Mr. Gower's Social Studies Blog: Wrapping things up

As my elective courses in Ethics and History v. Hollywood work on Final presentations, we wrapped up the semester in US history with Reconstruction! We spent some time this week analyzing the success of Reconstruction with a Common Core aligned task called the "Reconstruction Web". With this task, students must evaluate resources for credibility. They also have to identify arguments, and explain which ones are the most compelling. Finally they have to comment on whether or not Reconstruction was a success.

(A critiq of the Freedmaen's Bureau established during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War)

This week the Maine Council for the Social Studies board met and started work planning a new idea for professional development. Because the National Council for the Social Studies Conference will be in Boston next Fall so close to us, we are not planning to run a regular Conference in Maine next Fall. Instead we are planning to kickoff a slightly different approach to professional development starting this Spring and again next Spring. After that we hope to keep this going in addition to our regular Fall Conference (which will return in the Fall of 2015). Our plan is to host 2 different regional meetings hosted by historical organizations for about 3 hours for no cost and with free food. The meeting would address suggestions for digging into the C3 Framework for Social Studies and Common Core, and give teachers a chance to network with each other and share ideas. This is planned for March and the details will be released soon.

Since we are not running a regular Conference this Fall we are planning to promote the National Conference in Boston and to even organize a bus or two to take folks to Boston early in the morning and return late at night for a small cost (much cheaper than gas and parking if you drove yourself). The National conference in Boston will be November 21-23, 2014.

With the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday approaching on Monday, our calendar had professional development time Friday afternoon after the students went home. We met within our Departments and Social Studies looked together at the Common Core and C3 Framework to identify Priority Standards as the first step toward a Proficiency Based Diploma for Graduation.

Our Model UN Conference is scheduled for May 16 and 17 at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. This will be our 10th year attending. Its a great experience for our students to role play countries in a meeting of the United Nations. Its also good for them to be exposed to students from an urban area, and to experience some of the sights Boston has to offer. Students are in Committees during the day on the 16th and the 17th, but during the evening of the 16th we take them on a walk to Bunker Hill, "Old Ironsides", and a nice little boat ride over to Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall. Overall its a great experience, and we started the process this week! So far we have 18 students signed up and over the next few weeks we will begin the research of the countries and the topics. All of this is outside of our regular classes, but really enhances our interest in the Social Studies. It's a lot of fun and hard work!