A Long Week

Ahhhhh... technology. It giveth and it taketh... at will it seems. Last Friday we deployed iPads to our students and by Monday afternoon it was clear that something was amiss with the internet and the overall network in our school. What exactly was the problem, I am not sure. But it seems these iPads were too much of a drain on our somewhat antiquated network so that lessons dependent on the internet or being projected by LCD (because Apple TV uses the network) were not working correctly. Tuesday morning we received an announcement... the network would be down for the rest of the day as some technicians had arrived at our school to work on it. If you do not know, the network being down is a big deal. Our schools have embraced technology and much of the operations of the school are connected to the network. Our phone system, attendance, and much of our lessons are all dependent on a functioning network. Its not quite the same as losing power, but its pretty close. I heard another teacher say, "This is when we get to show our creative side and really earn our money!". I'm not sure I totally agree with that assessment, but we definitely had to get creative for the rest of the day Tuesday which ended with a headache for me. In the end it worked out fine, but its just frustrating how much time and energy we put into using technology and more often than not something about it fails just when you don't want it to.

The schedule. For every High School it seems like there is a different schedule. Our schedule is unqieu to our school. We have 8 periods over 2 days. We have 4 periods on "Black" days and 4 different periods on "Gold" days for 80 minutes each. Every Monday and Thursday are Black days and Tuesday and Friday are Gold days. Whenever we have a holiday or scheduled day off during the week, whatever day we missed we have on the Wednesday of that week. Whenever we have a 5 day week, Wednesdays are "White" days. On White days it is a Late Start for students. Buses run at the regular time, but students do not have to report to classes until 9am. This gives teachers an hour and a half to conduct Professional Learning Communities, Advisor meetings, or Department meetings. After the late start we have all 8 periods for 30 minutes each. This Wednesday was our first White day and it was a Department meeting. This is a great opportunity for our Social Studies Department to meet and discuss things related to the budget, curriculum, Professional Development and more. Our Department has 4 full time teachers and one person who teaches 2 Social Studies Classes and is a Dean of Students for grades 9-10 for the rest of the job.

Wednesday was also the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I think I had a similar experience last year, but the current Juniors and Seniors roughly are the last group of students who have any type of memory of having lived through it. That seems really bizarre to me, but very few students had much of a memory of 9/11/01. This means this tragic event will literally be history to all my future students... just like the JFK assassination, the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and other tragic days in American history. In all of my classes we discussed how the events of that day still impact us. To help with this we viewed 3 short videos. Each video was produced by Story Corps. Their mission is to archive one story for every person who was killed on 9/11. The three videos we watched were John and Joe, She Was the One, and Always a Family. This is always tough for me each year. I related to the students that on 9/11/01 I was not in school. I was at a Doctor's appointment with my wife. She was pregnant with our son and the appointment was the first time we got to see an image of him. I still remember the horrific images in the waiting room and how we were glued to the TV the rest of the day. I also remember how I felt utterly helpless and incompetent going to school the next day knowing all of the students would have questions and I would have no answers.

During the week in my classes we explored Democratic Ideals and examples of those ideals. We also began looking at the causes of the American Revolution. In History v. Hollywood we finished watching the film Glory and in Ethics we discussed the theory that all humans share the same values and the implication of this for Ethics.