The Department of Education appears to have kept the press out of its first big Hillsdale standards indoctrination session. But one social studies teacher who attended the show a couple weeks ago in Sioux Falls sensed an unusual level of spectacle:
In Sioux Falls, hundreds of teachers gathered for a summertime history and civics summit.
The Department of Education event sought to get teachers together and set the stage for the rollout of the new social studies standards.
After heated debate surrounding those standards this spring, Rapid City teacher Carrie Huber said the meeting was something of a spectacle.
“Initial impressions was this was just so different from a lot of the professional developments I had done through the Department of Education,” Huber said. “The Department of Education was definitely putting a lot into hosting a really nice event and pushing the bounds of what really is necessary. I mean, we’re teachers. We’re happy with pretty much anything” [CJ Keene, “Some Educators Apprehensive over Implementation of Social Studies Standards,” SDPB Radio, 2023.06.25].
But all the flash and dash and bacon donuts in the world won’t change the fact that the Hillsdale standards are impractical:
“I think it’s intimidating to think about what implementation looks like. I teach an AP course which, I at least, think there is a lot of question of how do the new standards function with AP courses – just not knowing,” Huber said. “Looking up the new standards for my course, we would have to tick off a standard every 25 minutes” [Keene, 2023.06.25].
Administrators agree the new standards don’t look promising from a practical educational perspective:
Spearfish Middle School principal Don Lyon said conversations have already started in school districts.
“The best thing about South Dakota educators, we’re really good soldiers,” Lyon said. “We do what we need to do to help kids. As always, the superintendents, the principals and the teachers will work it out, we’ll streamline things, we’ll all work together and put the best product out there for our kids. It will take a lot of work, but you’ve got the right people in there to do it.”
Lyon said he wants teachers to remember they, their administrations and their communities are the ones that drive education more than any set of standards. However, the question of developmental appropriateness remains for some.
In the Tea Area School District, elementary principal Samantha Walder surveyed her staff’s response to the standards. In that document, educators were able to offer their thoughts on the proposal.
“And I had teachers’, kindergarten through twelfth grade, that reviewed the standards to determine if it was something we could teach easily, if it was something that’s not currently at the grade level but we could make work, or we marked it red and said, ‘there’s no way this is really possible in that grade level.’ That work will really lay the foundation for what we do as a team next, and we will certainly be guided by the teachers that are closest to the work,” Walder said [CJ Keane, “School Administrators Prepare for New State Social Studies Standards,” SDPB Radio, 2023.06.26].
Teachers won’t make a spectacle of themselves or of the new standards. I suggest they keep their heads down and find ways to subvert the bad standards by sticking with the good social studies they’ve always been teaching… and I suggest principals and superintendents help protect their teachers and their students from the Hillsdale spectacle that the Governor is trying to foist upon them.