Zombie week

Parent/Teacher Conferences... maybe its because I'm an introvert and I desperately need time to recharge? I'm not sure, but staying at school for almost 13 hours and then turning around and going back for regular days for 3 more days is maybe the most exhausting thing for me right now. It takes another whole week for me to recover. It impacts my grading and my teaching as well as my family. I truly get the need for parents to talk to teachers about their students, I just wish there was another way to do it. I'm probably in the minority, but I would rather get out later in the school a couple of days and find a way to make this work better. I think it really does have an impact in a negative way.

So while in zombie mode this week, I did do a simulation during Focus Time with the students who are attending the Model UN Conference in May. We have taken students for 12 years now to the Model UN conference at Northeastern University sponsored by the United Nations Association of Greater Boston. Its always great fun, and the students work so hard on the topical issues of the day. I really enjoy working with them, despite the extra time it takes. I can't wait to blog about our experience in May! Topics this year include ISIS, Ukraine crisis, access to water, genocide, and more.

In U.S. History classes we experienced the Stock Market Crash of 1929 through a stock market simulation. We also started talking about the Depression and watched some of Ken Burns' excellent documentary on the Dust Bowl. More to come next week.

Students in Psychology are working on famous experiments in psychology and will be doing presentations. I just finished reading "The Tell-Tale Brain" by V.S. Ramachandran. It is an amazing book that looks at the idea of what makes the human brain unique. One of the areas of the most interest I found was his study of mirror neurons and his idea that maybe autism is connected to missing mirror neurons. This book is very helpful for teaching this class.

We are growing closer to the AP U.S. history exam. Those students wrote a DBQ in class this week which will help them prepare for the Exam. This essay uses primary sources to answer an historical question. My students wrote about the Treaty of Versailles after World War One for this essay.

(President Woodrow Wilson played a pivotal role in the Treaty of Versailles)

Next week we are headed to our annual Field Trip at the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Museum in Skowhegan, Maine. Its always fun for the students to learn about the first woman in both the House and the Senate who happens to be from Maine. The Museum has a wonderful and vast collection of Cold War era documents. Great fun!

(Margaret Chase Smith)

Testing

This week began the Smart Balanced Assessment for the juniors. This is the first time we have ever offered this assessment. The whole thing is done online using their iPads. There has been some concern about how well the technology will work and whether the format of the test will be frustrating for the students. Time will tell for both of these, but we held our first tests on Thursday and so far I'm not aware of any major issues. They will finish up on Monday. I wonder if their plan for how to administer these tests really makes sense? I think rather than scheduling two different days with the possibility of the whole day available is wise? Maybe only have 2 hours a day and then the rest of the day regular classes. I say this because on Thursday a bunch of kids finished at 12:30. TWO HOURS EARLY. All they could do was hang around in the gym. I think this is a bad plan. Eventually many got dismissed and got rides home. Seems strange to do it this way to me. Maybe it will be done differently next year?

This week was actually a short week for my classes. Thursday was a special day in that Juniors were testing, Sophomores were out of the building on a job shadow, and Freshmen were on a field trip. the seniors had some special presentations in the morning and were dismissed at noon. Friday was a workshop day for teachers, so we only had classes on Monday to Wednesday this week. It was, however, quite a busy week!

In U.S. History classes students were analyzing the foreign policy issues at the end of World War One and looked at potential causes of the Second World War. This is one of my favorite topics. There is something about the horror and tragedy of World War One that has always captured my interest.

In my Honors Sacrifice for Freedom seminar class, the students are making great progress. We have several personal stories to post to the website we are creating. In addition, students are planning to erect a memorial here on campus for Lewis Goddard. This man died during World War Two. I'll have more to say about this as the weather warms and we plan our memorial and dedication.

Psychology students have spent a good deal of time on the different approaches to psychology and the research process. Meanwhile, in Ethics, students presented projects around Moral Courage this week.

Even though we had no regular classes on Thursday, it was a very long day because we did have parent/teacher conferences Thursday night. I understand the importance of parent communication and I attend the conferences for my child. However, I am glad Friday was a workshop day because that late night wipes me out. I still wonder if there might be a better way to deal with communication, but I won't go on a rant about that now.

Friday was a workshop day for teachers. This is a great opportunity for us to have time to dig deeply into professional development. On this day we spent time analyzing habits of work and how best to implement our school wide rubric for this. We also had time to continue to modify our curriculum to align with common core and the proficiency based diploma required for Maine graduates in the class of 2020 (it was 2018, but we just found out that it has been delayed to 2020). The day was jam packed with plenty to do and we still have much to do, but it was nice to make progress. I even had the chance to work on some of the stuff I got out of the DBQ project workshop I attended!

Spring starts next week, so I hope we get a little warmer weather soon!

DBQ's and more

One of my favorite activities is a little simulation designed to get students thinking about World War One.  I call it simply the War Simulation. I first learned about it as a junior in College at the University of Maine at Farmington in a class activity from my Professor on Social Studies methods, Dr. Rod Farmer. According to his handout, he adapted it from the journal Social Education from 1966. However, a quick Google search will find it all over the internet and it apparently was in the book Social Studies for the Twenty-first Century: Methods and Materials for Teaching in Middle and Secondary Schools, 3rd Edition published in 1999. This simulation puts students in pairs and assigns them a fictional country on a fictional world. They are thrown into a state of war and must decide to stay neutral or go to war. They end up negotiating with other countries and forming alliances. The idea is to show students how quickly World War One could have gone from a small to a large conflict. It also demonstrates how the cause of the War are somewhat in dispute and why and how U.S. President Woodrow Wilson may have come up with his "Peace Without Victory" plan. The simulation never fails to make these points well. In addition, student never fail to get consumed by the strategy part of this simulation. It makes our study of the conflict, and the outcome of the war, much easier as I keep referring back to the simulation. Always good fun!

Since the only class all juniors take is U.S. History, The Guidance Department used some of our class meeting time this week to help students prepare for some testing. All juniors will be taking the SAT on April 15 and the State of Maine is paying for it. So They registered for the test online. In addition, students will be doing the Smarter Balanced Assessment for the first time. This involves downloading an app so they can practice how the test will work on their iPads. The Smarter Balanced Assessment has gotten a lot of media attention recently. Our school is one of the first in the State to take it, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Unfortunately students missed a day of class for this prep and will miss two other days for testing.

In Psychology class we have been studying the Brain and its functions. This includes mapping the basic areas as well. Students seem to find this interesting as we also discuss examples of people who have had brain damage to the different areas and how their lives changed as a result. The most famous being the case of Phineas Gage who was impaled by a tamping iron and lived. The study of his changed behaviors helped pave the way for modern psychology to emerge.

(Phineas Gage)

In Ethics classes this week students started their Moral Courage projects. They get to pick someone who has exhibited Moral Courage and defend why. We debated and discussed the case of Edward Snowden and raised the question. Is he exhibiting Moral Courage or is he just a traitor?

One of the highlights of my week was a professional development day spent learning about the DBQ project. On Tuesday, myself and two other teachers from my school traveled to Portland to meet with a bunch of other teachers and learn about this innovative project. There are some definite similarities to the Stanford History Education Group, but lots of time and money has been spent by this teacher and a few others developing Curriculua using historical questions and primary source documents. Luckily, The Maine Department of Education received a grant so that each person who attended received a free binder full of these units which normally go for $350 a piece. Then we spent the day learning about the units and how they are taught. We will choose one to practice with our students and then when we meet again May we will bring student work with us to share. I will be doing a unit on the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. I can't wait to share and hear from others in May!

March Fourth!

March is a tough month. Everyone is tired of winter, but its still cold and snowy. There aren't any real breaks the whole month and it's testing season. So the best attitude to have is to just keep going!

Since this week features the only date of the whole calendar year that is also a sentence (March Fourth!), its a great week to adopt the attitude. This month I have a Maine Council for the Social Studies meeting, Smarter Balanced Assessment for juniors, a workshop day, a training on using DBQ's (next week), and a field trip to the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Museum. All things that will make the month tiring but exciting.

This week we were focused on digging in. In U.S. history we examined war and specifically the details of World War One. In Ethics we looked at Moral Courage and the students started some research on real life examples. In Psychology we looked at the famous experiment on obedience to authority conducted by Stanley Milgram. All of these things added up to a busy week!

My blog this week is very short because we just spent a lot of time working as usual. I have been thinking baout making a chenge with this blog for a while and its a week like this that leads me to conclude that starting next school year I will reduce my blog posts to two times a month. Then, each post will have much more to it.

Next week I will blog about the DBQ project training and the MCSS meeting. Until then, March forth!