Chaos to Start

When you're a 9th grade Advisor the first 2 teacher days are chaos! There is just not enough time in each day to do the trainings, participate in the introductory trainings, and prepare for 9th grade orientation. However, we did our best and put a certain amount of faith into "it will all work out" thinking and it did! I really hope next year when I have the whole day Wednesday to prep and I remember how hard it was this year!

(Artist's depiction of chaos)

One thing we did on Tuesday was to engage in a training on Marzano's Teaching Standards. We focused on breaking the lesson into segments and discussing what activities fit into which segments in an effort to help us understand how to design lessons in this manner. My partner for this was English Teacher Paula Weisberger who ask me, "Will I make it into your Blog now?". The answer is yes Paula!

We also had a great activity on Tuesday that promoted Staff bonding. This was called "Come to the Mountain" with the idea being that each Staff member had to say something they did this summer and everyone else who had the same experience was to also stand up. I learned some things about a few Staff members who I have worked with for a few years now and am embarrassed to say I know very little about them! We have a new Principal and I very much appreciate his efforts in this manner and I think others do as well.

The first 2 days of class were tiring and filled with little issues that need to be resolved! After almost 4 years I forget that Freshmen need to be told their schedule and where all their classes are every day for a while. Every year Study Halls go through some bumps and this year is no different.

But it was nice to be back in the classroom engaged in the part I love the best! My AP students had a test on the first day over the Summer work (it's an AP class after all!). In U.S. History we did an activity to get to know each other and began discussing the myths and facts of Columbus. To do this we used a great cartoon made in the 60's that purported to be "educational". We had a wonderful discussion about whether or not humans are becoming more or less ethical and the significance of that in my Ethics class. It was great to watch various film clips and discuss film making techniques designed to convey meaning to the audience in History vs. Hollywood. Tomorrow the online class I teach through Virtual High School begins so I will get to monitor that.

This week I look forward to putting Columbus on trial, analyzing the French and Indian War, Reviewing early films and the Civil War to prep for our first Historical Film Analysis, and discussing where Ethics come from and theories about Ethical Relativism. I also anticipate some brief discussions about the U.S. response to what is happening in Syria. It should be a great week!

For teaching specifically this week:

* Document Analysis with APPARTS
* Myths and Facts about Columbus and the debate over his place in history as hero or villain
   (Sources I use for Columbus: PSA Commercial about Columbus Day, Howard Zinn Article,   
   Warren  Carroll Article, Various Columbus cartoons on YouTube, and Rethinking Columbus)
* Institute for Global Ethics Curriculum for Schools
* Various film clips on YouTube that show film making techniques
* Internet Movie Database