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Secondary Social Studies MS presentation titles, abstracts and session times:

CANDIDATE	Presentation Time/Session	MS Project Title	MS Project Abstract
Katie Barikmo	Session 2: Content Focused	Responsibly Teaching the Electoral Process	Often, students are told not to worry about politics until they’re older. Students go out into the world with a simplified story of the electoral process and this does the students’ themselves, and society at-large, a disservice. This unit aims to give students a more complete understanding of the electoral process, and voting disparities.
Jordyn Blomquist	Session 2: Stretching student understanding	Teaching The History of Slavery In The Midst of COVID-19: How Online Resources and Primary Sources Can Be Utilized to Teach About Enslavement in A Meaningful Way	Enslavement is often misrepresented or taught incompletely in social studies education. Slavery and its legacies actively are impacting students and their communities. Knowledge is power and the goal of this unit plan is to encourage anti-racist thought and critical thinking to develop an understanding of enslavement and its impacts today.
Jasper Brown	Session 1: Student's Relationship with content	Learning within a Democracy: Reevaluating Practices during Distance Learning	Teachers at Woodstock Middle School utilize democratic principles as a guide in creating curriculum that allows students to experience what it means to live in a democracy. Forced to recalibrate due to the global pandemic, teachers worked collectively with students to reimagine democracy in a virtual setting. In this case study, I will be examining teacher implementation and students’ reflections on how the principles of Fairness, Popular Sovereignty, Justice, and Pursuit of Happiness were enacted during distance learning.
Sophia Canon	Session 2: Safe space for identity	Leaning In: What Conversations About Power and Identity Can Do For a Classroom	Social studies is centrally about identity and power, but too often is taught as a passive script. In this unit plan I demonstrate a way to begin developing a space of vulnerability, community, and critical thinking, through intentional practice of discussing power and identity in a social studies classroom.
Brady DeBouche	Session 1: Finding Equity in the classroom	High School Advanced Placement Courses: Are we succeeding in teaching them?	Advanced Placement courses are offered to more affluent communities that have access to more resources to offer their students, consequently providing barriers for students attending schools in lower income communities. In this literature review I exploit the faults of our AP system and explore ways in which we can improve.
Aysha Dominguez	Session 1: Modifying our viewpoint	Decolonizing Social Studies Curriculum Through a First Nations Unit	This Unit brings forth a different worldview of learning our Wisconsin's First Nations. By decolonizing the curriculum that is used in schools today, students will learn that there is more than one worldview that can be accepted.
Alexandra Franzen	Session 1: Examining the role of community	Teaching through critical thought and antiracism: Understanding mass incarceration and its impacts in a social studies classroom	The United States incarcerates its citizens more than any other country. It is evidential that incarceration in the U.S. disproportionately impacts people of color and the poor. Mass incarceration not only negatively impacts the individuals themselves, but their families, communities, and the country as a whole. The goal of this unit plan is to inspire civic engagement among students through education on this civil rights violation.
Anna Gamm	Session 1: Socio! Social factors at play in the classroom	What it Means to Be American: The Social Connotations of Citizenship	Although there are numerous ways for individuals to become American citizens, citizenship is not objective. Rather, it is situated in society. Citizenship is not simply a result of a political process; it is a social phenomenon that benefits some populations more than others. Citizenship does not only grant individuals legal rights and responsibilities, it also gives them a social status of belonging. However, because this status is a social construct, the rights that accompany citizenship depend on one’s identity and the subsequent power that they have in society. I am going to investigate this concept in the context of a singular unit in a sophomore-level Civics class. In this unit, students will use first-hand accounts to identify and understand what it means to be a citizen for people whose American-ness is questioned because of their race, ethnicity, language, or religion. Students will also reflect on how their citizenship status affects their identity in order to better empathize with people whose belonging is repeatedly questioned.
Jessica Gorak	Session 2: Stretching student understanding	More than a Worksheet: Inspiring Today’s Students through Design Thinking	Lab-grown meat, self-driving cars, and Siri: These groundbreaking inventions have been produced by those who are innovative, creative, and divergent thinkers. Teachers must reflect as to whether we are including opportunities in our curriculum for students to build and exercise these very qualities. My project will examine this question, design thinking in education, and its affordances and limitations in a modern-day context.
Jerad Grimm	Session 2:
Nicolas Grotmol	Session 2: Widening accessibility	LGBTQ Inclusive Curriculum: For the Social Studies Classroom	LGBTQ issues and history are rarely seen in the social studies classroom at any level whether that is elementary school, middle school, or high school. This is a tragedy for both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ students. LGBTQ students do not have the opportunities to see themselves and their identities in the historical narrative, while, non-LGBTQ students do not have the opportunity to learn about people different from themselves and their experiences. Much of the work done by scholars has shown that an LGBTQ inclusive curriculum has positive effects on many different avenues of school life whether that is student safety, self esteem, attendance, motivation, happiness, or world view. The Unit Plan that I have created is an attempt to demonstrate how educators can use a LGBTQ inclusive curriculum to produce a positive non heteronormative learning environment where both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ students can learn about the impact the LGBTQ community has had on history and the present.
Mitchell Harlan	Session 1: Assessment Reimagined	Student choice in assessment and its affect on	This research looks at the widely recommended practice of providing choice to students for their assessment. Through the use of data collected in a real school environment and analyzed by comparing student work based on the choices they made, the research found ...........(need to finalize data analysis)
Robert Hemp	Session 2: Content Focused	Rethinking Economics: Fusing an Academic Understanding with a Humanistic Approach	This unit explores one way to teach the Great Recession by bringing together strategies that both equip students with a technical, academic understanding of its causes, as well as strategies that humanize the curriculum in order to build critical consciousness about larger structures of power in our democracy.
Anna Hunter	Session 2: Project-based learning	Where in the World Am I? Applying Cartographical Interpretation	This project is about critical cartography education and applying geographical analysis in studying WWII. In the proposed unit, students question how maps are used as tools to understand the world, but also reflect societal understandings and perpetuate inequalities.
Matthew Jefko	Session 1: Socio! Social factors at play in the classroom	Indoctrinating Critically Against Uncritical Indoctrination	In the Age of Information, students require effective methods for evaluating and interpreting narratives and data so they can engage with a polarized nation and be measured but effective agents of change.
Matthew Kim	Session 2: Widening accessibility	Beyond reading comprehension and summary: meaningful ways to engage with primary sources	I report how a series of my five source analysis exercises led students to a deeper level of engagement with primary sources. Students not only identified the origin, intended audience and purpose of each source, but also incorporated them to analyze historical values and limitations in understanding the topic studied.
Stella Lehane	Session 1: Finding Equity in the classroom	Where to Go From Here: A Critical Reflection on Emergency Online Teaching	The COVID-19 pandemic led to schools across the country being suddenly shut down and moved to online learning, leaving many educators figuring out how to teach in a mode they had never done before. Using assessments and feedback from one of my Honors World History sections at Very Real High School (VRHS), I reflect on how my attempts to teach online were successful and where improvement is needed using proposed online education models like the Blending with Pedagogical Purpose model as a framework to guide my analysis.
Christopher Little	Session 1: Examining the role of community	Virtual Learning in an A.P Psychology Classroom: A Unit Plan on Research Methodology Aimed to Maintain Engaging Lectures and Meaningful Discussion in a Virtual Setting	Two of the main criticisms of virtual learning are that the practice lacks engaging lectures and leaves little room for valuable classroom discussion. Here, I have created an evidence-based unit plan on the topic of Research Methodology in Social Sciences. This unit plan has been aimed to creatively use technology to incorporate engaging lectures and classroom discussion in a virtual setting where there are no face-to-face meetings. The ultimate goal of this approach is to make students feel connected and stay engaged, despite not engaging with one another in person.
Cassidy McBee	Session 2: Building Inclusivity	Best practices for teaching Indigenous students: How history and culture influences education	Indigenous students make up just 1.1% of the population in Wisconsin public schools, allowing educators to overlook their unique learning experiences. Indigenous students’ complex historical relationships with schooling and current racist systemic structures have widened achievement gaps. Teachers must be more sustaining of Indigenous cultures and incorporate shared values to meet the needs of all students.
Becca Meldman	Session 2: From the Teacher Lens	A Closer Look At The Use Of Controversial Current Events in Social Studies	I examined how including controversial current events into curriculum affects student engagement in social studies. After virtual learning began, students completed multiple assignments regarding their experiences with the pandemic. By comparing student work to similar assignments, I determined how effectively the use of controversial current events stimulated their engagement.
Christopher Noble	Session 1: Pedagogy, the craft of teaching	A Thousand Acres: On Slojd and Rhizome in Education	This unit plan blends Post-Structuralist theory with an 18th century Swedish educational style. The resultant pedagogy uses the manipulation of objects as non-hierarchical entry points into the studies of various disciplines.
Dakota Osborn	Session 2: Online! Teaching in the virtual classroom	Increasing Engagement in the Virtual Classroom: A Case Study of a 10th Grade World History Class	Online learning is a will continue to play an increasing role in the world of education. The largest barrier this presents to the welfare of our students is the absence of meaningful engagement. This research paper will explore the concept of engagement and outline the most important strategies teachers can use to increase engagement in their virtual classrooms.
Nate Ruby	Session 1: New Curricular Approaches	Cross-Curricular Approaches to Experiential Learning	Too great a focus on standardized testing has relegated Social Studies outside of the core curriculum at many schools. In addition, schools typically remain 'job training' grounds that do not produce critically engaged community members. My unit plan demonstrates how a cross-curricular approach, between Social Studies and English, focused around an experiential learning pedagogy can overcome these limitations and engage students in critical thinking and advocacy while still building core skills
Aaron Wickman	Session 2: Online! Teaching in the virtual classroom	Where did all my students go? Maintaining and growing student engagement in an online classroom.	I am addressing the question of how to sustain and/or increase student engagement in the online realm.