Drs. Schul and Crawford accompany Students to OCSS Annual Meeting

Ten students, along with Drs. Schul (Education Department) and Crawford, traveled to Worthington, OH on Friday April 16 for the Ohio Council for the Social Studies Annual Meeting. Schul and Crawford, along with students, presented sessions to the gathered teachers.

Schul's session dealt with using desktop documentaries to engage student interest in history. He was joined in his presentation by Beth Miller and Lawren Neely, both Social Studies students, who told the audience of the process they went through to make their documentaries and then screened them. Miller's documentary was created as an assignment to place oneself in the shoes of another and consisted of a rap song intermixed with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words and images of children. Neely's video was a mix of Depression Era songs by Woody Guthrie and images of the Dust Bowl years.

Crawford presented on the National Football League and Integration, and was joined by Rick Ingold and Andy Zaebst, who presented their lesson plans for making this a part of discussion of the Civil Rights Movement. Zaebst presented a lesson plan for discussing the reasons why integration happened relatively quickly in the NFL, but took longer for high schools. This led to a lively discussion by the audience and presenters. Rick Ingold then presented his lesson plan for discussing the Rooney Rule, which mandates that African-American candidates must be interviewed as part of the process of hiring a new head coach in the league.

All of the student presenters did a bang-up job in their presentations, and they were joined by several other students who also attended. Those students included Katherine DeMars, Jennifer Sherman, Trey Jones, Ryan Fleming, Jennifer Bazell, and Emily Spangler (Middle Childhood).

In addition to presenting and attending sessions given by practicing educators, the students also brought home a lot of free materials that they might use one day in their classrooms. This was a valuable experience for students, both in the ideas that they gained, and also in the chance to interact with professionals in their field, some of who may one day be in a position to hire them.