great new resource for cultural competency & world history

Today in the mail I received a very exciting delivery: the National Council for the Social Studies' 103rd Bulletin, Social Studies and the World: Teaching Global Perspectives. I almost cried when I started skimming through it. How often have I felt totally isolated and even been belittled for promoting ideas like these—but whaddya know, they're the official position of the most prominent professional organization.

This is an incredible publication & I can't wait to read it in more depth. I hope to transcribe here some of the 49 "teaching ideas" scattered throughout. Some examples:

• Teaching Idea 20: Stereotypes and exotica
  
• Teaching Idea 18: Experiences of Refugees and Immigrants
  
• Teaching Idea 27: Inventing America Through Maps
  
• Teaching Idea 28: Imperial Frameworks

...on and on!!!

This just fuels my increasing eagerness to seek out lesson plans other people have written—which goes hand in hand with my growing suspicion that what I want to do has already been done, or half-done, and is out there somewhere if only I could find it.

I begin to feel that it's not so strange that it takes me so long to write lesson plans. I had started to think of myself as quite slow & stupid, but really, to write a really, really good lesson plan (the only kind I ever want to write) can take a really, really long time.

Also, increasingly, when I hear about a teacher here or there who is "developing a set of materials," I feel great frustration and anxiety. How many teachers are working endlessly at these "materials," when they already exist? Or how many teachers could benefit from these materials, who have no access to them? I want a nationally standardized curriculum! The only reason we don't have one, is because the quality of the standardized textbooks is so abysmal that everyone fears being reduced to that level. But think what could be accomplished if we combined the best research with the most up-to-date information...

Anyway, back to this particular exemplary book. Here's a great little excerpt, a personal anecdote from one of the authors, that sums up a lot:

The comments of a guest speaker from Nigeria woke me up to the inadequacies of [my] approach [to teaching world cultures]. He told me how disappointed he was that my students not onlyknew nothing significant about Nigerian people but did not want to listen to what he thought or cared about. "They just want to learn a game or eat some food—what does that teach them that is important?" were the words I shall never forget.

*Sigh.* Don't you just want to buy a copy of this book for every social studies teacher you've ever encountered????