The Quiet

Well things are finally slowing down a little for me. For the first time all year (I think) and I didn't have one meeting this week. As a result, I actually felt a bit like a normal person. There are still lots of things to do before the end of the year. This includes getting awards ready, leaving a supply list to be ordered, and saying goodbye to folks who are retiring or leaving. I also have been working on firming up plans for the field trip with my advisees just before the last day of school. So there is still much going on, it just is starting to feel a bit more manageable. Crazily enough, my family and I are accompanying 4 Maranacook students to France the day after school gets out! So even though this week was quiet, there is still much to stress about.

My students are into their Final project presentations with full force. U.S. history students are examining Native American rights and issues of sovereignty. Ironically, tensions between Maine Native Americans and the state of Maine have really increased in the last week or so as we work on this project. I hope that the state and the Wabanki Confederation can ease the tensions soon, but it has piqued some of the students interest as they hear about the tensions in the media.

(Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis)

My Sacrifice for Freedom students are putting together websites with their research. We have earned some money for Lewis Frelan Goddard's memorial, but not as much as we need. So we may have to wait until next year to actually get the memorial installed. There are still some things in the works, so we will see what happens. Either way, the memorial will still happen.

With this week over, there are only 12 students days left. This includes Final Assessment periods, and a field trip with our advisees. So much happens in these last few days it always make my head spin. Usually I need 3 or 4 days of nothing in June to recover. This year I won't have that luxury because we are going to France. We fly to Paris overnight on Thursday June 18 and land on Friday. We will be staying in Paris in a hotel for 3 days. We have a whirlwind planned including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Opera. I have been to Paris twice before, but none of the students nor my family have ever been. I also speak no French, so it will be a bit of an adventure! On Monday June 22 we travel by train from Paris to the city of Vannes in Brittany. There, host families will pick up the students and we will go to the Flat we have rented. One day over the next two weeks we will all meet together for the day. Otherwise than that we won't see them while they are with the families unless there is a problem or an emergency. Let's hope neither happens. We fly back home on July 6. At that point I will probably need a week of doing nothing to recover!

Next week is the last week of full days, only half days remain after that. this gives us time to grade assessments. the end is in sight, but there is still much to do!

Memorial Day

Yes Memorial Day is on the horizon, but we haven't finished yet! Another busy week saw my students working on Civil Rights in U.S. History, Euthanasia in Ethics, and Sleep and Hypnosis in Psychology.

The class I teach through Virtual High School has ended. This is the last time I will be teaching this class on American Foreign Policy and I'm happy about that. Not only is the content of the course tough to change and not great right now, but there are so many issues teaching students in an online class I was so tired of it. I good number of students each semester have no intention of following through with the course, they just want a study hall at their school and feel its easy to blow off someone they never meet in person. I spent a lot of time chasing down students. VHS policy is no breaks, students are to work through vacations. Except that they don't and in the Spring between the end of February up tot he end of April it seems like at least one student or more is on vacation every week. Then you get hit with a litany of excuses. My school has decided they can meet these sort of needs of students in other ways and has allowed me to give up teaching the course. I learned a lot from doing it and I think it worked well for some students, but I am ready to leave it behind.

I was very excited this week to see the coverage of the assembly we held last week by WCSH 6. This program aired at 6pm on Wednesday May 20, 2015 and was very well done. We appreciate the coverage of our students and of Mr. Goddard who was killed in France during World War Two.

This was great coming on the heels of the coverage by The Kennebec Journal and the article they published the week before. We are hoping this media attention helps us to fund the Memorial planned by students to be on the Maranacook campus and to be dedicated to Lewis Frelan Goddard. We have a GoFundMe page to raise the money. This has been a great experience for all of us.

As Memorial Day approaches, this story continues to warm my heart.  What would Frelan Goddard think about the impact he has had on my students?

There are three weeks left in the school year and I expect they will be very busy!

What a week!

Boy did I pack a lot into this week... The big Assembly to honor the memory of Lewis Frelan Goddard and the Model UN Conference all in the same week!

Of course all the usual things were happening this week too. The Juniors had to do Science Testing on Monday and were on a Physics Field Trip to Funtown on Thursday, so I didn't see much of them this week. In my U.S. history class, students have been learning about the War in Vietnam and we are planning on a Mock Trial of the incident at My Lai when William Calley was accused of murdering innocent women and children.

In Psychology, we wrapped up listening to the podcast "Serial", and students have an assignment to draw some conclusions form the podcast.

My largest area of focus for the first half of the week was the assembly for Lewis Frelan Goddard. I have mentioned this project several times. We have been working on gathering many stories of people who lived through the World War Two years and will be posting these stories on a website. Some of these folks were German POW’s in Houlton, ME, some were from the area and served in the war, some participated in the resistance in Europe. We have been working with a man who lives inot too far away, Mr. Goddard saw the media coverage from two years ago around the project we did on the Maine soldier buried in France. He came to the school as his brother is buried in the same cemetery. He has shared with us a scrapbook and sat down to do several sessions of oral history. Mr. Goddard’s brother, Lewis Frelan Goddard, was a First Sergeant in the US Army during World War Two and a member of the Highly secret Operation Jedburgh. His “Team Ivor” parachuted into France in August of 1944. Goddard was killed while parachuting in. His body was recovered by locals in a small town and they hid him from the Nazi’s. This story is documented in the scrapbook and was learned by Mr. Goddard when he traveled to France in the 1970’s and met some of the veterans of the French Resistance.

So moved by this story, we have received permission form the Superintendent to erect a permanent monument here on school grounds to Lewis Frelan Goddard and the sacrifice he made. We are still working on getting the small monument constructed, but the plan is for it to include a small plaque with basic information about Lewis Goddard. 

In order to educate the school about what this monument will be and why it will be here, we thought a school wide assembly would be in order.  Reporter Jackie Ward from WCSH 6 also came to cover the assembly. 

The memorial is not yet finished, as we are still raising money. We have a website to raise money: http://www.gofundme.com/frelanww2.

The assembly was a smashing success and the students were wonderful!  Local Newspaper The Kennebec Journal, also covered our story.

I hope to have more to say on this story once the memorial is complete!

On Friday, we took 23 students to Northeastern University in Boston, MA to participate in the Model UN Conference. Most of our students represented Russia, but some represented Jordan.

We left at 5am for Boston and arrived in time for the opening ceremonies which included a speech from investigative journalist Robert Marquand.

Once we were on Boston, students settled in to their committees and began debating the issues. It is a very tiring day, but also a fun day.Two of our students won awards for Best Delegation, and two of our students won awards for Best Position Paper.

Friday night we had a chance to do some sightseeing. We took the Subway over to Bunker Hill to start. It was a beautiful night and so we had a nice walk following part of the Freedom Trail.

(In front of the Bunker Hill Monument)

 We also visited the Boston Massacre Site and old Ironsides and took a ferry ride across the harbor. We then went to dinner at watched the street performances at Quincy Market.

(In front of the Samuel Adams statue at Fanueil Hall)

Saturday morning we were back in sessions to wrap up another day with great debate a few awards.

We were on our way by 4 pm and everyone was tired, but felt satisfied with a great two days in Boston. I always look forward to the Model UN Conference. Its nice to be on a college campus for two days and to see students shine and grow by having this experience. Our school has very little cultural diversity, so its nice to see our students have the chance to experience some diversity at this conference. We have all the logistics down to a science now which really helps. I also have a few fellow teachers willing to help chaperone and that is invaluable. Some teachers who bring students are the only teacher from their school. Not only would that be overwhelming, but also very depressing. I am lucky to have co-workers willing to give up part of their weekend to support me and the students. It warms my heart to see students who are shy or nervous take a chance and feel good about it. Weekend like this remind me why I love my job. It was a great weekend, but I am looking forward to some sleep and a quieter week next week!

Busy times

My week started with another visit from Attorney James Lawley. Mr. Lawley has worked at Lipman and Katz in Augusta, Maine and has come into my classes several times to discuss Constitutional Rights. He also has come into my Ethics classes to discuss the Death Penalty. Unfortunately for my students he has left his job to go back to Death Penalty work in Pennsylvania. I am hopeful we can stay in touch and maybe he will Skype into my classes in the future? His visits are always fascinating and the students come up with great questions that help them to way the pros and cons of the Death Penalty and try to come up with an ethical idea about Capitol Punishment.

My AP students spent the week preparing for the AP exam. The College Board requires the exam to be taken on Friday May 8 this year. So students were studying all week in the hopes of doing well on the Exam. The exam was quite different this year and so it will be interesting to see how my students do compared to students across the county.

Students in my Psychology class have been dealing with sleep issues and dreaming all week. They have been recording their dreams so that we can analyze them next week and try to make some connections to our lives.

On Friday I attended a follow up workshop through the DBQ project. In March we learned about using the process in our classes and received a free binder of resources. Then we were charged with trying one out and bringing back some student work. It was another great day examining student work and talking about how to make the DBQ idea work in our classes even better. We are planning a few ways to incorporate this into our U.S. history classes next Fall.

Next week is a big one! On Wednesday we will have an assembly to honor Lewis Frelan Goddard who was killed in World War Two and announce to the school our plan to build a memorial to him on campus. Here is the link to the site we are using to raise money for the memorial: http://www.gofundme.com/frelanww2

Also next week I will be taking 23 students to Northeastern University to simulate the United Nations with students from schools all over New England. This event is sponsored by the United Nations Association of Greater Boston. We are representing Russia and Jordan. It should be great fun! Some of the topics include: Ukraine crisis, ISIS, Maternal Health, access to clean water, Freedom of the press, and more. We are always exhausted by Saturday night, but it is always a lot of fun and a great experience for the students!

Spring has Sprung

My week started off with a wonderful guest speaker in my Ethics class. Former student, Emma Burke, now works for the Maine Ethics Commission. Her job is to make sure that candidates running for office and accepting tax payer money for their campaigns follow the rules set forth in the Maine Clean Election Act. She explained how it works to run for office in the State and what happens when people bend the rules. She also talked about specific examples of things that have happened in the past and the role money plays in elections in general. It was very interesting! Its always nice to see former students doing neat things, but even better when they are somewhat connected to Social Studies!

In my AP class, the Exam is looming. On May 8, 22 students in my AP U.S. History class will be taking the AP Exam through the College Board. We have been working hard to prepare. We missed half a class on Tuesday as almost all of them were pulled for projects in Physics. The Physics projects happen around this time every year and I knew it would happen at some point but I hadn't seen it in the calendar. It was tough to miss the half class, but once I found out they were missing class I thought it would be the entire period so I was pleased to get them for half the class. I wish they would consider doing these projects after the AP exam as the Juniors are really stressed right now!

A news reporter from the local newspaper The Kennebec Journal came to my Sacrifice for Freedom class on Tuesday along with a photographer. They talked with the students about the project they have been working on to commemorate the stories of people who lived through World War Two. But they were especially interested in the story of Lewis Frelan Goddard and our planned memorial.  I look forward to the media coverage of our project.

On Wednesday I was pleased to accompany a bunch of Juniors to Boston for the day to tour Boston University and Suffolk University. I know our Guidance Department gets a MELMAC grant that pays for the trip. I really enjoyed getting to see the programs offered at both schools and walking around Boston a little bit on a nice day. Both schools did a tremendous job giving students good information about College. I also know our Guidance Department does a great job providing these experiences for students. Overall, it was a very nice day.

We've been studying the end of World War Two and my students are reflecting on the tragedy and destruction of the war. Each of them are composing a Haiku related to one aspect of the war and drawing an image to go with the Haiku. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of poems they come up with.

In Psychology we are discussing sleep issues and dreams. The students are very interested in this topic and research around the role sleep plays in the brain and in human behavior. They will be keeping a dream journal to monitor what they are dreaming about over the next week and then we can reflect on what we speculate our dreams mean. Its always interesting to think about this very mysterious part of the brain.

Next week my students take the AP Exam and I will be out the same day at the follow up workshop for the DBQ Project workshop I did in March. We will also spend a good deal of time planning the Assembly for World War Two Soldier Lewis Frelan Goddard who died in the war. I always enjoy May, good stuff coming up!