This past summer, a few teachers from the social studies department at Renaissance Academy discussed the idea of incorporating the experiences from Dr. Steve Marable’s recent trip to Cyprus. Marable – an assistant principal at Renaissance – would be able to make the lesson more relevant to students through his travel there.

Greg Moxley (a social studies teacher in the high school 4×4 program), Guy Barnes, and Ron Nieto discussed co-teaching one of the World History classes utilizing Cyprus as a spring board to review the impact of cultural diffusion over the course of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.

Marable and the members from the social studies department met a few times over the month of October to discuss how they would design a learning plan that would incorporate photos, cultural aspects and historical places of Cyprus while also reviewing the previous units.

In order to hook the students’ attention and engage them they began with a brief written response: Does technology help or hinder a sense of community? Once finished, students paired up and discussed their responses. Students also had to pair up with a student that had an opposing view point in order to allow each student to expand his or her limited perspective.

This discussion helped the class come to an unintended consensus that technology has positive global effects as it is capable of passing along information to the masses and communicate with friends and family from far off distances. However, they agreed that technology had the opposite effect in smaller communities, such as family dinners, conversations with friends, etc. This led into a discussion about how difficult it must have been for large empires to effectively communicate and how trade centers became important pit stops.

Overall, members from the social studies department reported this was a great experience and they look forward to continuing. Specifically, the lesson showcased the importance of feedback. Staff appreciated hearing from students and observers how the instruction could be modified for improvement.

This experience allowed everyone involved to see the importance of feedback as roles were shifted from that of teacher to that of an observer.