Takaki Chapter 7 and Wineburg Chapter 4

To spice things up a bit, I will do my reflection on Wineburg. Continuing in much the same fashion as when Takaki, I underlined what I thought were key points, read the cover of the book to get the author's viewpoint, and asked myself questions as I read. With Wineburg's chapter, though, I found myself doing something a little different. Instead of asking myself superficial questions such as "how can I relate this material to my students" or "what issues would be beneficial for my students to investigate," Wineburg's discussion on how to properly contextualize history inspired me to ask more salient questions such as "what do my students know about contextualization" or "how can I even approach to teach my students about contextualization?" I continually found myself drifting off and asking myself the question "if you were an administrator or consultant designing a curriculum, would you continue down the road most schools take when designing a social studies curriculum, or would you develop something that would allow students to contextualize more?" In essence, I was contextualizing Wineburg's discussion by considering the viewpoint of students, teachers, and administrators.
One of the issues I contend with as a new teacher is how to teach the material the way I want to while fulfilling standards. Currently, in the rush to fulfill standards, teaching students to contextualize is difficult because of timing and resources. Is what Wineburg proposing actually doable in most schools? If I were an administrator, how would I try to accomplish what Wineburg discusses? These were some of the questions I was asking myself while reading chapter 4.
I was also disappointed with the history teachers responses to the information Wineburg presented (I noted that with a :( in my book). I felt that the physics teacher did a much better job contextualizing the material, so much so, I wrote questions in my book about discipline training and how much attention should be paid to how teachers are trained and what courses they should be qualified to teach. Once again, I drifted off to my stint as a make believe administrator and pondered whether or not the type of discipline training should be considered when certifying teachers or designing curriculum.

For my lesson plan, I would have students research current immigration policy and some of the reasons why some people have argued that greater control must be exercised over immigration. Hopefully, my students will uncover the argument made by some that America is becoming "less American" because the influx of immigrants, particularly those from Latin America, has had an indelible impact on political, social, and economic issues. In essence, some Americans feel that the US has been invaded by immigrants and that the US is becoming increasingly Hispanic. I would then present Takaki's findings where he illustrates the sentiment of Mexicans living in California when Anglo settlers started moving into California. I would have students compare the two scenarios, asking them what are the similarities and differences and what information can we gleam from Takaki's investigation that might shed light on current immigration issues.