That’s Edutainment: Kamp Krusty
For more than fifteen years, I have been teaching world history to high school students with special needs. The vast majority of these students have a very severe deficit in reading. They need to practice this skill as much as possible. Although I provide many opportunities for my students to hone their reading skills, the deficit can create a barrier to learning some of the most important concepts in our world history class.
As a result, there are times I need to find other ways to inspire the students to engage in discussions and learning.
Teachers need to compete with quite a few of distractions.
As I have mentioned before, one of my favorite ways to generate student interest is through the use of pop culture. Nothing is better than The Simpsons.
This week, our class focused on the causes of revolutions. The state curriculum requires us to use the French Revolution as the primary example (although I choose to incorporate more modern examples as well).
When I teach an important concept, I use some combination of teaching, discussion, and application in order to help the students to learn it.
For Revolution, I begin by creating fake school rules. I present them to the students as if they are real. Each of the fictional rules corresponds to one of the causes of revolution we study later in the lesson. This activity is quite effective at grabbing their attention and inspiring them to want to learn about the actual causes. It also provides a common example that the class can refer to as we discuss revolutions and their causes.
After sparking their interest, I use a memory trick, pictures and animations to help the students to understand six basic causes of revolutions.
Although these aren't the only causes of revolution, it provides a common starting point for the students to use to analyze some revolutions. This slide is the summary of the larger discussion.
During the presentation, I ask the students to relate the causes of revolution back to the fake school rules from the beginning of the lesson.
After the students learn the vocabulary and ideas and connect them to my fictional example, it is time to see if they can spot them in a less obvious source. This is where a typical class would present some case studies for the students to read. But my class is not “typical”. I save that reading based task for another day.
In my class, this is where the fun comes in.
The revolution begins!
I tell my students we are going to watch an episode of The Simpsons titled Kamp Krusty. After a little bit of cheering and fist pumping (from me) I pass out the accompanying sheet. This sheet calls for the students to identify and record examples of each of the six reasons for revolution that we have studied.
Miraculously, because The Simpsons writers are freaking geniuses, every single cause can be found in this episode.
If you want to play the “game” for yourself, Kamp Krusty is the first episode of the fourth season. If you are creative, you will discover an example of each cause of revolution.
The students jot down quick notes as the causes appear in the episode. When it is over, we discuss their findings and flesh out their ideas a bit more.
If you would prefer not to play, here are the answers:
Economic Distress - The students identify the lack of food, poor housing conditions and forced labor as economic causes of the revolution.
Nationalism- Most students immediately identify the "U.S.A." chant as an example of nationalism. If they look deeper they can use the campers' love of Krusty and the camp song as another example.
Social Injustice - The campers at Kamp Krusty represent a group that is being treated unfairly. The children at the weight loss camp are treated even worse. It is no wonder they wanted to revolt.
Unpopular Method of Rule - It begins with Mr. Black being in charge of the camp instead of Krusty. It is made worse by the fact that the school bullies have been given positions of power.
Religious Intolerance - Although it is a stretch, the camp has been built on top of an Indian Burial Ground. Although not a direct cause of this "revolution", my students are able to articulate that if Bart needed allies, he might be able to inspire the indigenous people to join him.
Enlightenment Ideas - The students quickly see Locke's concept of "right to revolution" illustrated in the episode. They also point out that the episode uses one of Voltaire's favorite techniques: satire.
In every class in which I have shown this episode, there is one question that is always asked:
“Mr. Hanshotfirst, did they write this episode for history classes?”
It sure seems like it.
Ha! Fab.
As a Maths and Computer Science Teacher (I've been doing it for about 25 years now), this sounds like one of those perfect examples that you come across every now and then.
I spend my days teaching people to become teachers nowadays and one of the clips I use to introduce my Computer Science teachers to the fact that some of their students will be functionally innumerate is the Blackadder- Some Beans sketch:
Not because I'm trying to say that their students will be like Baldrick, just to get their attention.
An excellent post, keep it up.
Oh this is brilliant!
That is a great lesson. Hopefully, others can use it to learn in an entertaining way also. Thanks for sharing your curriculum secrets!
Yes, I am planning to hire an Animator to make me a Rick and Morty Scene where they goon Steemit while using "Interdimensional Internet" and Rick makes jokes about JerryBanfield and Haejin lol "yeah morty people in this dimension get paid in bitcoin just to Blog, "hey rick do Bitcoins work between dimensions rick?" "Don't think about it morty!"
Most teachers have a peculiar way if teaching, his methods are quite amazing.
Thanks! I hope that someday it will be easy for teachers to share resources and ideas here. Someone already posted a pretty fun attention grabber for math in these comments. I voted it up to the top.
We need to watch that episode when we read about the French Revolution for history class now.
For sure. Tell your teacher about it. I started using it many years ago. One by one I have gotten all of the other World History teachers to use it. Now its a school wide thing.
Sounds like a perfectly cromulent teaching method :)
It’s one of good way to make your students to get interested and listen . 😊😊😊😊
Hi, I use to be a teacher I teach government and literature to students andy experience was quite funny but worthwhile,
I found out that students find in difficult to maintain dates and numbers, they do not remember definitions, philosophical point of views and maybe theories, and what I did was back up my teachings with anecdotes and number patterns.
I also look for the dates or popular people in all walks of life and link them to my teachings, before I stopped teaching, I found out it really helped the students a lot.
I'll be applying for a teaching job soon and I think it'll be wise for me to learn something out of this. Maybe I can even adopt this strategy too or improvise considering how the classroom situation and students will look like.
I read the post all through and I've learnt greatly from it. In that case I'm adding this to my special bookmarks.
Thanks @hanshotfirst for sharing this. I won't lie I learnt a lot and I'm sure others will too
maybe for the students at the school, you are their favorite teacher.
because the learning system you apply is very unique.
I like the way you keep kids to follow your learning
It's been almost three years i have been in this wonderful field of teaching and everyday is a funday with lot of new things and yes i am not history teacher at all lolx :-D
when i feel my kidies are tired i turn them to some jokes or games ;-)
As the father of a special needs child I can tell you that you are a Godsend my friend. Wow this is fantastic. We need more teachers like you. God bless you. Where do you teach please?