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!