The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Just finished the longest week of the year! What makes it so long is our annual Open House, or Mini-schedule night. On Tuesday night (why a Tuesday? Who knows!) we had an event for parents from 6-8 pm. On this evening parents can follow their child's schedule and have a few minutes in each class to meet the teacher and get to know something about the class. We have been doing this ever since I have been at this school and attendance has never been great. However, it is definitely less than it used to be. Less than a quarter of the students in the school had parents come to the Open House. There were 2 soccer games and a Field Hockey game that night and I know this had an impact. Still, it seems like a difficult time of year for people to find the time to come in. I also wonder if many of them see a need since by week 3 the students know their classes very well. I have long since wondered if we did it the night before the first day, if we would have a better turnout? Parents could sign all that paperwork there and even take home the iPad! Perhaps parents and students would both attend looking ot meet their teachers before the first day? Also, there are no papers to grade, no homework, and no games at that time of year. In the past when I have suggested this, it has fallen on deaf ears. We will see if this trend continues. Perhaps it won't increase attendance, but I know doing nothing won't increase attendance either. I hope the parents who did come found it worthwhile and I enjoyed talking to them.

One of the things we are working on this year is to improve communication with parents. I personally have been working on this for three years. I came up with an idea for my advisee group where 2 times a month I would email the parents in my group with a newsletter of sorts about things going on at school that impact their children. This has been met with praise and I have continued it this year with my new group and it seems to be going well. We have also discussed communicating with parents in our classes about what is going on in class. The program we use for School Information, PowerSchool, has a feature whereby you can type up an email explaining what is going on in class and in one click it will send it to the parents of all students registered in the class. Our goal is to try and make a communication like this once a month. I decided that on the heels of the Open House would be a good time to try it. So I sent my first email for each class on Friday. My email included generic information about what we are studying in the class and some due dates for upcoming assignments. I received a few responses from parents thanking me for the information. What was disheartening, however, was a couple of responses I received that were not only rude in the content but also explicitly said in no uncertain terms don't send me another email like this. This was distressing to me. I am shocked that anyone would not want some general information from time to time about what their child is doing in school. But that's just me and I guess there are plenty of others who disagree. I have to admit that it hurt my feelings to see such a vitriolic response to something that was meant to be helpful and supportive. I made a note to remove those folks from future emails, that's not a problem. But my personality is such that for a few days those rude words will continue to bother me. Just a little insight into what it is like to be a teacher sometimes!

Now for better stuff! We also had our first PLC this week! Professional Learning Communities (sometime called CFGs or Critical Friends Groups) meet during Late Starts once a month. During this time we meet in a small group of diverse High School teachers to share ideas about teaching, current research on teaching, share student work, and more all in an effort to improve learning for our students. I have improved things in my practice a great deal over the years from this work, and I now this has improved student learning as a result. Part of what makes a PLC work is the bond of trust in the group. I really enjoy working with the folks in my group and even when we add new people, it feels like we work very hard to support each other. I have taken a class on the PLC concept and am a big supporter of the philosophy. I have heard form those who are not as enthusiastic and I understand it is difficult and can even be intimidating to make our practice transparent, but I believe it is very important and this is why the group bond is so crucial.

We have been studying the events leading to the Revolution in my US History classes. There are a few resources I have used to help with this. To help with analyzing and understanding historical documents we used a book on Document Based Questions. Although the DBQ is thought of as an AP exam skill, there are now lots of resources applying the concept to other levels of students. This resource book does a great job with this and includes a variety of DBQ's on different time periods. We used the one on the Revolution for practice in groups. Students will then write an essay using the documents and their analysis of them. We also watched a couple of cool videos. the folks at Soomo Publishing have created wonderful music video about the Revolution. They also have a variety of videos from different eras in history and are working on more. We also watched the old Schoolhouse Rock Video about the Shot Heard Around the World. This is a great video for discussing the myths surrounding the Revolution and how they contribute to American pride and Nationalism. For the students who like the military aspect of the Revolution, History Animated has an interactive web page that shows what happened in each battle using maps and sound effects.

In History vs. Hollywood we finished watching the film Glory this week. Students are now working on Film Reviews. A great source for this is the Internet Movie Database. In Ethics we are moving our discussion of Ethics into the area of analyzing Ethical Dilemmas and the different philosophical approaches. Michael Sandel, a Professor at Harvard, has a great online lecture series we use to introduce these ideas. It is surprisingly accessible for most students and engaging. I can see why he is so popular as are his books. I have to thank one of my mentors who was invaluable to me when I first started teaching and still helps me from afar, Gib Brown, for introducing me to Michael Sandel. Much of Gib's influence remains in my classes, even though he is no longer teaching in a classroom but instead he and his wife are off improving the world by working for the U.S. government in Burkina Faso.