Current events are constantly an important part of our daily lives. Today, there are so many events to try to keep up with. To list a few, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S political updates, COVID-19 news, and local news are constantly changing. Global history and social studies classes have had numerous events in the past year to include in lessons. Social Studies teacher Kevin Flynn says, “I always try to connect what we’re talking about in terms of theory in a class like the government to something that’s happening today so students have an anchor to remember the theory.” Events that are changing day by day can be a key part of tying history classes into modern issues. History and Government classes rely on tying relevant events into history. Flynn explains, “Certainly the big events you have to talk about, in part because part of teaching is you have to meet students where they’re at. If there is something that’s on all the student’s minds you would be doing a disservice to them if you didn’t talk about it.” Emphasizing the importance of current events in the classroom, and in students’ education.
In terms of what he has covered recently when teaching, Flynn states that, “We’ve talked about the war in Ukraine, since it’s a government class we’ve talked about the U.S. government’s response, recently the Supreme court confirmation hearings…There’s always things going on in the senate or the house in court cases and stuff.”
Modern events are important not only to history and government classes but across sciences as well. Marian Webster dictionary defines current events as, “important events that are happening in the world.” Important events are used across classes to continue the interest and relevancy of many topics.
COVID has been one of the most common events, but history, science, and language classes have made an effort to focus on many other events. Jim Arnold, an anatomy and physiology teacher often includes scientific and medical events into his classes. Arnold recently has included a breakthrough heart transplant into his anatomy classes. A pig heart was transplanted into a person for the first time this year. The anatomy classes are learning about the recent transplant during their unit on the heart.
