Making Content Come Alive

In doing my unit plan, I have been actively think about what we need to do to keep our students engaged. I have an extremely organized mentor teacher for my practicum who knows her subject area, has a plethora of resources, but there seems to be something missing...The kids respect her but are not fully inspired and I wanted to figure out how to make the content come alive for the students.

If we're tired of leafing through text books, it's likely that high school students aren't very inspired either, but we need to make the content in them relevant. One way is to bring in primary documents or other resources like personal accounts to really get students actively living through the events that have shaped our country in the past.

It can also be extremely inspiring for students to have guests in the class to hear a story from a new and unique perspective. My initial reaction to getting in guest speakers is that I wouldn't want to put them out. But how would you feel if someone valued your story and life experiences so much that they wanted you to impart your wisdom on the leaders of tomorrow? We can flatter ourselves and think that we are the only ones that our students should hear from. But it is so essential for teachers to bring in outside sources beyond the text, get students to find new resources themselves and bring in a living, breathing person to pass along their story and insights to others.