The walls of Adam Wagner’s history classroom at San Marcos High School reflect his innovative contributions to student learning—the expected historical posters and world maps and the unexpected cycling helmets and bicycle racing bibs.
When Wagner served as the history department’s academic dean, he and his colleagues wanted to increase interest in history while raising test scores. “The chronological approach to teaching history just wasn’t working. Students were regularly checking out from boredom,” he said. Sorting through state standards that presented material on a timeline, students had to return repeatedly throughout the year to topics such as “Presidential Scandals.” Wagner and his colleagues noted moving back and forth through time too often confused students. “What would happen,” he wondered, “if we taught all these scandals in one lesson?” Wagner’s innovative approach to teaching conceptually rather than chronologically led to higher test scores and student achievement.
Wagner and his fellow teachers printed out the state standards known as TEKS— Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, and cut them into individual strips of paper, isolating each standard, then arranged them in the order of concepts rather than time. “It took us months to think about the best way to arrange those little slips of paper,” he recalled. “We had to take everything that we had done in the past, analyze it, and in some cases get rid of lessons that we had used for years.” They updated the lesson objectives and infused more active teaching practices, with the goal of making the information more meaningful to students. Wagner took a risk trying this new approach but today is happy to add, “It worked!”
