My personal pedagogy constantly evolves in response to practical experience in the classroom and personal growth as a learner and teacher.

However, my student teaching experience and seminar helped me discover key aspects of my teaching that are displayed in my portfolio and work in the classroom. Social Studies as a disciple provides students the opportunity to examine societal problems and critically think about racial, gender, religious, ethnic, and linguistic relations through time. It allows students the opportunity to question and examine the grey that exists between how events actually occurred and how they are construed through time. Finally, history provides students the opportunity to personally connect to content and figures. The goal of my teaching style is to bring forth all of these factors within my classroom. Encouraging discussion allows every student to realize they have a voice and to use my classroom as a platform for students to express their views and ideas discussion is both a desired outcome and a method of teaching students critical thinking skills, important content and interpersonal skills"(Hess, 2009, p.55). Learning how to critically think and express views on a topic applies across multiple disciplines and areas of a students life. My classroom will use dialogue about historical events as the center for inquiry and analysis of how different groups, including their own classmates, relate to history. This shows students the benefits and community that come from collaboration. In addition, I hope to incorporate writing skills and activities so students can express their views verbally and in written form. In order to create this democratic classroom, I have to start from the ground up and focus on creating a classroom culture that encourages student participation and input. Helping students voice their ideas and learning through inquiry-based lessons takes time and persistence. It also takes building relationships of trust, respect, and understanding with my students. Listening and engaging with my students as individuals allows me to see more from their level and through their eyes. My challenge will be overcoming this rift between our different life experiences to form meaningful relationships and connections that will allow students to feel valued and secure within my classroom. Combining a student-centered classroom with one focused on implementing the ideals of social justice allows students to understand social justice in a way that is meaningful to them as an individual. I hope to teach students about activism through an examination of primary sources. Multiple sources will be used to show my students differing perspectives of an issue. In her Ted Talk The Danger of a Singly Story, Chimamanda Adichie speaks of how a single perception of a group of event breeds ignorance and division; the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story (Adichie, 2009). In my classroom, students will learn how different groups, including themselves, relate to the outside world, and how this relationship has changed over time. I want to use Social Studies to show not only injustices committed, but also the agency, methods, and success of those who changed them. I plan to use these ideals as a basis for making Social Studies relevant to my students and current events. By teaching students about activism and talking to them about how to be an activist in their own community, they will understand how to enact positive change in issues they care about. By presenting content in a way that students

can understand and relate to, I can create engaging lessons that apply directly to my students lives. For example, by paralleling industrial unionism to that of the NCAA college football unionism I can demonstrate how similar issues exist in their time in a way they can identify with. Finally, I hope to encourage multiple modes of presentation of knowledge and assessment within my classroom. All students process information differently and demonstrate this knowledge in different ways. By solely sticking to objective testing, knowledge of students understanding is limited. Although summative assessment has a place and importance in education, I also value differentiation of presentation and product to present multiple facets of student understanding. For example, by having students create artwork based on their understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, they could show an individual and creative interpretation of its themes and messages. I hope to use what I have learned in the past, what I have learned this semester, and what I will learn everyday in the future to become a positive agent of change for my students and the Social Studies education discipline.