Marching ahead

The end of March is fast approaching (though not fast enough for me!)! We started the week with quizzes and the Great Depression. We are learning about how the Depression impacted peoples lives and reading real letters written by children to Roosevelt asking for help. We also learned about FDR's New Deal, and wrote responses to those children from FDR's perspective using the New Deal. In Psychology I introduced a project in which they have to identify a famous psychological experiment and present it to the class. We also looked at Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment as a model for this. Zimbardo has followed this up with a wonderful book I read called The Lucifer Effect.

(Dr. Philip Zimbardo)

Tuesday was round two of Parent/Teacher Conferences. I had way more parents than last week, and we had nice conversations about how their children were doing in class. I had the students reflect on their learning in a written format ahead of time and shared those reflections with the parents. Despite wiping out my energy for the week with a 14 hour day, it was a good night. I also stumbled onto this great animation that shows the history of the US in a map!

(Still of the animation)

Wednesday was a wacky day... The Sophomores were out of the building going a job shadow and the Freshmen were all on a field trip. In addition, all the juniors were taking a state required Science test in the morning. So in the afternoon we had classes with juniors and seniors only. It was definitely a weird day. Throw in how exhausted I was from Tuesday night and it was a bit like the twilight zone. The 9th graders field trip to Lewiston to experience culture and counter stereotypes is one that I would have liked to go on. I think it was a great experience for 9th graders in our rural school to see what Jewish, Islam, and Christian cultures are like as well as how they integrate in the public schools there.

On Thursday I took my AP U.S. history class to the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Museum in Skowhegan, Maine. The facility is now organized through the University of Maine, and I have been taking my AP classes there for a decade! One piece of the AP Exam is something called the DBQ or Document Based Question. This is where a student is given a question and 9 excerpts from historical documents. They then must use the documents to write an essay response to the question. For this field trip, my students are exposed to lots of primary source documents. There job is to pick 6 and then create a question that ties the documents together as if it were a DBQ. I call this assignment, Create Your Own DBQ. During the field trip students are introduced to the role Senator Smith played in U.S. history as the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress and to have her name before a major political party as candidate for President of the United States. Students learn about how she was the first person to stand up to Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare with her Declaration of Conscience speech in 1950. The Staff of Director Dr. David Richards, Collection Specialist Angela Stockwell, and Museum Assistant John Taylor do a fantastic job! They are knowledgeable, helpful, and work very well with students. I can't say enough great things about the service they have provided over the years. Its always nice to walk through her house that is a living museum and the historical timeline of Cold War era artifacts. But I really love the Library part where we get to look at real letters and other documents from the time period. The Field Trip wouldn't be possible without the generosity of the Library. We have no money in our budget for field trips, but luckily the Library pays for field trips through their endowment. As a result we get a solid 3 hours of immersion in the Cold War and just a nice day overall!

(Senator Smith and Me)

(My students researching)

(Newspaper headline from the Senator's run for the Presidency)

We finished the week with a normal day on Friday but there is plenty more to come next week! In our prep for the Model UN Conference we will be doing a simulation next week. World War Two will come into focus for us next week as well!

Too much in one week

Well it wasn't quite the 8 days a week the Beatles sang about, but it was a 6 day week at least! Sunday we all had to be at school at 1:30 to welcome the visiting committee from NEASC. At 2 we did an hour long presentation with Staff and students highlighting some of the cool things we have been doing at Maranacook. The French teacher and I presented along with a student about the Rhone American Cemetery project we did connected to our trip to France last Spring and showed the news clip that covered it. (On a related note, we also found out our new course for next year Sacrifice for Freedom will run! We have 13 students signed up and it will team-taught between myself and the French teacher. Students will earn 1/2 credit in foreign language, and 1/2 credit in social studies. They will be continuing the work of finding families and telling the stories of the soldiers buried in Europe as well as civilians. We have lots of international organizations supporting us, and we are planning for another exchange, its all very exciting!). Then we had a 30 minute break followed by one on one interviews with visiting committee members to talk about our classes and student work. After these interviews there was a brief reception with refreshments and I was on my way home by 5:30. It went fine, but not how most of us want to spend a Sunday afternoon. The visiting committee headed back to their Hotel where they worked until about 9:30pm to prepare for their observations which started on Monday.

(The Rhone American Cemetery we visited in France last April)

Monday's classes went well. We analyzed dreams and talked about different theories around dream analysis in Psychology. In U.S. history we did a mini stock market simulation meant to show the crash of the market in 1929 that went very well. I had only 2 visitors come in one class, and in in another. My 3rd class had no one come in! After school was meeting time! I was chair of the curriculum committee and we wrote the report about how our curriculum aligns with the NEASC standards. The meeting went well and we were able to tell them our concerns as well as emphasize what we do well. That was followed by a meeting with the Leadership Team. I thought the questions in this meeting were interesting. They assumed that the Team had been a part of a common instructional and planning model and I do not think we have. Perhaps we are moving in this direction?

Tuesday I had to miss out on the NEASC stuff in order to attend a training around the Marzano Teaching Standards. The way teachers are being evaluated is changing and we are looking to adopt the model advocated by Dr. Marzano. As a result, a team of about 15 teachers from my district met with teams from others schools in the State for a 2nd training. The first one was abysmal to put it kindly. This presentation was better, more engaging and relevant. I always find it comical when teachers are "taught" a new way of teaching that is nothing like lecturing from slides and yet to be taught this new method they lecture from slides. Do they really not get the hypocrisy? Having said that, I understand why Marzano's model is appealing. Rather than the Observer doing a lot of work in advance to observe a class, the teacher does all the work to prepare the Observer! Isn't that great? I am over exaggerating a bit, but the fact remains that if a teacher wants to get a high mark on the scale they are going to have to give the Observer lots of information in advance and make sure their lesson does certain things Marzano requires. It may be good teaching, but if you don't monitor for at least 50% of the student's understanding you are in trouble! Oh well, there will be more to come on this!

Wednesday was a normal day, the only one of the week really. Anticipation was high for just what the visiting committee would say in our staff meeting as they left to finalize the written report. What they said was a mixed bag to be honest! They praised our advisor/advisee program and commented on some of the other good things we are doing. What surprised me most was the feeling of being scolded we got in the revelation of the recommendations. I know partially it is the style of the NEASC chair, but it definitely felt misplaced. The emphasis was on lack of community support and lack of adherence to the core values and beliefs which I feel just isn't true. What is true is that there was a general malaise about some of the criteria NEASC was asking from us that felt to many to be not as important as things like updating the curriculum, aligning with common core, and more. I thought our Principal and our Superintendent sent out wonderful responses afterward. They reminded us that of course we have areas to improve on, but we should be proud of what we have accomplished and what we do for students. So at least that's over for now!

Thursday came and I thought I lucked out, no school! But alas, we were called in to still have parent/teacher conferences that night. I had 6 parents signed up and all 6 came. I was also able to get some work done so it worked out really well. It's always nice to see parents but I can't help but wonder if we could somehow make this better? 4 hours and 6 parents just seems like its not really working the way its intended?

Friday was a workshop day for us. In the morning we looked at literacy strategies with the hopes of picking a few for grades 6-12 that we would agree to use each year in all classes 6-12. I really enjoyed talking with my colleagues about the work I had done around compare and contrast. I also learned about a few other strategies. We picked 6 strategies (from the books The Core Six, Notice and Note, and The Thinkquuiry Toolkit) and I feel really good about all 6. The plan is that we will teach all 6 of these strategies each year 6-12 (but not necessarily in every class). I think this will help students tremendously and one of the first examples of vertical articulation in our curriculum I have seen in years! The afternoon was devoted to learning about proficiency based education. The state of Maine requires the class of 2018 (next year's 9th grade) to graduate with a proficiency based diploma. this means we have to have things in place for 9th graders in the Fall. I liked how the information was presented, it was designed to get us to shift our paradigm. However, I have lots of concerns mostly about where the time will come from to do this well, but I'm also concerned about students and parents understanding this shift.

(this is from our literacy workshop today)

Next week we will have the rest of the Moral Courage presentations and we will be studying the Great Depression in my U.S. History classes. I have my last round of parent/teacher conferences on Tuesday night and a field trip to the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Museum on Thursday. Finally, next Saturday morning is a "Food for Thought" networking session at the Margaret Chase Smith Library sponsored by the Maine Council for the Social Studies. The good news is that we will be in Florida on vacation in less than 4 weeks!

Short week

As it turns out, this was a short week for me! A bad cold kept me home on Monday and a Spring Blizzard of sorts sent us home early on Wednesday and kept us home on Thursday.

We were supposed to have parent/teacher conferences on Thursday night that are now rescheduled to next Thursday night. We were also supposed to have a Maine Council for the Social Studies Coard meeting that has been postponed to April. So in two in half days of school they were pretty quiet for me as it turns out.

My U.S. history students are preparing for a test. We wrapped up World War One this week in preparation for the test.

Students in Ethics started work on their Moral Courage Projects. A wonderful source for this is the website, Americans Who Tell the Truth. As it turns out the man who made all of those paintings, Robert Shetterley, will be at my school in April. He will be there with some of his paintings conducting a workshop for teens around moral courage. It should be fantastic!

Next week will be jampacked with interesting activities... I have to go to school on Sunday to welcome the NEASC visiting committee. This committee is coming to give the school its accreditation. In addition to being here Sunday, they will be meeting with us and observing classes on Monday and Tuesday. They will give a brief report before they leave on Wednesday. The final report will be received by us in the Fall. Tuesday of next week I am doing a follow up training around the Marzano Standards for Teaching at the University of Maine at Farmington. Thursday is an early release day for students with professional development in the afternoon around literacy strategies. Thursday night is now parent/teacher conferences. Friday is a workshop day further working on literacy strategies. I will have lots to blog about next week. Next weekend will be one where I will be ready to relax! Less than 40 days until our family vacation in Florida and that's what keeps me going. Come on Spring, let's have some warm weather already!

Winter Carnival Week

Substitute teachers... we need them! We couldn't function without them. Just like anything else there are strong ones and weaker ones. Either way, I appreciate them all. I think the students do as well. I was working this week and could hear the machinations from a class nearby with who had a sub. This is a much beloved sub who has been a sub for a very long time. What roused my attention was a young girl, "Will you take a selfie with me Mr. ______?" Apparently this sub is quite a super star. How many of us have been asked to be in a selfie by an adoring fan? The sub complied. The girl then asked "How do you spell your name?" Probably to accompany a facebook post or something. The sub responded, "I never used to get asked how my name was spelled when Little House on the Prairie was on the air." The girl asked, "What is Little House on the Prairie?" The sub responded, "A program that used to be on television back when television was a place you could turn to in order to learn a little history, or gain some insight into the human condition." Another kid said, "What's the human condition?" The sub said, "That may be the scariest question I've ever been asked." Another student chimed in, "Mr. ________ you're my favorite sub. I learn so much from you." What an enlightening 5 minutes of distraction that was!

(Homestead known as "The Little House on the Prairie"

Speaking of distraction (it was Winter Carnival week after all), Monday and Tuesday were fine. Regular classes and regular attention spans. Wednesdays are crazy anyway, so by the time we got to Thursday Winter Carnival was the only thing on their minds really. Distraction was the name of the game at the end of the week. That's ok, all in all it was just the right amount of fun and energy for them. Now we are ready to get back to business next week.

Winter Carnival hallway decorations

Within the madness was a meeting Tuesday night for 8th grade parents whose children will be incoming 9th graders next year. As the Social Studies Learning Leader I attended this meeting in order to answer questions and provide information about Global Explorations which is the Social Studies course 9th graders take. This was really interesting for me. For the first time I saw the paperwork the parents receive. It tells them their child's NWEA score and then what level they are recommended for based on that. It also tells them what level the teachers recommend them for based on what they do in the classroom. We had examples of typical Honors level assignments versus College Prep level so that parents and students could see the difference in the expectations. The night was very well attended and I think it was very helpful to those parents.

Wednesday we had another joint meeting with the English Department in order to share and discuss various literacy strategies. I shared 3 strategies that I have used with success and that I happen to like. Two of the strategies are form The Core Six book, and the other is from the Thinkquiry Toolkit. I have linked to all of them in this Blog before. Compare and Contrast, Discussion Web, and Inductive Learning are the strategies. There were other strategies shared by others that I found interesting and would like to try as well. This is all in preparation for a 6-12 workshop on 3/21 where we will vote on the top 4-6 strategies and agree that we will use them in our classes 6-12. I think this will be great for students going forward!

Next week in Psychology we will be doing some dream analysis, starting Moral Courage projects in Ethics, and getting into the Roaring 20's in U.S. history. My online class will be doing another group presentation, this time around the lessons learned form the Vietnam War. We also have the first round of parent/teacher conferences next week!

Marching ahead

With February vacation out of the way, the month of March looms with its longness and coldness. March is always a tough month and this year is no exception. We kick things off with a crazy week for Winter Carnival. We have 2 late nights of parent/teacher conferences in March coming up as well. I like meeting with parents, but its really hard to put in what end up being 15 hour days and have anything left for students the next day. Then our once every 10 year accreditation visit happens. A team of about 16 teachers will visit our school for 3 years and decide if we get to keep our accreditation or not. Testing for Juniors happens in March, as does the Spring play. There is also Model UN prep, and a bunch of other things I'm doing (like the "Food for Thought" PD for social studies teachers at the end of the month). I will be happy when March concludes!

(2014 Winter Carnival t shirt design)

I started off the week meeting with 9 teachers from my school who will be doing a book study that I am leading around the book "The Core Six". This is the same book my earlier webinars were based on. Most of our study will be online but should lead to some interesting thinking around the best literacy based instructional strategies!

All students registered for courses for next year this week, which may seem early but trust me it isn't. Sometime next week I will receive the signed forms from my 9th grade advisees and then go online to officially register them.

In U.S. History classes we wrapped up the Teddy Roosevelt simulation. We also did a small one class simulation that is really more like a game designed to teach them about the errors in reasoning that led to world war one. This game is called "War" and I got it from one of the my professors in College. I love how old it is, the citation in the handout says it was originally printed in Social Education Journal in 1966.

(photo I took of a recent copy of the journal Social Education, I don't have the one form 1966!)

My online VHS class rolls along with group projects posted to an online Wiki. Here they were assigned one of 4 options through the Choices program simulations. They had to defend the option they were assigned related to the end start of the Cold War. They were to pretend they were advising President Truman on how he should respond to the Soviet threat. Here is 2 parts of a student sample:

In Ethics we spent time this week looking at right vs. wrong dilemmas in order to point out that some dilemmas are actually right vs. right. This is where much of the rest of the course puts its emphasis. Students will be starting Moral Courage projects next week.

In Psychology, we spent some time looking at the structures of the brain, and how are senses fool us. We mapped the brain, and we looked at optical illusions, and other examples of perception. Next week students will be keeping a dream journal and they are already excited about it!

(Do you see the chin and ear of a young woman turning away, or the nose, mouth and eye of an old woman?)

Also this week, 6 different administrators visited my classroom in 10 minute intervals. They were practicing a walkthrough observation technique that will we be suing as part of our future evaluations. I was pleasantly surprised to find such positive and reassuring feedback. Apparently my students could articulate the target for the day! I was distracted by the simulation, so I couldn't hear what my students said to them when they visited. It was a little stressful, but I feel reassured a bit that I am on the right track.

Next week is Winter Carnival, which means I will get one good class out of each course next week and the rest of the week will basically be shot because of how distracted they will be by the Winter Carnival activities! I hope March comes in like a lion so it will go out like a lamb!