Routines are awesome!

One of the things I look forward to about the start of a new school year is routine. It takes a while, but once we start to feel like we are in a routine, its amazing how comforting that feels to me! As this last week finished, i was starting to feel like a routine was developing.

This is my first year teaching AP Psychology and I have really enjoyed, though it has caused me some stress and a few late nights. I really want the class to be enjoyable and engaging, and I also feel a lot of pressure to adhere to the AP curriculum. My students have the added bonus of receiving College credit from Thomas College, and so I feel that as well. Lucky for me I have joined the AP Psychology online community and it has really helped. Not only have I found countless units and activities that align with the AP curriculum, but I have heard what teaching is like in other parts of the country. I find teaching is busier than ever, but I think I would quit if I worked in another part of the country. I consistently hear in this online community about classes of 35-40 students, class loads of 200-250 students, and pay being docked for students who didn't get a 3 or higher on the AP exam. To me, all of those are just unreasonable and I wouldn't do it. I have a great deal of respect for those who are enduring these conditions. I tried to keep this in mind as I stared out at my 17 Seniors and Juniors in this class and confessed my math skills were poor but I was going to attempt to learn about Standard Deviation with them anyway. No surprise, considering how bright they are, that I think they got it despite my shortcomings in the area of math. Their first quiz is coming up on vocabulary and I hope they are up to the challenge! I'm looking forward to the statistical analysis of chocolate chip cookie brands myself!

My AP US History students have been applying the 9 Historical Thinking Skills to their analysis of the events that led to the American Revolution. We have had a good time questioning the Boston Massacre painting by Paul Revere, among other iconic images from the period. We also watched my favorite music video of all time, Too Late to Apologize, that depicts the anger from the rebels toward the British Government. What a great video!

The students I teach in Honors U.S. History have put Columbus on Trial, analyzed how Democratic the Puritans were, and are just about to try and figure out who fired the first shot at Lexington Green. All fun stuff with great conversations and essays from the students!

(Historic House located near Lexington Green)

I also teach History v. Hollywood and Ethics and both classes are also going very well. The only complaint I have at this point is the heat. I love the weather we have had in general, but my classroom gets killed by direct sunlight all day long and we have no air conditioning. Each day my class hits about 86-88 by lunch time. I have a small fan that provides little relief.  If not for this, I think it would have been a truly fabulous start to the school year! My personal focus this year is to get my dual enrollment classes aligned with the Thomas College curricula and assessments. In addition, we need to participate in the Robert Marzano version of Teacher evaluation. This is a whole new process that requires much from each of us. We all are also working on moving toward a proficiency-based diploma, which also means we are adjusting our curriculum. Related to this is a greater emphasis on student test scores in general and adherence to the Response to Intervention procedure required by law. There are more things we must do, but I'm starting to feel a little negative so I will refrain from rehashing it all. I try to approach each day focused on my students and our learning and make progress on the things I have to do. To try and think more gets overwhelming.

Looking ahead, I am looking forward to two conferences. I am now Vice- President of the Maine Council for the Social Studies and we are hosting a Conference on October 30th in Hermon, ME. Our keynote speaker is a woman named Jenny Buccos who has created Geography videos for educational purposes and given TED Talks around the country. We feel very lucky to have her. We also have some snazzy sessions throughout the day. It should be a wonderful learning experience for all! In my new role as VP, I will also be helping to represent Maine at the National Conference in New Orleans in November. This means participating in the House of Delegates along with our President. I am excited about seeing some of the French Quarter for the first time as well as attending a session on World War Two at the National World War Two Museum, as well as other sessions. I look forward to learning and seeing New Orleans for the first time. In the meantime, studying the Constitution and keeping up with AP Psychology are at the top of my agenda!

Year 18 has begun!

The Staff came together for our annual Advisor Training at Camp Androscoggin on a Thursday. It was a great opportunity to do some planning for the year ahead and also to get to bond a bit as  group. We have many new folks on Staff this year inlcuding two new Advisors at my grade level. One of the thintgs we did was to make a Junior mascot. Ours is below!

Friday was a "nuts and bolts" day. I always try to not let these days overwhelm and annoy me but its tough. We get reminded of the multitude of things we have to learn and be responsible for. Unfortunately some of these are outside mandates with very little support. Not a one of them is bad for kids, except that it takes time away from students for teachers to be able to do them. I'm convinced that the only way we can do the things for students we need to be doing to serve them well is to only teach one class a day of about 10 students. That would give us the time to do the things we need to do for those students. Some of these things include: RTI programming, IEP adherence, Marzano Standards for teachers, proficiency-based education, technology expectations, etc. I won't rant any more, but it was a long day. By the end I was thinking, just send us the kids!

This year may have been my best start out of the previous 18! I and my students were enthusiastic and had a great time talking about collaboration and leadership by participating in the Marshmallow Challenge. This requires them to create a freestanding tower with limited supplies in 18 minutes. I have a few pics from their work below.

The weather was rough this week. Maine has such a short summer in most respects, that almost no schools have Air Conditioning. My classroom hit the upper 80's with high humidity each day during the week. The kids whined a little, but they did what I asked of them. I enjoy warm weather, but it is sure tough to get students to think and work after they have done so for 4 hours in the heat and humidity.

We kicked off my AP Psychology class with an experiment to measure reaction time. In U.S. History classes we debated the merits of Columbus and his holiday. In Ethics we evaluated eating a cat and whether or not morality was involved. In History v. Hollywood we looked at historical film clips and discussed the message. Great fun!

My LCD projector died on Monday, but the tech folks provided me with a loaner and I am told a new one will be installed soon. Aside from that and the weather, it was a fun week! The students were engaged and positive and I can't wait to get into some fun activities next week! I will blog more about our start to the school year and what we are doing in two weeks. It should be a bit cooler by then!

Summer concludes

Well its been a really nice summer! After spending three weeks in France, I purposely didn't do much the rest of the summer so that I could rest up for the new school year.

I wasn't completely on vacation though. I did attend two meetings for the Maine Council for the Social Studies. I am now Vice-President and we are have been planning our annual conference for October 30. We also have a new website: http://www.mainecouncilsocialstudies.org/ and and are very excited to promote Social Studies education. As part of my role, I will be attending the National conference in New Orleans in November and represent Maine in the House of Delegates. The National World War Two Museum is right near where the Conference is being held and I've already registered for a pre-conference workshop there. I am very excited about this! It should be an amazing NCSS conference!

I also attended a workshop put on by the Maine Historical Society. They have a grant to fund lessons around using primary source documents and local history. I learned some great ideas and even came up with a project to connect a local soldier killed during World War One. Benjamin Bradford was from Wayne, Me and is buried is the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France. I would like my students to tell his story and perhaps erect a small memorial to him on campus.

I have also spent some time this summer participating in the #sschat on Twitter. This has been great in giving me some ideas for my classes. For the first time, I am teaching AP Psychology. I spent a good deal of time reading for this and developing lessons. I am very excited about this new class! I am no longer teaching through Virtual High School. It had become tedious and uninspiring, so I'm happy to have left it. I am excited to put my time and energy into my face to face classes instead. I will be doing to more Webinars this year through the Maine Department of Education on writing in Social Studies. We are moving toward a proficiency-based diploma and modifying our teaching as a result. I will be blogging about this throughout the year. This year I will only blog twice a month, about every other week. This will help me to focus on bigger issues and I think I will be more reflective as a result. It's wonderful to have time in the summer to recharge and do fun things, but I am very excited to get back in the classroom and be intellectually challenged once again!

School year, here I come!

Summer, but learning never stops

So now that its summer and I have had a bit of a vacation, I'm blogging only twice during the summer. Starting in September I will blog two times a month and I hope to be more reflective as a result.

My family and I accompanied 4 High School students to France on an exchange trip. The French teacher in my school planned the trip but he was unable to go along. Since I had been with him on 2 other trip to France he asked if I would go instead. He also pointed out since the trip would be in June I could take my son and wife and only have to pay for their travel and everything else would be covered. So I decided to go with it! Its a little stressful being responsible for 4 other children in a foreign country (and I don't speak French), but everything went really well! I don't have a desire to do it again anytime soon. this is my 3rd foreign trip with students and I have had some ups and downs with it. I want to travel more, but not as a chaperone of students. The students we took this time were super and it was a great way to "end" my travels with students (for now at least).

We ended school on a Tuesday and then we all left for 19 days in France two days later. We met at the bus station around 7:30 am on Thursday morning. The parents said their goodbyes and we boarded the bus. An hour and a half later, we stopped in Portland. We arrived at Logan Airport in Boston almost two hours after that. I was surprised how short the security line was and we were through with 2.5 hours to go before our departure time. We flew on Icelandair which meant we would have a brief layover in Reykjavik, Iceland.

We left Boston at 2:30 pm and flew about 5.5 hours to Iceland. Iceland is 4 hours ahead, but further north. The sun basically doesn't set in Iceland around the Summer Solstice, so we landed at 11:30 pm local time and the sun was still up. We left Iceland at 1:30am local time and it was darker, but more like twilight. We flew south and east and the sun kept getting stronger the whole trip. It was 6:30 am local time in Paris when we landed. I slept maybe 20 minutes on the plane. From there we started our exploration of the city. On day one we saw Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and did a river cruise tour of the city.

After getting some much needed rest Friday night, we took the Metro out to the famous Paris Flea Market known as "Les Puces". My friend and mentor Gib, who lives in Geneva, took the train up to Paris to spend the rest of the weekend with us. The students had a chance to find good deals at the market and use their French skills to barter. My son even got a couple of soccer jerseys at  great prices! Saturday afternoon we did a tour of the Opera Garnier and then went out to the Arc de Triomphe.

On Sunday morning we went to the Louvre before it opened and stood in line about 30 minutes. That meant we barely had to wait once it opened to get in. I really enjoy seeing the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the other treasures there. But its so big, it would take many days to see the whole museum! Sunday afternoon we went to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. Then we went back to get some rest and prepare for our morning train ride to the city of Vannes in Brittany. There the students would be staying with host families for two weeks and my family would be in our own Flat.

Monday morning we took the TGV from Paris to Vannes. It took about 3.5 hours. The French woman who was organizing the exchange on their end and all of the host families met us at the train station. The students went with their families, and the French woman took us to our flat. We were exhausted! So other than resting and going out for dinner, we didn't do much the first two days! We did meet up with the students and their families after a few days at a BBQ. this gave me a chance to make sure they were all doing fine and they were. The French woman and her husband also took us for a boat ride in the Gulf of Morbihan one day. Another day we met with the students and they all paddled out to alittle island in the Gulf.

While my family were on our own for a few days we did several things. We explored the Medieval parts of Vannes which are still in good shape. We went to the open market in Vannes and found some bargains! We also went to the local mall and experienced some of modern Vannes. One day we rented a car and drive to Normandy to go to Omaha Beach and visit the museums as well as the American Cemetery. Another day we took a bus to a nearby city called Carnac. In Carnac are strange alignments of massive stones dating back to 3000 BCE. No one knows why or how they were placed there or what meaning they may have had for those ancient Celtic people. But the Megaliths were quite impressive!

After 9 days in France, the time came to return home. The French families were sending their children with us to be hosted by the American families. So 12 of us left at 5am on Monday July 6 by train from Vannes. It was a 3.5 hour train ride to Paris where we had to catch the Air France bus. this bus drives across the crazy Paris traffic to the airport and took about 1.5 hours to do so. Once at the airport we had to find our check in kiosk and go through security. This took a very long time. We finally got to our gate with an hour before departure. Around 2 pm our flight left for Iceland. It was a 3 hour flight but we arrived around 3:40 local time. The Iceland airport is quite small but there are lots of people there! Only one cafe was challenging, but after standing in line we all got some food. We left Iceland at 5:30 local time and after 6 hours in the air, we arrived in Boston at 6:30 local time. We had to split into 2 groups because one line of customs was for US citizens and the other for non-citizens. The line was long, but eventually we all made it through and got our bags. We were just in time to catch the 8:30 pm bus from Logan airport to Portland where the American families were waiting to pick up the students. When we finally arrived in Portland it was 11:10 local time, but felt like 5 in the morning to us! We had been up 26 hours with barely any sleep and were all very exhausted! The families were happy to see us and all took their French student and American student with them. We hopped in our car and drove another 1.5 hours home where we collapsed!

It was a wonderful trip that my family and I will never forget! Though we were "working" as chaperones responsible for the students, we also had some time to do some things on our own. I believe its very important for a Social Studies teacher to travel and experience real history. Its equally important for students, but not always possible. I had been to the Rhone American Cemetery and so getting the chance to visit Normandy was truly a dream come true. It was extra special that I got to share it with my family.

For the rest of the summer we aren't doing much. We will do some fun and relaxing things close to home. I have a few days of training for various things to improve my teaching. I also need time to read and prepare to teach AP Psychology for the first time. I will blog again next month about the work I did this summer to prepare for the new school year!