Maine Council for the Social Studies annual conference

I was so excited about the Conference I attended today I couldn't wait to blog about it! Today was the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies conference. I am on the Board for MCSS and so have been a part of the planning for the conference for the last year. Our theme this year was "Content, Instruction, and Technology: Standards-Based Approaches for 21st Century Learners."  We had the largest number of registrations we have ever had! I think we also had the most session options we have ever offered and also had many vendors available selling resources but also giving away a lot of stuff.

(MCSS President Glenn Nerbak)

 

 

The day kicked off with information from Maine Department of Education Social Studies Specialist Kristie Littlefield. Kristie spent some time talking about the C3 Framework (On page 10 of this document you will see my name because I was one of the teacher's from Maine who worked on this document) for Social Studies that is designed to supplement the Maine State Learning Results. Twenty two States were involved in the creation of C3 and so it is hoped this will result in more resources for us. She went on to discuss the law that requires a Proficiency Based Diploma and support available to schools for this. This means the class of 2018 must graduate with a standards based diploma, which also means big changes for my school! At the end of her talk Kristie recognized Maine's last 3 History Teacher of the Year Award winners. This award is given by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. I can't say enough good things about their organization. I attended one of their summer institutes in 2010 and it was tremenodus. They give a lot of money for history education.

 (Kristie Littlefield and the History Teacher  of the Year Award winners)

After the information from Kristie, we had a tremendous keynote speech that centered around the Gettysburg Address and using Common Core standards to analyze it. Jared Peatman, Director of Curriculum, Lincoln Leadership Institute, Vienna, Virginia gave the keynote speech. Mr. Peatman is a Maine native, from Skowhegan as a matter of fact. His speech was outstanding. He discussed strategies for analyzing the speech and using the Common Core to do this. He also talked about his book which gets into the impact the speech had later and in other parts of the world. He raised lots of interesting questions- why focus on 1776 in the beginning of the speech? The Constitution endorsed slavery, the Declaration did not! Why quote Jefferson? Hard for Southerners to criticize a speech based on something Jefferson wrote! What's his message? Democracy doesn't exist without equality! Like I said, it was awesome! There is something Mr. Peatman mentioned I found chilling for some reason that doesn't really make any sense. Mr. Peatman said that President Obama just announced he was declining the invitation to speak at the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. He then mentioned that at the 100th anniversary President John F. Kennedy also declined an invitation to speak because he had already planned to speak in Dallas, TX...

(Jared Peatman discuss the Gettysburg Address)

 

 

 The talk was fantastic! I even attended Mr. Peatman's session on the responses to the Gettysburg Address in other parts of the country. This was also a great activity aligned with the Common Core. I decided to buy his book, The Long Shadow of Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address and he graciously autographed it. I attended a session run by the Choices Institute. They have been around a while and create high quality units around role playing activities. Today's session was on a new unit about the Civil Rights Movement. I got a free copy of the unit which was awesome! I have used other Choices units and they are all well done, I highly recommend them! The other session I attended was about differentiating assessments through technology. It was very interesting and gave me some great ideas for what I can use. The presentation they gave is publicly available here. One of the great draws to these conferences is the possibility of getting new resources form vendors. I got a whole stack of free books and teaching guides. I also got a lot of information about National History Day which is something we have been thinking about for a while and might be ready to take the leap and judge this year so we can see what its like. Fantastic day and I'm happy to have a three day weekend to go through all of the books, resources, and ideas I got today!

The conference was Friday, so I was in my classroom Monday-Thursday this week and we learned a good deal in that time! I introduced the $35 Dollar Bill project in US history classes this week to much excitement and concern. I am always anxious to see who they are choosing and the kind of creative presentations they can come up with. In addition, we had a spirited debate around the Ethics of Torture and we started watching Schindler's List in History vs. Hollywood. 

We had another Department meeting this week and tried to come up with a plan on how to update and improve our curriculum and begin to align it with Common Core standards. We also needed to finalize our budget proposal to submit to our Principal (which we did) and began to make plans to organize this year's Model UN club. Every year we take about 24 students to Northeastern University in Boston, MA for 2 days to participate with other schools in a simulation of the United Nations. The United Nations association of Greater Boston is also involved in organizing this. We are just starting this process now! We included in our budget proposal funding for the National Council for the Social Studies Conference next Fall which will be held in Boston, MA. We figure its the closest it will be to us for the next 10 years so we can't pass up the chance to try and attend! Even if we don't get funding, I will plan to attend and find other funding if I can!