College, Career and Civic Life

Two years ago I was one of two teachers in Maine paid to consult and advise on the new Standards for Social Studies to be proposed to each of the States in the same vein as the Common Core standards. I signed a nondisclosure agreement so I will spare any reader the details, but it was interesting to say the least. What emerged from this work was eventually NOT recommended for State standards, but instead as a guide for States to adjust or rewrite their State standards. This Document is known as the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards. The idea behind the framework is that Social Studies is all about preparing students for those three important things. My week exemplified the C3 Framework, so I feel like I am living this document in many ways.

In order to be ready for a job and one's responsibilities in a democracy, we have been working on cultivating Historical Inquiry skills. This work is based on the work of the Stanford History Education Group, and more specifically the book Reading, Thinking, and Writing About History by

Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, and Mark Felton. Our first investigation is to use primary source documents to draw a conclusion on who fired the first shot at Lexington Green in the Revolution. We also talked about why this question was important and controversial. Students will then craft a historical argument and learn to analyze the sources in writing. I'm really excited to try this out as I will also be presenting this and the student work in a Webinar in December.

College and Career were on my mind this week as well for our Advisee Day Out. Every year, 10th graders go with their Advisors on a College tour. This is paid for by a grant from MELMAC. I have 10th grade Advisees so I was lucky enough to be able to accompany them on this tour. Some advisee groups traveled to different schools in different parts of the State, but we all had a chance to see a Community College, a competitive Private College, and more of a University type setting. We first visited the campus of Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield. This school has recently purchased land nearby their current campus and so I see moving and/or expansion in their future. Our tour guide spent a good deal of time showing us the programs they offer from nursing to lineman work. He discussed how cheap their classes are compared with many schools and how credits can transfer. He also talked about the types of programs they offer and the types of jobs graduates have gotten who attended there. After leaving KVCC, we took a quick ride to the nationally known competitive school Colby College. Our first stop on campus was lunch in a dining hall. It was interesting to see the students eyes get big when they saw the food available. "How much can we take?" one student asked. "As much as you can eat." I said. I heard several others say "I can't wait for College, the food is awesome!" So at least they have that to be excited about. Following lunch we split up into smaller groups and had the chance to see a dorm room, several classes including state of the art labs and technology. We learned that Colby is expensive, but students who work hard and test well can qualify for grants to pay for their tuition. We discovered that very few Maine students attend Colby, but many from other states and countries attend. Our final stop of the day was Thomas College in Waterville. Thomas is not as expensive as Colby, but more expensive than KVCC. Thomas is more like a University in terms of admissions and its campus, although it is a private school. The top two programs at Thomas are Criminal Justice and Sports Management. Students learned about the job placement guarantee from Thomas where they guarantee you get hired after graduation in a job related to your degree, or they refund your tuition (over four years each year you remain not hired). All three school had a variety of pros and cons, and all were very different. It really got our students thinking College and Career life, and for some it was scary!

(KVCC)

(Thomas College)

Friday afternoon was our first Early Release Professional Development of the year. We are piloting a new process for Teacher Evaluations this year and its based on the work of Robert Marzano and his book The Art and Science of Teaching. One area he talks about is using role play and competitive games to engage students. So we did this to deepen our learning about the Marzano teaching standards. Groups of teachers had to create a presentation based on one of the elements from Marzano in helping students interact with new knowledge. My group made a video about chunking information into digestible bites. Then we shared our presentations and had to guess which element was being presented. It was a little outside of my comfort zone in some ways and not my learning style. While people were laughing, moving, getting competitive, etc. and that may have been engaging, I find things like that difficult. The noise, the chaos, it all makes me uncomfortable and distracts me from what I'm trying to learn. I am one of those rare few people (I guess) who would rather be lectured to in a quiet setting. But I know I am in the minority and that many learners need what we had to day, so I was willing to play along. I did learn a bit more some of the details, but just the idea that we are going to be evaluated with this new process that not everyone yet understands is pretty overwhelming. But that seems to be the norm in the world of education, so I'll do my best and keep at it for my students and their what's best for them.

(Robert Marzano)

Next week October begins and things start to get really interesting! I can't wait for my guest speaker Attorney James Lawley to return and talk about Constitutional Rights with U.S. history students and to discuss the death Penalty with my Ethics class!

Historical Investigation

My VHS class on American Foreign Policy has really taken off. Students have debated the start of the Cold War and are engaged in a simulation around advising President Truman in connection with the War in Korea. This simulation comes from the Choices program. I struggle with online learning as I feel it is more formulaic and not as passionate as the face to face learning. However, this group of students seems very enthusiastic and interested in the material.

Students in Sacrifice for Freedom, continue to research with primary sources. In some cases they are even translating the sources into English to use for a presentation about their country during World War Two.

(soldiers prepare to parachute into France as part of Operation Jedburgh)

In history v. Hollywood, students finished watching the film Glory. They then started working on historical research to analyze accuracy for film reviews. The next film we will be watching is about the fight for Women's Suffrage called Iron Jawed Angels.

Values and the research of Rushworth Kidder was discussed in Ethics class this week. We looked at a few hypothetical scenarios and talked about the theory that all humans share the same values. These students have a vocabulary quiz coming up soon as well.

The Revolution and propaganda were the topic of the day in both AP and Honors U.S. history. On Friday, I attended a training to help me prepare for a webinar in December. Another teacher and I are using the book Reading, Writing, and Thinking about History, in order to pilot a unit around argumentative writing. The book uses the Historical Investigation model to research andvwrite about 6 controversial questions in U.S. History before the Civil War. We are each piloting one of these units and then will share the student work and any advice we have in a webinar. The State of Maine has once again received a grant to sponsor the Cross Discipline Literacy Network that is providing the webinars in many different content areas K-12. In order to prepare for this, my students have read about the French and Indian War, and how Britain used taxation to pay for the War and the colonial responses. This will help them for the Historical Investigation we will start next week, "Who fired the first shot at Lexington Green?"

Next week I will blog specifically about this investigation and our first advisee day out! I have 10th grade advisees and next Wednesday we will be traveling to 3 different types of colleges so that students can see what college is like. This is paid for with a MELMAC grant.

Habits of Work

With several classes now down, things are settling in a bit. We are still dealing with tagging students for Focus time and figuring out issues that arise around that. In all my classes, we spent a little bit of time reflecting on the anniversary of the attack on 9/11 and how that day still affects us. Our class rosters have firmed up, especially in the elective classes which tend to see a good deal of change. In History vs. Hollywood we have been discussing Film as an art form and how it can be used to teach about history. We have also delved into the basic of the Civil War and finally this week started to watch the film Glory. The students are very quiet in this class! The class is meant to be a lot of discussion around the things we see in the film and our analysis, but this has proven difficult with this class so far. I'm hopeful that after a few more classes they will want to talk more.

In Honors U.S. History this week we had our first Pop Quiz! We started the week introducing the online textbook for the class and we talked about how to read from it and take notes. I warned them we might have a quiz over the reading. I tagged as many as I could before the class when it was due and reviewed the highlights with them. Then we had a quiz! There was much panic, but I told them not to overreact and that it was all part of the learning process. In addition, we talked about the Puritans a bit, and the idea of Democracy and Democratic Ideals.

(tongue in cheek depiction of the first Thanksgiving)

In AP U.S. History class we talked about historical thinking skills and did an activity to illustrate each skill. We also started talking about the outcome of the French and Indian War and the events that led to the Revolution. I asked students if the Revolution was inevitable, or at what point did it become inevitable. We did some investigation, debate, and discussion. It feels like many students had always assumed there was no choice, but now they wonder. They also wonder about the motives of those rebel leaders. It was a great discussion!

(Paul Revere's depiction of the Boston Massacre

In Ethics we just got into some philosophy about how people make ethical decisions. Students were given thought experiments that led them to discover the idea of consequential or Utilitarian thinking, The Categorical Imperative or rules-based thinking, and the Golden Rule or care-based thinking. We talked about how most dilemmas are analyzed from one of these 3 perspectives (or a combination of them). Soon we will be looking at universal values and the ramifications for ethical dilemmas.

In my VHS class, students finally got into the content. I have 23 students from Virginia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio, and Switzerland. They seem very enthusiastic and energized to learn about U.S. Foreign Policy. Online classes pose a different set of challenges and rewards compared to face to face classes. In some ways I really enjoy the class, in others I grow weary of it. Because of the need from VHS to have every section of a class the same, I do not have much freedom to change to content of the course. I t would be great to make edits on the fly, instead I have to wait until Summer and propose changes. By then, my mind is not in it and its more difficult to make those proposals. Also, it goes through a process and so it may not be allowed, so what's my motivation to take time to propose changes if the likelihood of being approved is unknown? At any rate, I am pleased with student progress so far.

I am teaching a new class this year, Sacrifice for Freedom, which I am co-teaching with a Foreign Language teacher who just happens to be able to speak German, French, and Spanish. The idea is that students will focus on the World War Two era, and create a website for educational purposes to document people and their stories who were involved in the war, resistance, collaboration, etc. Students must make use of a target language for resources, either French, German, or Spanish. At this moment, the students have been tasked with creating 40 minute presentations about the basic events of the war within their country. We have some great guest speakers lined up and still working on more! It is a seminar style class, students self assess themselves and my co-teacher and I meet with each individual every two weeks to talk with them about their grade and then issue our official grade based mostly on the self assessment. I have enjoyed the class so far. We have pushed the students in some ways (our presentation requirements are more in depth and demand more of them than they have done in High School) and yet given them lots of freedom and opportunity to do the work of real historians in areas of interest without having to worry about memorizing things for a test. It is just the beginning, but we are all very excited!

Something else I thought a lot about this week is a new initiative we have at school this year. A group of teachers met last school year to discuss the State mandate that incoming 9th graders graduate with a Proficiency based diploma. During these discussions to support those students, they proposed that the school implement a standards based Habits of work rubric to help support the work habits that lead to success. This is the HOW rubric they came up with:

The idea is that each student will be assessed on the three areas of the HOW rubric in each class every 2 weeks. To remain eligible for privileges and co-curricular activities, they must average a 2.25 or higher on the HOW rubric in each class with no "1"'s (average the three habits together for each class). Other than that, it does not affect a student's GPA or the grade in that class. Very likely the HOW score and the grade will correlate, however. I think this HOW rubric will help students see the connection between effort, work ethic, and success. We are struggling currently to find a way to keep track of these scores as our grading program does not work well with standards based stuff. Aside from these technical difficulties that we are working on fixing, I think it will have a positive impact on students and be great vehicle for conversation about work ethic.

Next week I being plans for the first Cross Discipline Literacy Network Webinar and really start getting into the foundations of Government in the U.S., it should be fun!

To the Moon

After a restful three day weekend, we were back at it on Tuesday. Because of my illness on Friday, I met my students for the first time on Tuesday in those classes. In Ethics this week we spent time talking about where ethics come from and why we should be concerned about ethics. We talked about what evidence exists that the world is becoming more or less ethical. We also discussed the famous thought experiment of men working on the tracks and a speeding train on its way to kill them and whether or not it is right to steer the train to another track killing one, or leave it alone and let it kill 5. We had an even deeper discussion about whether or not pushing someone in front of the train with the same outcome is different ethically from steering the train with the same outcome. We of course relied on the Justice series with Michael Sandel to help us out.

In my brand new co-taught class, Sacrifice for Freedom, we participated in a little simulation. this role playing activity put out by the Choices Program, is designed to help us think about the competing interests at the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War One that led to World War Two. We also discussed our goal of creating a website where we will store our research and the information we learn about the people in Europe and America who were affected by the War. Its really great to be able to co-teach a class, and I look forward to the chance to observe my colleague teaching and vice versa. The course is designed to be more of a seminar with a lot of discussion and project work.

For AP U.S. History we started by reviewing the reading and work the students had done over the summer. We also started discussing the new themes and historical thinking skills that are part of the AP U.S. history redesigned curriculum and exam. We read an article about the death of Silas Deane and how new interpretations of evidence could lead us to believe he may have been murdered, when previously many thought he had committed suicide. Students had a chance to apply these skills using the article.

(Silas Deane)

In my History v. Hollywood class this week we spent time looking at early film clips and talking about how film making has changed. We also talked about how films can be used to teach history and tell stories and the limitations of film in trying to do this. Students in this class can receive College credit from Thomas College, and so we discussed the benefits of that as well. Students seem very excited about the course and the College Credit option. Next week we will talk about the Civil War a bit and start watching the first film in the course, Glory. The film tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

(Memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment)

In my Honors U.S. History class, we put Columbus on trial! We have been reading, and discussing what Columbus actually did. We talked about the myths and the facts as we know them and how this impacts what we have come to believe about Columbus and whether or not he still deserves a Holiday. I used the book Rethinking Columbus as a resource to help with our study. Our mock trial ended with a conviction of Columbus and an essay assignment to use sources to support a claim about the way we remember Columbus.

(Columbus! Another myth? This is the first painting of Columbus, but was painted 13 years after he died, so did he really look like this? How can we know?)

My VHS class started this week as well. I teach the online class U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-present. The first week is really just getting to know each other.

The real focus of my week was a new initiative we have implemented this year called Focus Time. We have added a 50 minute block of time to our schedule on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. This is a time when all teachers and students have set aside to work on extension of class activities, extra support on assignments, or extra curricular type activities. How it works is that each day a teacher selects at least 10-12 students to "tag" for Focus Time the next day. Some days Social Studies has a priority over other subjects, other days its other subjects. Then in the morning students check a website called EdYouSched and it tells them who tagged them and where they are supposed to go. If they do not get tagged, they go to a silent study hall. Students who are really struggling in classes but do not qualify for Special Education could be targeted for a new Federally mandated program called Response to Intervention. Whatever services they might receive would happen during Focus Time as well. We EdYouSched, which is a web-based app that we use to "tag" the students and find out where students are once they have or haven't been tagged. Students use it to see who tagged them.

This is my honest take on it as of this moment. It's a bit clunky, a bit stressful (trying to think of who to tag and then doing it), and I'm not sure the students I have (at least so far) really use the whole time effectively. However, I LOVE the fact that we are trying to do something to change the culture in our building around learning. I think it sends a great message to students and parents that we are committed to supporting students to meet standards. Especially for students who struggle or need time with the teacher for help, I think it will have a big impact. I think we will end up making some tweaks, or maybe even some bigger changes. It seems in my classes students need help from me in fits and starts, when we are working on certain projects or certain types of projects. So I see there being times when I am tagging students without much of a reason and that feels odd to me but I think we have to do it to make it work for everyone. Once everyone is used to it, there will be fewer of us feeling odd at times. I really have to applaud my colleagues for taking a risk with this in an effort to help students. It would be much easier to do what we have always done and wonder if we could do anything different, it takes a lot of courage to try something different and risk it not working. One of  my advisees on Friday had an assignment and needed a good deal of help from the teacher, but the assignment was due last period. He plays football and so a "0" would make him ineligible for football.  I told him to ask the teacher to tag him before school. He ran to the teacher who tagged him and when he came back he said "Thank God for Focus Time". This is the same student who had mumbled that it was "stupid" on the first day of school. So when I was feeling a little stressed by Focus Time this week, I reminded myself of a quote from President Kennedy when discussing the U.S. plans to put a man on the moon. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." So let's put these students "on the moon" and see what happens!