National Resource Guide to American Studies in the Secondary Schools

Sponsored by the ASA Secondary School Committee

Model 5 -- 11th Grade: Caledonia, MI

Compare with: Tuscaloosa, AL, Montebello, CA, Miami, FL, Elgin, IL, Lebanon, NH, Iowa City, IA

American Studies Team
Caledonia High School
9757 Duncan Lake Road
Caledonia, Michigan 49316
Phone: 616-891-8129
Fax: 616-891-7038
E-Mail: stan.spencer@qm.caledonia.k12.mi.us
Contact: Stan Spencer

Program Development & Organization

Origins and History of Program

Caledonia is a suburban/rural area 15 miles southeast of Grand Rapids. The district is 100 square miles, has 2,714 students, 390 employees, a 22 to 1 student-teacher ratio, and receives $6,502 state funding per student. The district contains one high school, one middle school, and three elementary school buildings. The ethnic background of Caledonia is mostly Caucasian.

It is important to note that the American Studies Program at Caledonia High School was developed within the context of an overall major school restructuring effort based primarily on the work of Ted Sizer and others at the Coalition of Essential Schools, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. As the first "essential school" in Michigan, Caledonia has been the site for visitations from all over the United States where educators come to see such innovations as block scheduling, student-as-worker, advisory periods, integrated course scheduling, team teaching, a school without bells, et al. This major restructuring effort was begun in 1988 and continues strong today, i.e. the more we do, the more we find there is to do. By 1992, American Studies was being taught in separate rooms by using separate syllabi. For example, while one teacher was teaching history from one syllabus, an English teacher down the hall was teaching from a different syllabus. A music teacher also contributed to our classes sporadically. At least we were attempting to coordinate time periods and some content but there was no team teaching per se and certainly no team planning on a regular basis. Nevertheless, the seed for integrated teaching and learning had been planted.

Our turning point occurred during the summer of 1992 when three of us (Stan Spencer, history; Ruth Grinstead, English; Carol Gess, music) enrolled in a summer institute at Brown University. Entitled "Integrating the Curriculum", it could just as accurately have been called "Team Building: How To Work Together through Thick and Thin." None of us had ever spent such an intensive time together trying to find common ground within our educational philosophies, methods, teaching styles, and even personalities. We learned how to compromise but, more important, we learned how to fight or disagree without being disagreeable. Later that summer our school held an "Advance" (same as "retreat" except we never go backwards) where the three of us gave a formal yet humorous presentation to our staff and shared our experiences and recommendations. Due in large part to American Studies taking the lead, our school now has integrated curriculums for World Studies, Mathematics, Science, and Computer Applications.

In 1993 the American Studies Team attended another institute, this one sponsored by our local school district. This is where and when we actually wrote a truly integrated course syllabus, one which has changed and hopefully improved every single year since then. Although our efforts have been extremely frustrating at times, we have been encouraged and supported by both our building and district administrators.

Number of Teachers/Teams

We have one American Studies team. It is composed of four full time teachers, one special education teacher, and one student support person. The personnel may change annually.

Our philosophy involves respecting each others' teaching styles. We accept each others' left and right brain mannerisms (but we do drive each other crazy at times). We share the belief that all kids can (will) learn. No student is labeled, categorized, written off, or left to drift because they just are not "smart" enough. We believe that all students are smart and it is our job to help them discover how they are smart. We believe that all students must learn to use their minds well. After all, the sole purpose of school restructuring in the first place is to improve student outcomes. Basically, our shared philosophy and vision stems from the so-called "Nine Common Principles" as authored by Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. (For more information, see Sizer's books such as Horace's Compromise, Horace's School, and Horace's Hope.)

Our pedagogies involve left vs. right brain research. We assess ourselves and our students in order to understand our personalities and learning styles. Some of us are "feelers" and care deeply about the impact any lesson, assignment, or test may have upon our students. Some are "sensors" who want simply to "get on with it". (This is particularly true during team meetings.) Some are "intuitors" who understand the big picture of a lesson or unit while others do not comprehend at first where we are heading at any given moment. Finally, some are "thinkers" who crave assurance and do not wish to move ahead until the matter is discussed thoroughly. In all, we find that we need each other and the sometimes conflicting characteristics we bring to American Studies.

We provide our students with substantial group work, lectures, and visual learning opportunities. (As an example of visual learning, one of us has over 1000 slides on the Lewis and Clark Trail which we incorporate into a research simulation.) All of these teaching methodologies are planned together. Due to our creative and flexible scheduling, we have created team planning for ourselves every day during school hours. Prior to having built-in team planning, our lessons were not nearly as integrated. During our team planning periods, we engage in a constant and continuous tug-of-war where we try to decide where to put more time for this and/or less time for that. We present lessons in a very traditional manner at times, i.e. large group lectures complete with outlines and note taking. Other times we role play. As an example, we debate the British and American perspectives in 1775. This is done in our auditorium in front of 100 students at a time. The debate comes complete with period music, flags, and banners.

Some of us are risk takers while others prefer to play it safe and stick to what we know works. Together, we build up one another's confidence and/or "rein in" each other.

Challenges, Frustrations, and Successes: Advice to Those Starting Up

We face difficulties almost every day. Some we have yet to overcome. We want to believe that teachers should be "generalists" in education first and specialists in their subject matter second. With this in mind, we should be able to teach each other enough to get each of us through a particular integrated lesson. This approach makes for wonderful theory but discouraging practice when a music teacher needs to listen to student presentations on World War II.

We do not always agree on due dates. Only through compromise (usually via time consuming incessant talking), agreement is reached. We argue about the types of tests to give. Some prefer all essay. Others find those too difficult to grade and prefer objective questions. Sometimes each of us simply writes our own individual tests. Which assignments to make and when to give them is sometimes a point of contention. We consider such factors as how much time we have and how successful the assignments have been in the past. We also do not always agree on how much each assignment is worth.

One of our biggest problems has always been the lack of suitable teaching materials. We extract magazine and journal articles, selections from textbooks, and basically just develop our own materials. It sure would be easier (and less expensive) to use an appropriate American Studies textbook but most companies still prefer to publish separate books for such subjects as history and English. Perhaps we need to write our own book!

We have had to deal with a minority, yet vocal, set of skeptical parents. After all, American Studies is not what they studied when they were in school. Therefore, our program can not possibly be superior. Change is difficult for anyone. People accept change at different times and for different reasons. Currently we have a supportive staff, administration and board of education. Most parents seems to understand and appreciate what we are trying to accomplish. Most also realize how much more effort it takes to teach this way. Still, we have bitter memories of parents telling us not to assign any readings which deal with Margaret Sanger (birth control), AIDS (Ryan White), homosexuality, African-Americans, et al. We even had a proposed textbook rejected once because it contained the word "hell." Is it any wonder we become despondent at times?

The issue of quantity vs. quality is ongoing. How much can we "cover" and how much will students actually remember? This requires continual trade-offs. In addition, we struggle constantly with part of our philosophy, "less is more." By limiting content and going more in-depth, students supposedly learn more. Every staff meeting, every team planning meeting, and every grade level meeting we hold eventually comes around to this issue. Is less really more? Content vs. process: What do students really need to know? Teaching by using projects and "exhibitions" is a slow approach. Students learn by doing. It is a trial by error approach at times. How many wars should students know? How many presidents? How many of anything? Isn't it more important to see connections between subjects and all knowledge? Isn't it more important to know how to learn? As one may guess, with difficult issues such as these, our team planning sessions are seldom dull.

One of our greatest frustrations involves the feeling of inadequacy. We sometimes teach out of our subject areas: a history teacher may be teaching English, while a music instructor teaches history. Another problem is that, as with any group, it takes so much longer to accomplish goals and to reach consensus. How challenging to make the course also causes frustration. At what level can students perform? What constitutes an outstanding exhibition? Is effort more important than the final product? These would be major frustrations for any individual teacher but the matter is compounded when a team of teachers needs to agree on the definition of quality.

Despite frustrations, thank goodness we have achieved even more successes. We constantly learn from each other and "grow" as professionals. We receive compliments from our students who remember particular units after leaving the course. We model exhibitions so that students know what we are looking for when we mention quality. We have received outside affirmation from dozens of schools which have visited our classrooms and borrowed our syllabus. Even now, we receive requests for our syllabus from people we do not even remember meeting. Being selected as a model program by the American Studies Association does not hurt either.

As for advice we would give to others, we just happen to have a few ideas as follows:

Be patient. - Change takes time. Don't try to do everything the first year or you may "burn out."

Expect problems. - Goodness knows what they will be. Every school is different. Just be ready to hang together or you will certainly hang separately.

Agree to disagree. - Do this right from the start or you will cause each other undue misery and hurt feelings.

Execution will never be perfect. - No matter how long you plan an integrated lesson, it will seldom live up to all your expectations. Make 100% your goal, not your compulsion.

Be ready to change. - Even in the middle of a lesson or unit which you have prepared so diligently, something unexpected will happen and you will need to be ready and willing to switch over to "plan B." Expect the unexpected.

Say to your students, "I don't know." - We find ourselves saying this a lot more since we have empowered the students as workers and resigned ourselves to being primarily resource people. In fact, when students ask us a question, we now respond by asking a question in return such as, "Where do you suppose we could find the answer to that?"

Visit other programs. - Attend conferences. Talk to other teachers. Travel. Read. Discover for yourselves what works and what doesn't.

Beg and borrow from others. - We did just that and we are not ashamed to say so. We took ideas from all over the United States and, by adapting them, made them our own. Now we allow others to do the same with our ideas. In the final analysis, we are all in this thing called American Studies together.

Be willing to change your teaching methods. - There is nothing better than a good, solid, hard-hitting lecture but not every day and not during an entire block period. Use a variety of methods. Keep the students guessing. Better yet, make them the workers of the class. School should not be a place where relatively young people come to watch relatively old people work. Really make students dig and search for answers. Answer a question with a question. Remember, "student as worker" should be the governing metaphor.

Insist on common planning time during the school day. - If you do not, your program may still succeed but at what cost to your family and sanity?

Find or create a large group area. - It really helps occasionally to bring all students together during a class period for guest speakers, lectures, overviews of units, certain videos, etc. We purposely schedule our auditorium for such presentations so that students can all hear the same thing at the same time when it is appropriate. Ideally, large areas with sliding walls would allow for maximum flexibility.

Summary of Program

American Studies Course Design

Several characteristics may distinguish our approach to American Studies at Caledonia High School:

Music integration - Through the use of a full time teacher, we integrate music into our study of America's past on a regular basis. Every unit of study lends itself to the study of music as well as history and literature.

Model syllabus - Countless hours of work have been devoted to the preparation of our American Studies Syllabus. Nearly 100 pages in length, people tell us that it is one of the best they have seen which integrates the Humanities.

Planning backwards - When designing this approach to American Studies, we "planned backwards." We decided first what we wanted our students to know and be able to do at the end of the course. We actually drew a life size outline of a student on butcher paper and wrote on the paper what skills and areas of knowledge this student should obtain during the course. Then we began planning backwards as to how we could achieve our outcomes.

Essential questions - We developed a series of "essential questions" which would direct our curriculum. We started with ten or eleven essential questions the first year but now agree that less really is more so we use only the following ones now:

When we have time, we even toss in one more at no extra charge:

These questions are posed during each of our ten units. The answers change as America changes. The beauty of this approach is that students are exposed to tough issues which have no easy answers. Such is life itself.

Habits of mind - Each unit of study focuses on a single outcome, something we call a "habit of mind" or a way of thinking and viewing knowledge. Assignments are designed around these habits of mind which are as follows:

  1. To understand the relationship between geography, history, literature, and music as a mixture of time and place, and as context for events
  2. To prepare to live with uncertainties and exasperating, even perilous, unfinished business, realizing that not all problems have solutions
  3. To understand the significance of the past to your own life and to your society
  4. To understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter
  5. To grasp the complexity of historical causation, and avoid excessively abstract generalizations
  6. To think critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and assertion, and thereby to frame useful questions
  7. To perceive past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as opposed to present-mindedness
  8. To make comparisons between things, ideas, or situations in different time periods
  9. To gather information from a variety of media and personal interviews, to make inferences, and to perceive cause-and-effect relationships in order to make hypotheses
  10. To distinguish between the important and the inconsequential, to develop the "discriminatory memory" needed for making judgments in public and personal life

Socratic seminars - Another distinguishing characteristic of our program is that we try to conduct a "Socratic Seminar" during each unit. As the name implies, students are asked "entry level questions" in order to reach an understanding of "essential questions." Normally readings are completed prior to the seminars and, ideally, written reaction papers would follow.

Large group/seminar groups/small study groups - Our students are grouped accordingly, depending upon the focus of that day's lesson. Large group means we meet in the auditorium as one body. We also break into four seminar groups (20-25 students) as the need arises. Finally each seminar group breaks into 4-6 small study groups where exhibitions are prepared. Cooperative learning is alive and well at Caledonia High School.

Socialize - A team that plays together stays together. Thus we celebrate birthdays, exchange Christmas gifts at different houses each year, and occasionally embark on weekend outings such as a Revolutionary or Civil War re-enactment. We also visit each other when someone is sick.

We incorporate the following disciplines: film, music, oral history and guest speakers, literature, history, writing, and speaking. The major themes/questions/perspectives raised in the course were discussed above. In general, we offer a combination chronological and thematic approach to the study of American history, literature, and music. Due to personnel constraints, we currently are not able to offer the perspective of art.

We can not locate a suitable textbook for our course. Nevertheless, we are considering writing and binding our own book as early as this summer. There is administrative (and perhaps financial) support for such an endeavor. The closest textbook we have found which does what we do is American Studies Album by Annie Dillard (Scott Foresman). Unfortunately, for the reasons discussed above, this book was withdrawn from the adoption process. In this age of political correctness and controversial National History Standards, it is doubtful that any textbook will appease every community. This provides a sad commentary on contemporary American society.

Because we have no textbook per se, we use parts of United States history textbooks, literature readings, magazines, and journals. Mainly we develop our own materials, duplicate them, and have students place them in readings folders. Currently we use one readings folder each semester during our full year course. Each readings folder probably contains 250-300 pages.

We integrate region, race, ethnicity, class, and gender into our course very carefully and tactfully:

Region - Our first exhibition requires students to write a travel diary as they study a particular state and/or region of the United States. As the course progresses, basic chronology advances by region, i.e. the westward movement as exemplified by Lewis and Clark, etc.

Race and Ethnicity - The student body of Caledonia High School is sheltered to say the least. Despite an overwhelming white student population, we offer detailed lessons on such subjects as slavery, civil rights, Native Americans, Japanese internment, and the Holocaust. Our World Studies team does a better job with ethnicity, as they examine world cultures. The American Studies formal examination of ethnicity, however, is limited to colonial settlement unless a student selects such a topic for a future exhibition.

Class - This topic is addressed primarily during our studies of the Gilded Age, the women's rights movement, pre-Civil War reform movements, the Roaring Twenties, and/or modern America.

Student Performance and Learning Assessment

Student learning is measured in a number of ways. Because we advocate "authentic assessment", each student exhibition must contain the following components: written, oral, visual, in-school, outside of school, individual, cooperative, vocabulary, and completed analysis sheet. The analysis sheet is unique in that each student must analyze his/her own exhibition and performance. This is done by addressing a school graduation outcome, benchmark, and skill(s). Successful exhibitions are placed in student portfolios which are later used during a "senior exhibition" whereby students explain why they deserve to graduate.

In addition to exhibitions, we use traditional tests which usually are both essay and objective in nature. Quizzes, writing assignments, oral mini-exhibitions, and student conferences are all utilized in order to accurately assess student learning. Because our school offers an Advisory period each day, we are able to meet individually with many of our students to discuss portfolio development in general and progress in American Studies in specific.

Go to Caledonia Course Units