While I teach older students, I generally try to tell them the most important question is “why” (and sometimes how). For example, if they are reading state-mandated propaganda, you can ask them “why would X or Y say this?”, or “who benefits from this narrative?”, or “when the book says this, how does it reflect reality?”. Getting them to question the basis of the pseudo-reality they are fed feels like a positive. But since they are young, it needs to be slow and in digestible pieces (I suppose that is just teaching). As such, I would advise against directly saying “the book is wrong here” and rather trying to get the students to reach the conclusion that the book is questionable, by asking the right questions of the material. If you are too direct with your words, then it can easily be seen as subversive. You can easily counter such an argument (if you never explicitly say something is wrong) with saying that you are giving students the tools to think. But it might still be a fine line depending on how the administration feels.
That said, what is the measurement of learning for the students? Is it for a country-wide exam or just for the local area? Or is the only measurement the teacher’s grades? Depending on what happens at the end of the school year, means you could just leave some things out of your lessons entirely and just accidentally not teach the objectionable material. Though, if you have time, you could also teach the full context of an event. Which may lead the students to alternative conclusions. But, generally, students should be led there anyway. We just need to give them the right path to go on.
As for the “Complex Instruction Program” the underlying basis is reasonably sound. But should only be used as one tool in the toolbox. When I try group work it can be very mixed. Some groups will do excellent work because they are motivated by the assignment, while others depend on one or two students to do the majority of the task. It can be slightly better if the students are given “jobs” to perform during group work, like “leader” (the person who makes sure everyone does work) or “reporter” (they would report how many questions everyone asked, or summarize what happened in the group). There have also even been some students who don’t want to do group work at all. But so long as the assignment is completed, it doesn’t really matter. Overall, I’d probably recommend group work for large projects and consider it for smaller work if students could all feel like they can contribute.
At least for my students, group work on smaller worksheets (two students working on the same assignment and only handing in one copy) doesn’t particularly work because they largely divide up the questions and don’t bother actually talking to each other and discussing the answers. This is because of their mindset that the only thing that matters is the end-product, rather than the learning they should be doing. But that’s because they’ve been learning that way for the last decade. Hopefully if you get students earlier, they won’t have so much of that style of thinking pushed into them.
Another thing to consider is how used to group work the students are and how much training the teacher has to do for them to complete whatever task they have. In general, tasks shouldn’t be too hard or too easy and broken down in enough steps where it is able to be completed. For example, on larger assignments I give many different due dates (sometimes upwards of five or six) to students and expect to check in on them daily to note their progress. Otherwise many would wait until the last day to work on and submit their less than mediocre quality final draft. Which somewhat defeats the purpose of learning to create something of their own.
As for specific books, there are two I can highly recommend. If you read nothing else, read these two.
Powerful teaching: unleash the science of learning P. Argawal & P. Bain
Make it stick: the science of effective learning P. Brown, H. Roedigger, & M. Mcdaniel
What I mostly had in mind is just to be human, empathetic, talk a lot with them and guide them to the best of my ability
The above is definitely an important part of being a teacher. And since you are teaching social studies and other humanities; reading, writing, and thinking are important skills that students need in society and you can always emphasize those skills in your lessons and in conversations with students.
These kids are dubbed as “dumb” and “lazy”, while obviously the white kids are superior to them in all aspects, “hard working” and “smart”.
Here, you are hitting a little bit on labeling theory, which is a sociological idea that if you give someone a label it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy for both the giver and receiver. Which I do find has some basis in reality, both in the way I treat students and in the way students treat themselves. Though I get them a little late, so it’s much harder to make a dent in a negative mindset. With that in mind, I tend to treat students with as much empathy as possible, which seems to work well with most of them.
For the final topic, I have some bad news. The first time you teach it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of preparation to be done and you might find you will have less time to do things that you want to do. Especially if you are also doing university classes. Definitely think about what you should prioritize (for me, it’s mostly resting after a long day of masking as a teacher). As for the act of preparation, it would be best to have a specific time and place where you are able to solely do planning. If you have a quiet place at school, then I would suggest doing it there. As it’s much better for work-life balance and your general sanity. 20 lessons may not seem like a lot, but it can take a while to prepare a good lesson, as well as develop your delivery skills, and trying to assess whether the students have learned anything.
It would be easier if you had a basic template to work with for each lesson, so you could effectively plug-and-play the new content. For example:
- the first 5 minutes is a review quiz of last time’s lesson
- then you spend 10 minutes on introducing new terms and concepts
- then you spend 20 minutes talking about the topic (a smaller amount of time for younger students)
- then the students do something with that topic for some amount of time
- then the students do some task for reviewing the material
- then a small preview of the lesson for next time
But the basic idea should be to keep the students active and doing something, especially the younger ones. Something like Total Physical Response where the students have to physically do something in the class will help.
Anyway, there are a lot of questions in your post. If you feel I didn’t cover something that you really want an answer to, please ask again. Or if you have other questions, I’m also happy to help with them!
While I have spent over a decade of teaching, the most enjoyable years were those where I could help other teachers. Anyway, take your time and I’ll be somewhere on the internet. And I’ll leave you with another tip: the most useful skill to learn might be reflection on what went well and why, and what went wrong and why.