Holiday Vacation at last!

It doesn't matter when vacation starts, those school days leading up to the vacation tend to be the longest and most stressful! It doesn't help that there isn't much sun this time of year in our part of the world for weather reasons as well as the shorter day lights hours leading up to December 21st. I do my best to turn on my charm and stay positive!

The highlight of this week was our Abolitionist Simulation. What was the simulation? Well I will now explain! Students are assigned a famous abolitionist (like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Wendell Phillips) and must research how that person felt about 4 proposals for the Abolitionists to consider. One advocates the inclusion of women in the movement, one advocates the use of violence, and one advocates secession form the Union. Students then use parliamentary procedure to debate these proposals and adopt them or not. It is designed to help them understand how complicated slavery and abolition really was and perhaps suggest why the Civil War happened. I always have a lot of fun with this playing the role of William Lloyd Garrison and running the meeting.

The Maine Council for the Social Studies Board had its annual meeting at Joyce's in Hallowell this week. We debriefed the National Conference and came up with some ideas for our annual Conference next Fall. We had dinner and a little celebration for our outgoing President who is taking some time away and may come back in a support role n some way down the line. It's a great group of people and I really enjoy the work! Exciting times to come I'm sure!

(MCSS Board with 4 members missing)

We also had the chance this week to start talking about the Civil War and I shared my pictures and videos form my Teaching American History Grant trip in 2009. I can show students Harper's Ferry where John Brown was captured and also the Battlefields at Antietam and Gettysburg. By showing them these images and videos, I can also explain the role the 20th Maine regiment played in the Battle of Gettysburg and their leader, Joshua Chamberlain. Students are always fascinated to hear the story of how the 20th Maine defended Little Round Top and won the Battle for the Union (and maybe the war?).

(20 Maine regiment at a reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg sitting on Little Round Top)

We ended up the week watching a fascinating film about the French Resistance during World War Two in Sacrifice for Freedom. The film is called "Army of Shadows" and was in French with English subtitles. The students have been hard at work with their research and we wanted to do something a little different just before break. We even provided popcorn and soda for the students.

(French Resistance fighters)

I'm too tired to blog about any of the other things that happened this week!! Time to rest.We now have 2 weeks off so I won't blog again until the end of the first full week in January. When I get back I will be preparing to deliver Webinar number 2 and we will be looking to wrap the semester up in all my classes.

Another Historical Investigation

Another busy week was had by all! Student in my U.S. history classes spent some time studying Abolitionism and slavery. They participated in a 2nd Historical Investigation with an essay coming next week. The question they grappled with was this: What was most effective way to free slaves, moral persuasion (non-violence) or a more aggressive approach? Students analyzed a famous speech from Henry Highland Garnet and one from William Whipper each on opposite sides of the question. This is another investigation from the book "Reading, Writing and Thinking About History" with another Webinar to follow in January. It was very interesting, and I can't wait to see the essays!

Henry Highland Garnet

William Whipper

On Tuesday we were honored to once again have Attorney James Lawley visit my Ethics class. Mr. Lawley spoke about his work with Death Penalty clients during his time in Alabama. The students were very inquisitive asking great questions about the Scott Panetti case and other issues around the use of the Death Penalty. It was all very interesting as usual. I am so fortunate to have Mr. Lawley willing to come in and speak to my students!

In History v. Hollywood we are preparing to watch the film "JFK", so we must analyze the JFK Assassination first. This topic is one of my favorites in history, as it is still a mystery in some ways. Did Oswald act alone? If he did, why do so many people question it? Either way you go, the exploration is fascinating. We used a couple of different websites and the film series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". The website The Kennedy Assassination is one we used and JFK Lancer is the other. The students are always amazed and intrigued by this topic, so I really enjoy discussing it with them.

On Friday was our annual Kids Who Care day. On this day we work with our advisees to do something to give back to the community. This year we visited a 2nd grade classroom at a nearby elementary school. My 10th grade advisees ran 4 different craft activities for 2nd graders who got to take them home. We also had a bingo game for them with some prizes. It was very tiring, but it was a lot of fun! Luckily my wife is an elementary teacher at the school and so she did a great deal of the planning and organization which I really appreciate!

Five days of school left before a 2 week vacation for the Holidays. This is the week when the students start to get a little stir crazy. Vacation is starting a little earlier this year and so I hope that may keep them a little calmer than usual for the last days of school of 2014. Next week is also the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies dinner and business review for the year.

Ethical Applications

Coming back after the break my U.S. history students were prepared to present their projects. Students had to nominate a person important to U.S. history to be put on a new $35 Dollar Bill. They then had to give a creative presentation to persuade the Federal Reserve the person they chose deserves the honor. They also had to dress like the person they chose, and submit a design for the bill. This is always fun to see and a bit stressful for the students who get nervous about presenting in front of the class. We had some really interesting presentations, using music and video, and some really great nominees! It was great see a case made for people like Martin Luther King Jr, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Chase Smith, Samantha Smith, Edward Abbey, Frank Sinatra, and Geronimo to name a few from a diverse group of nominees.

(1886 Silver Certificate featuring Martha Washington)

In my Ethics class we wrapped up our discussion of End of Life and Euthanasia Ethics with a guest speaker. My friend, who is a nurse at a local hospital, came into the class to share her experiences and stories around End of Life care. The students were extremely interested in her anecdotes and examples connected to the issues nurses and other medical professionals face around ethics. I know there are students in the class considering a career in a medical field and they expressed to me their appreciation for her coming in and giving them a sense for what it is like with a such a difficult topic. Many thanks to my friend Sara Casey who came in!

Also in Ethics, we switched gears to begin looking at the ethics of Capitol Punishment. In the news this week is the story of Scott Panetti who was scheduled to be executed this week, but had his execution delayed by a judge due to concerns that he is mentally ill. The students were fascinated by this case in particular, so its fortunate we can follow it while we are discussing the issue itself. We also looked at the number of executions in the US and compared it to other countries in the world. We also discussed the Innocence Project and their work at exonerating wrongly convicted inmates who were on death row scheduled to be executed. There is also the Death Penalty Information Center that has interesting information about the Death Penalty.

We practiced our webinar presentation we will be doing next Monday around historical investigations. Myself and a Middle School Teacher from another District have been working with a grant the state received to promote literacy across the disciplines. As a result, we are using the book "Reading, Thinking, and Writing About History" to help us create and implement lessons that are around Historical Investigations and using an inquiry based approach. It also requires students to do close reading of primary and secondary sources in history. The example I will be presenting will be around the Revolutionary War.

We had a professional development early release day this week. The focus of our PD was around incorporating Common Core standards into our learning targets. We also had to identify priority standards for Social Studies from the Common Core to implement into our units. This work is all in conjunction with our need to have the current 9th graders graduate with a diploma that is proficiency based for at least English and Math, and within 3 years, all students will need to graduate with a proficiency based diploma for all subjects.

Next week will be the Webinar live on the web for teachers around the State and at the end of the week is our annual Kids Who Care event with our advisee groups. Two weeks left until vacation!

Conference debrief and more!

The week leading up to the National Conference for the Social Studies was an interesting one. In History v. Hollywood we started watching the film Schindler's List. This is one of my favorite films of all time, and yet breaks my heart each time I watch it. I really enjoy helping students try to process the Holocaust, and this film is one way to help with that. We examined the psychology of the Holocaust, examples of the camps, and learned a bit about Nazi philosophy. We also talked about the legacy today including Holocaust denial. Very emotional issues, but also very important ones.

In Ethics class we discussed Euthanasia and watched the film Million Dollar Baby to help with our understanding of the issues surrounding this topic. Often at least one student has a personal connection with this topic. All of the issues we are examining form here on out are difficult and this was no exception. A friend of mine who is a nurse will be coming in after the Thanksgiving break to discuss her connection to this issue.

In my U.S. history classes we have been working on the $35 Dollar Bill projects to be presented after vacation. We also learned a lot about slavery by watching a film and reading from the Frederick Douglass' autobiography.

Despite all these things keeping me busy, I and a fellow teacher from my school, left on Thursday for the NCSS Conference in Boston! We met another colleague of ours who teaches at a nearby school so that we could room together for the Conference.

We were up early Friday morning knowing we would have to register and get our badges for the Conference. The Conference was held at the Hynes Convention Center. This building is huge and has 3 floors with plenty of rooms for conferences. We stood in line to get our Conference book, a nice canvass bag full of goodies and our conference badges.

Bag from the Conference

My first stop of the morning was to see historian Eric Foner speak. I have always enjoyed Foner's work having read many articles by him and his books A Short History of Reconstruction and Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World. Foner talked about this book that is about to be released. He told the story of how he was made aware of the Sydney Howard Gay papers at Columbia and was inspired to write abou this work in abolitionism. He was very interesting and I really enjoyed it.

Eric Foner speaking at the Conference

After lunch came time for a tour of the Exhibit hall. Here there are lots of vendors mostly selling things. But if you say the right things and give them some attention you can get a lot of free stuff! By the end of my two days I had 15 books, 2 t shirts, and a bunch of posters, resource books, bags, and lesson plans. I only paid $20 total (for 4 of the books).

I then had to join a representative from the Newseum for our joint presentation on the Civil Rights project I did with my students last year. The rep from the Newseum talked about the website and resources they offer, while I focused on what research my students had done. They used the Newseum lesson plan and interactive timeline in order to analyze a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Then they connected it to local history. My students were a bit skeptical, but pleased to find examples of people form Maine who connected to the Civil Rights Movement. I was pretty nervous going in, but things seemed to go well. The participants seemed to find our project interesting and had really good questions for us. I have to thank the Newseum, as they paid for my Conference Registration a $200 value!

Me presenting my student's work

Me and my co-presenter an educator who works at the Newseum

Since I am on the Board for the Maine Council for the Social Studies, I agreed to represent Maine in the House of Delegates. Each State has at least one representative who gets to vote on resolution the NCSS would like to pursue. We also vote on the leadership of NCSS. It was a really interesting experience. I did have to give up 4 opportunities to go to workshops in order to be in the House of Delegates. I was pleased and honored to represent Maine, but it was tough to miss those other opportunities. I had to be there from 4:30-6:30 Friday evening and again Saturday morning from 8-10.

My seat in the House of Delegates

Outgoing President of NCSS addresses the House of Delegates

The last event of Friday night was a recognition of a woman from Maine who has worked as a teacher and educator for many years. She was honored by the Goethe Institute for her service. I traveled with her through the Goethe Institute as part of their Trans-Atlantic Outreach Program in 2006 to Germany. In addition, I have worked with her on many projects. So I found it a great pleasure to be able to honor her at this event. the Goethe Institute must be commended for giving her this award and for providing free food and drinks for those who attended. They must have spent a lot of money!

The Welcome Dance

Saturday morning was another session in the House of delegates. Then I had the chance to attend a workshop sponsored by the United States Holocaust History Museum. They provided wonderful resources and were very interesting. This was followed by an outstanding session on oral history from the National World War Two Museum.

After lunch and another hour checking out the exhibit hall, I covered the Newseum Booth for my co-presenter so she could attend a meeting related to planning for next year's Conference. This was a really interesting experience to see things from a different point of view. Teachers came by and treated me very differently thinking I was an employee of the Newseum.

After an hour at the booth, I attended a really interesting session on new and important books for teaching Psychology. This got me really interested in looking forward to next semester when I will be teaching Psychology. My last session of the day was around deciphering hoaxes and false stories in social media. I found this deeply interesting and important information to share with my students. This session was run by a man who works for the News Literacy Project.

After this we walked to a pub called Brownstone to attend an event sponsored by the travel company Explorica. This event included free food and drinks. We had the chance to meet some teachers and connected with a couple other teachers from Maine.

The Conference was fantastic, but the highlight came on Sunday when we got to meet and listen to historian and filmmaker Ken Burns. Burns is known for his famous film title The Civil War and his most recent film The Roosevelts. Burns was given a Kidger Award and was eloquent in his discussion of his films and his praise for the work of teachers. I learned he is working on a film about Jackie Robinson and one on the war in Vietnam. I look forward to everything he does!! I was even lucky enough to meet Burns briefly before he spoke and get my picture taken with him. There was a nice summary written of what he spoke about published by Education Week.

Ken Burns and I

Ken Burns receiving the Kidger Award

 So after a whirlwind 3 days of excitement, the three of us were ready to head back to Maine for a short 2 day week before Thanksgiving.

Next year's Conference will be in New Orleans and I'm already trying to think of ideas to try and attend the Conference. Time will tell if I can find a way! Time for a little break and some rest. Happy Thanksgiving!

NCSS Conference

So I am currently attending the NCSS Conference in Boston! So I will not be blogging this week. Since next week is a short week anyway, I thought I would blog next week about this past week and the Conference instead. Hopefully I'm having a great time!

In Flanders Fields

The Veteran's Day holiday made for a short week. I love everything related to World War One, so I always find particularly poignant the worldwide observance of Armistice Day. In the 11th month, on the 11th day, at the 11th hour, the war ended. Of course what followed was a bit of a mess that led to World War Two, but end of the war is an event to be remembered, considering the millions that were killed in the war. I make sure my students know why we celebrate Veteran's Day on the 11th every year and we discuss the sacrifice made in general. Across the nation there were parades, wreath laying, and other tributes to veterans and/or the end of the First World War. I think the most moving tribute was the ceramic poppy display at the Tower of London. The poppy became a symbol of war dead and has remained so in part thanks to famous poem "In Flanders Fields" by Lt. Col. John McRae. For this year's remembrance, organizers set up a display of 888,426 ceramic poppies, one for every British soldier who died in the war. I really like how the display looks like blood pouring from the Tower, symbolizing the loss of life to the country. Very moving!

In U.S. history, students started work on their $35 Dollar bill projects this week. We also started reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as we begin discussion of slavery and the Civil War. In Ethics class we debated torture, and started learning about Euthanasia and end of life issues. I have a friend who is a nurse and will be visiting my class to talk about ethics and medicine and answer questions. This will happen after Thanksgiving.

Frederick Douglass

In History v. Hollywood we began talking about the Holocaust. Students created a wordle of important things associated with Holocaust to keep in mind as we watch the film "Schindler's List". We had a great discussion about the causes of the Holocaust, and examined pictures from the time and watched a short documentary about Alfons Heck who was member of the Hitler Youth. This is always a moving subject for students that they always find interesting. I look forward to our discussion of what happened and how it could happen.

The wordle we created

I talked with an educator from the Newseum this week about our presentation at the National conference next week. We will be talking about the Civil Rights project I did with my students last Spring. Luckily, the Newseum paid for my conference registration as a result. I am also attending the House of Delegates on behalf of the Maine Council for the Social Studies. The whole conference should be a lot of fun and I can't wait to blog about it next week. Below is the slide show we will be presenting at the National Conference, including work my students created.




Next week will be busy as I have four days of classes, then I have to prepare to leave on Thursday for the four day conference!

November Rain

Thanks to Guns and Roses whenever it rains in November I think of that song form my youth. We actually had snow on Sunday, but rain later in the week. With the turning back of the clock and the cold and the wet, November can feel very somber. I am excited that I have the National Conference in Boston this month to look forward to.

We had elections this past week, and we have been looking at the issues on Maine's ballot in the days leading up to the election. We didn't spend a lot of time studying the arguments for and against in my classes, but we did refer to the League of Women Voters Guide, and discussed the merits of the arguments. The real election happened on Tuesday, but on Monday and Tuesday I held secret ballot elections in my classes and tabulated the results. 6 out of the 7 questions on the ballot this year were bonds. All were approved in real life and in my student elections. We also had Representative Chellie Pingree running for re-election and she won both in real life and in my student election. In addition, Susan Collins also won both elections. What was interesting was the two measure son the ballot in which the real vote and the student vote differed. Question 1 asked voters if they wanted to ban the use of bait, traps, and dogs in hunting bears. In real life, the measure was voted down in a close vote. However my students voted to approve the measure (but also in a close vote). The other area of difference was in the election for Governor. In real life, the current Governor won re-election. Paul LePage defeated Mike Michaud by about 48%- 43% and Eliot Cutler had around 9%. In my student election Michaud won with 50% over LePage with 31% and Cutler with 19%. We discussed this in class and students speculated as to why they thought the vote came out the way it did. It was all an interesting exercise in democracy that I hope will foster a bit of interest so that they will vote when they have the opportunity  in real life.

In Ethics class I had a guest speaker as well. Over the summer we received a letter form the Better Business Bureau that discussed a school speaker program in which they offered a variety of topics to go over. I took them up on it scheduled a speaker to come and talk about what the BBB does. I had told her ahead of time that it was an Ethics class and they had already been study the basic principles of Ethics. My speaker drove up from Massachusetts to be in my class at 8:15, so I'm sure she was up early. She was full of energy and had a nifty little powerpoint to share with videos on what the BBB does. the first few minutes were a bit of an overview of what the BBB can do. Then she decided to go basic and start posing hypothetical scenarios, most of which we had already discussed in class. She seemed impressed with the quality and depth of responses (no surprise to me since we had had the same discussions already). She was so impressed she sang their praises to me over and over. While she was impressed, I was not so much. She gave a great effort and I appreciate what she did, but she either missed the point and forgot that we didn't need the basics. I wanted her to talk about examples of how businesses have been accused of shady practices and what the BBB can do to help consumers, not hypotheticals about what to do if you see a $100 bill in the hallway. I think she has this "canned" presentation that she is used to doing it to younger students who have had no formal instruction about ethics. At least it kept the students engaged, they didn't seem to be bothered by having the same discussions over again, and I think it's because the speaker was so high energy and charismatic.

In History v. Hollywood students presented the Historical Trailers they made using the iMovie app on their iPads. Almost every single student felt the need to apologize in advance for how" stupid" their was. This is so annoying! Non of them were "stupid" the students just get easily embarrassed about showing these to the class as they are forced out of their comfort zone. This is why I like to show them the one I made, so they see that if I can be a little ridiculous, so can they. Each trailer showed creativity and a connection to the message from the film.

My students in Sacrifice for Freedom continue work on individual projects and I have to admit I really enjoy helping them look for material and leads to follow up on. It's great that they get to experience the work of what historians actually do and understand what makes it so interesting and important. As Veteran's Day approaches, I can't help but feel the emotional connection to the work the students are doing and I look forward to when they have a product that can be shared in some fashion. We also hope to follow up with the people living currently in Beddes, France who still honor Mr. Goddard. Despite the implementation of new standards, the pressure form student testing, and new teacher evaluation work, its this kind of work that keeps me going!

Next week we start $35 Dollar Bill projects!

Too Busy

These last two weeks have been full of things to do and extended time at work! I'm not excited about it either, but this is what doing Parent/Teacher Conferences this way does to us. I love having the day before Thanksgiving as compensation for doing evening Conferences, but it makes for overworked and overtired teachers that, in my opinion, aren't as effective with their students for both weeks. I think we would be better served to have Thursday evening of Conferences from 4-8, then no school the next day for students and Conferences from 8-12 for teachers. There are no other classes to teach in the mean time and we get the weekend to recover. Its really kind of crazy, I would argue, for us to teach a regular week and have an evening of Conferences in the middle of the week. I also think it would be just as convenient for parents as what we do now. At any rate, that's my annual rant on the matter.

One thing I have been trying to find time for, but I really enjoy, are these mini-courses offered through FutureLearn. These are Massive Online Open Courses that people from all over the world take for free, and they last about 3 weeks. With sponsorship from the BBC, they are offering courses related to World War One to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the war. I have taken 2 so far and absolutely loved them! Luckily they don't require a ton of time or work as I haven't had much of late. But I have really enjoyed analyzing the issues with people from all over the world. The first course I took was on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and an analysis of the League of Nations and the United Nations. Not only can I use some things in my classroom , but I learned so much more. The course I am taking now is on how the war changed the way we think of Heroism, and I am absolutely enthralled with it!

In Ethics class we have been discussing Moral Courage and students presented projects on that topic. We have a guest speaker coming next week from the Better Business Bureau. In U.S. history classes we are examining the paradox of Andrew Jackson who expanded democracy and was autocratic at the same time. History v. Hollywood students worked on their iMovie Trailer projects using historical films. Sacrifice for Freedom students finished their group presentations about the war in their countries and have moved on to more specific individual projects. One student is looking into German POW's who were held in Houlton, ME during the war. Another is writing to the Mayor of Beddes in France where a US soldier was killed and buried in order to learn more about how they honor this man each year. Another is looking for anyone who may have been from Maine who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. This is just the beginning of what we think will be an exciting project!

So I'm busy grading, teaching, conferencing with parents, modifying curriciulum for proficiency based diplomas, considering my teaching process to line it up with the new evaluation model using the Marzano model, being an advisor, and a few other things I'm supposed to be doing but probably not because I'm too busy!

On top of all this I am preparing for the Webinar to be delivered in December and my presentation at the NCSS Conference in Boston on 11/21. So I will be very excited to blog about these exploits very soon! Election day is next week and so we will discuss the ballot here in Maine, in my classes, so students can follow the results of the election.