Welcome to Superlative Social Studies Instruction. SSSI is a website dedicated to making you a better social studies instructor by giving you the tools needed to mold new generations of students into critical thinkers and civic-minded citizens. My name is Derek Regensburger and I started SSSI in 2021 to help you be informed on the latest controversies in the field, offer balanced and engaging materials for you to use in your classroom to teach Civics and U.S. History, and help you produce students that can produce quality written work that defends an argument with reliable evidence.
Social studies has often been given short shrift by administrators and policy makers. The subjects of civics and other social studies classes have largely been excluded from regular testing and accountability measures. This prompted a 2018 Brookings Institution report to refer to them as “second-tier academic subjects.” The report was also highly critical of the quality of civics education and social studies instruction generally in the U.S. The report detailed several deficiencies with regard to the teaching of history and civics, most notably a lack of active participation and community engagement in the classroom (56% of students reported never participating in a mock trial or other role playing). This site is geared toward remedying those deficiencies.
By way of background, I am an attorney turned educator. I am a former prosecutor and civil litigation attorney who dove headfirst into the education arena in 2005. From 2007-2012, I served on an advisory panel to the Colorado Cold Case Task Force dedicated to improving the investigation of unsolved homicides. I taught criminal justice and paralegal studies at the college level for 8 years. I have published a college text on criminal evidence (soon to be in its third edition). In 2015, I left higher education to pursue a career in secondary education because I taught a number of students who lacked basic skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical writing that could not be corrected at the collegiate level. I have dedicated my career since to producing civic-minded students that can do those things and defend their positions intelligently. I hope you are doing the same.