Vacation, then the sprint to the finish!

The last week before vacation always seems like everyone is trying to get a bunch of stuff done so they feel better about doing less during the week after when we are on vacation. As a result, it tends to be a busy week. this week was no exception.

I went to Thomas College on Tuesday and attended my first Dual Enrollment meeting. Some folks from my school and Thomas are meeting together on a program that would allow High School students to earn an Associate's Degree from Thomas College through some classes offered on our campus, a few on Thomas' campus, and a few online.  All of this at no cost to the students. I will be teaching 4 classes next year that are Dual Enrollment classes, and I am very interested in College level work in particular. This is all very interesting to me as a result. Who knows, I might consider moving to that level on a permanent basis some day?

I also met with the Maine Council for the Social Studies on Wednesday evening, for our regular Board meeting. We discussed our plans for the Fall Conference. On May 30 we will be hosting our annual conference at the Morgan Hill Event Center in Hermon, ME. We are still receiving proposals form folks who like to present, but we will also have vendors set up and are very excited to have a guest speaker. Jenny Buccos has given talks nationwide, including TED talks. Her goal with her Project Explorer work, is to spread  educate to all around the US about cultures in other parts of the world. She is very energetic and will be a great Keynote speaker for our conference. I met her through the Twitter chat on Monday nights at 7pm. Anyone can participate with the #sschat. This is all very exciting work, and keeps us very busy.

(Jenny Buccos from a TED talk)

In my U.S. history classes, we are studying World War Two. This includes the causes of the war, and the impact of the War on people in the US. We looked at Japanese- American Internment, the Holocaust, and the use of the Atomic Bomb as well. It was a great week as I am very interested in all of these topics!

In Sacrifice for Freedom, we continued our work to plan for an assembly to honor Lewis Frelan Goddard. Our school's Leadership Team approved our proposal for May 13, and WCSH 6 News will be here to cover it. This is the announcement I sent to our Staff:

"Hi Staff,
We wanted to give everyone a heads up about an assembly coming up on May 13. The Sacrifice for Freedom class has received permission to hold an assembly on Wednesday May 13th from 2 to 2:30 pm for the whole school.

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 (link will be shared later this spring). 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 nearby, 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 from 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 hawk and a small plaque with basic information about Lewis Goddard.

So we are very excited about this as well! I will be blogging about it and posting links to our website and any news coverage! Now for a nice week off to get rested for the last 6 weeks of the school year!

Another break on the horizon

April typically means Teen Issues at Maranacook. the school has a long tradition of offering a day or two of alternative programming that teens are interested in. We set aside classes for the day and invest time in these programs instead. We rely heavily on outside presenters to come in and discuss social and emotional issues as well as career related opportunities. This includes presentations from the ACLU, a Game Warden, Family Planning, Substance abuse, fitness experts, and more. This year I was sick and missed it, but from what I understand it was fabulous as usual.

In U.S. history we have been learning about the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Students made use of resources from the DBQ project to analyze primary sources and craft an essay arguing the cause of the Dust Bowl. We also watched the excellent Ken Burns film about the Dust Bowl. This is a great way to connect environmental concerns to history and personalize the experience for students who made connections to the current drought in California.

Students in Sacrifice for Freedom continue work on planning for our website to tell the stories of people who lived through World War Two. They also started planning the school-wide assembly in May to recognize Lewis Ferlan Goddard. I am very excited for my students and the work they have done using both a foreign language and history skills in this work. Their websites will be fantastic, and the assembly should be amazing!

Also this week students in Psychology shared projects about famous experiments in Psychology and their impact on our current understanding of Psychology. These were multimedia presentations in which we learned about the Bobo Doll experiment, the Chameleon effect, the Marshmallow test, and more. I really enjoy discussing  and analyzing this work and its a great way for students to understand the process for conducting experiments in Psychology.

I was able to connect with educator Jenny Buccos using Twitter and #sschat on Monday nights. She has agreed to waive her fee and be our keynote speaker at the Maine Council for the Social Studies annual Conference in October. She is fantastic, and we are lucky to have her!

That's it? Yes, that's it! It was a busy week and I was also sick for two days. I have decided that next school year I will only blog once or twice a month. I think that will produce deeper and more analytical blogs for me to reflect on my work. Also, some weeks it feels like I don't have much to say! I will say this... one week until vacation!

The end of March

Things are coming together nicely for our attempt to honor the memory of Lewis Ferlan Goddard. We heard from WCSH 6 and reporter Jackie Ward. They plan to come to school for an assembly we are planning to honor the memory of Lewis Goddard.  The end of this year should be very exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I'm starting to get excited about the trip to France. In June, my wife and my son will help me chaperone 5 High School Students in Paris for three days. Then we will take them to host families in the city of Vannes and stay in an apartment nearby for two weeks. We plan to visit Normandy while we are there as well. This will be my third trip, but the first for my family. It should be a lot of fun!

This week we were studying the Depression and the Dust Bowl in my U.S. History classes. This included piltoing a unit from the DBQ project which I will report back on in May at a workshop. It also included the use of the fabulous Ken Burns documentary The Dust Bowl.

 

My AP class traveled to the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Museum this week for our annual field trip. The Staff there is very helpful and organized. They gave a nice overview of the Library and gave us a tour of the Museum and her home. Senator Smith was the first woman to serve in the House and the Senate and the first to be considered by a major party for a Presidential nomination. She became famous for standing up to Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare in the 1950's. Her Library has the largest collection of Cold War era documents on the east coast. She was an inspirational woman and the students enjoy learning about her. My students also get time in the Library examining the documents and practicing the skills needed for document analysis on the AP exam coming up in May. Dr. Richards and the entire staff are always very helpful and supportive! In addition, the Library funds our trip to see them each year. What a great experience!

I had a guest speaker in my Ethics class this week. A former student of mine is a Game Warden and is featured on the Animal Planet TV Show North Woods Law. He came in and spoke about law enforcement and ethical issues Game Wardens face. He did a great job with the students and they really enjoyed learning from him. Plus, its really cool to see a former student out there doing great things!

(Game Warden Ethan Buuck)

Next week will be busy! With only two weeks until vacation, we are working hard planning the assembly for Mr. Goddard and preparing for the AP exam. The best thing with April's arrival, however, is the warm weather!

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!