Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Educator profile: Wendell Brooks


I watched a video today that was the single best example of great high school social studies instruction I've seen yet. The teacher was Wendell Brooks, an instructor of history and vocal music at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, CA, and the video is available in the "Social Studies in Action: A Teaching Practices Library, K-12" series produced by the WGBH Educational Foundation (2003) and available as streaming video online at Annenberg Media's Learner.org.

The video can be found here: http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1791

The description of the video as listed on the website: "Wendell Brooks is a teacher at the diverse Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California. Mr. Brooks' ninth–grade history class focuses on a variety of political ideologies present during the period of World War I (sic). His class includes lively discussion on capitalism, communism, totalitarianism, and Nazism, as portrayed by leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini. In his lesson, Mr. Brooks incorporates a Socratic discussion into his lesson, as well as group activities and presentations."