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!