Week before Holiday break

The last week before Christmas vacation is arguably the craziest of the year! There are so many obligations outside of school (parties, concerts, etc.), the students are overly excited for the Holiday break, looming here in New England is the possibility of a weather related closing or delay, and the business of school is expected to carry on as usual! By the last day before break this farce has all but collapsed. I used to wonder why schools would plan a half day on the day before the Holiday vacation, and I now know why! (Although my school district doesn't do this). The only positive, really, is that my online class ended this week for the semester and the next semester doesn't start until 1/27! My online class in VHS ends earlier than my face to face classes each semester which is a welcome break, but the trade off is that the VHS class goes 15 weeks with no breaks for holidays. So there are times when my face to face class is on a break but I still have to check on and "teach" my online class through VHS.

We started the week with the few remaining $35 Dollar Bill presentations. These presentations take several classes, but I always enjoy watching students rise to the challenge and talk about these important people.

Student Dollar Bill design featuring Martin Luther King Jr.

Another Student Dollar Bill showing the back side of a bill

After the presentations we moved back into the tensions of the 1850's. One activity I always enjoy is a role-play of the famous Dred Scott trial. Scott had been a slave who sued his new master for his freedom. The details of his case called into question the constitutionality of slavery in general, and the Missouri Compromise in particular. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court and result in the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

Only photo of the famous Dred Scott

For this role-play I have two homemade puppets that I use (my wonderful wife Erica who is an Elementary School teacher made the puppet for me!). I portray the attorney for both Sandford and Scott and then I use the puppet so the students know who I am speaking on behalf of. The students are role-playing the supreme court and must come up with a decision based on the Constitution. Then we discuss what happened in real life and the significance. It should be noted that the decision of the Court in this case cemented the notion of the slavery being endorsed by the Constitution, which led many to conclude the only way to end it would be an amendment. With the nation so split that would be almost impossible, and so Civil War seemed plausible. The decision is criticized by many legal scholars today.

"Dred Scott"

"John Sanford"

Since we are talking in class about the Civil War, just before the break I always show some of the images and video from my Civil War tour. My colleague Mike Streeter and I were part of a Teaching American History Grant through the Maine Humanities Council in 2008-2010. As part of this Grant, in July of 2009 a group of teachers traveled to Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry, Monticello, and Montpelier.

Cannon at the Gettysburg Battlefield

Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg

Myself and Mike Streeter at the famed Monument to the men of the 20th Maine Regiment who defended Little Round Top at Gettysburg

view of the 20th Maine Monument on Little Round Top

part of the Battlefield at Antietam

Me in front of "John Brown's Fort" where Brown was captured at Harper's Ferry

It was a busy week, but we made it to vacation! After the break we will be doing an inductive learning activity that I will blog about and finishing up the semester with iMovie projects in History v. Hollywood. So I will blog again in a couple weeks. Happy Holidays!!!

Too busy to go into Details

Busy, busy... $35 Dollar Bill presentations, and working on projects all week! The highlight of the week came Friday for our annual Kids Who Care event.

For this event we work with our advisee groups to do something to give back to the community. Every advisee group in the school does something to support those who are in need. My group partnered with 4 other 8th grade groups to organize and put on a luncheon for Senior Citizens and some day care kids. It was really nice to see High School students helping and interacting both with Senior Citizens and with Day Care kids. It took a lot of time to prepare the crafts, decorations, and food for the event. It was great, but also was a distraction away from grading studnet work and other things I have to do! One week left before vacation!

Off to the Races

Three weeks until the big Holiday break does not seem like enough time! Throw in the specter of a possible snow day or two, and all of the related Holiday obligations outside of school and it is really a busy time of year!

This past week saw us working on a simulation for the Abolitionist Society Convention and the $35 Dollar Bill project. The Abolitionist Society convention is a simulation. Each student researches a famous Abolitionist and portrays them in the meeting. The meeting uses parliamentary procedure (which our students are familiar with because of Model UN simulations freshmen year and the Model UN project some of them participate in). I love simulations like this and do them quite frequently. The idea started with a lesson I saw published in the journal Social Education which I receive because of my membership in the National Council for the Social Studies.

In Ethics class this week we had Attorney James Lawley visit as a guest speaker. He came to my U.S. history classes in October to discuss Constitutional Law. This week he discussed his work as a Death Row Lawyer in Alabama and led a discussion of the Death Penalty. It was very fascinating! He talked about recent Supreme Court opinions, attorney-client confidentiality, and what its like working with people who are on death row. The students were captivated!

(James Lawley speaking to my class about the Death Penalty)

Also this week we had a training about eBackpack. This is a great "Workflow" website and app for student iPads that makes it easy for students to submit work and for teachers to take those submissions, grade them, and send them back to students all without paper and without printing anything! This service is provided for free to all schools in the State and its connected to the State Technology Learning Initiative. The instructor was great, I really appreciated how she attempted to meet everyone's needs. I came way ready to use eBackpack in my classes!

Wednesday night was the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies Board meeting. We reviewed the evaluations from the annual conference in November and they were overwhelmingly positive. We also discussed not offering a conference next Fall because the National Council for the Social Studies Conference will be at the same time and right nearby in Boston. We did discuss ways to encourage folks in Maine to attend and other things we can do this Spring and next Spring to keep Social Studies on everyone's minds and build off the great conference we had this year. I am really looking forward to attending the National Conference in Boston next Fall. Ken Burns (famous documentary filmmaker) is the keynote speaker!

(Ken Burns)

Lastly this week I attended a webinar training to prepare for my last webinar at the end of January. The webinar focus is around bringing Common Core and Literacy across the disciplines. We are using the book The Core Six. Our next webinar will focus on the strategy of inductive learning. I can't wait to try it out with my students (though I have done things similar in the past anyway)!

Two weeks left and still a ton to do! YIKES!!!