is Social Studies? Why and How should we teach it? From this class I have been able to understand each of these questions and how they interplay with one another, in order formulate my own thoughts on each. This combination of these questions ultimately defines why I feel I would be a good candidate to teach Social Studies. When coming to a conclusion regarding what the topic of social studies is, I realized that ultimately, it’s about people. The way people interact, alter their landscape, build systems of government, and shape the current society from past events. Each of these different human actions, it defines a specific

This class is all about these different interactions and what happened because of them. Additionally, this class teaches the ways in which citizens can partake in their civic duty that is granted by being a part of this democratic society. It is this class that teaches them how to do this and what it entails. The final question of how we should teach our students lies directly on the students. They should be our guiding way. Our teaching methods should provide for our students. In doing this, a variety of teaching methods are used to accompany a variety of learning styles. By knowing all of this and putting it into practice, it will create powerful and authentic social studies and will provide each child a way to succeed and enjoy Social

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines social studies as, “A part of school or college curriculum concerned with the study of social relationships and the functioning of society and usually made up of courses in history, government, economics, civics, sociology, geography, and anthropology” (Merriam- Webster, 2017). By their definition, social studies involve interactions that form relationships and provide functions for society that are further explained by the different perspectives of the specific course. In class, Mr. Lewandowski explained to me during class that the definition of social studies is, “An interdisciplinary approach to looking at people and social issues objectively, to better understand why events happen and enable us to make informed decisions as a citizenry…” (Lewandowski, 2017). To him, social studies is a way of explaining why things happened in addition to being able to make important decisions by looking at different people’s opinions on social issues. My ultimate belief lies in a combination of both ideas. I feel as though social studies is ultimately the study of people, what they did, what is predicted they will do, their actions in shaping their environment, their actions towards creating a sense of order, and even their financial actions. All of these concepts come together to define social studies and the multitude of strands that are encompassed in