Work?

I was asked recently if the Understanding Sacrifice project is a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but I have to admit that it doesn't really feel like work. I don't think I have ever had "work" that has felt as important and was as interesting and fun for me as this project. Compared to the various and sundry hoops we must jump through for our new evaluation procedures, which take much less time, the Understanding Sacrifice Project hardly qualifies as work. I was fortunate to have the opportunity over the last few weeks to meet the families of two soldiers killed during the war, to begin to document their stories.

Captain Joseph F. Berry is actually the Great-Uncle of a few former students of mine, and grew up in Wayne, ME. Berry was killed defending an anti-tank gun necessary for the landings at Gela in Sicily in the summer of 1943. Berry was awarded the Distinguished Cross and the Silver Star. His sister, Priscilla is 98 years old. I was fortunate to be able to meet with her and her son. They have a treasure trove of letters, pictures, and various documents related to his service. My students will be learning more about Captain Berry this spring. Berry is buried at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Italy and I will be visiting his grave and paying tribute to him when I am there in July.

Harvey J. Madore was married and living in Augusta, ME when he was sent to France in the fall of 1944. In March of 1945, his unit had just moved across the German border when he went missing. He was listed as "Killed in Action" 2 weeks later. The circumstances around his death are unknown, but he is buried at the Epinal American Cemetery in France. His son, Bob, met with me and shared his scrapbook of letters and images. bob and his son were fortunate enough to visit Harvey's grave in 2013. My students will be learning about Harvey this spring. We will be visiting his grave in July.

While excited about making progress, it does consume my time. I participated in a webinar with the Understanding Sacrifice program this past Wednesday night around some of the things we had read related to the war in general, and the war in Italy. Professor Christopher Hamner from George Mason University led our webinar discussion which was very interesting!

(Screenshots from the Webinar)

Students in my classes were involved in presentations over the past couple of weeks. After doing research, they had to select someone important to be put on a dollar bill. They had to defend their choice in a class presentation. Students had to dress like the person they chose or somehow defend their dress as inspired by the person they chose. This is always a lot of fun and involves much energy. Below are some samples of my students in costumes inspired by the person they chose for the dollar bill.

In Ethics and History v. Hollywood classes students have started to think about their Final projects. Since these classes are only a semester long, they will end in mid-January. Some years, the weather plays havoc with these last few days leading up to the Holiday break. This year we have had surprisingly mild weather. Not only have we only had an inch or so of snow so far, but its all now melted. The forecast is calling for temperatures to stay mostly in the 40's and so this may be one of the few years where we lose no time in December due to weather. This means the last 7 days of school before the break should be a bit less stressful than usual.

Over the last couple of weeks we did have a scheduled early release day for professional development. Apparently there have been a few issues in my district with understanding of what a "504 plan" for students truly is. All the staff in the district spent 2.5 hours listening to a lawyer discuss the finer points of the law. I was surprised to find him somewhat entertaining in the stories he told, though I would argue that they were distractions from the issue at hand as many of the questions posed to him were not really answered. Upon reflection I think the true purpose was so that the district could say in the future, if anything ever came up. that we have had "training" on this issue rather than something that would be more helpful. Considering all of the the things we need to do for teacher evaluations and proficiency-based education it didn't seem to me to be a very good use of the little time we have for professional development. However, its not my decision and so I focused on learning what I could from it and moving on.

The State Department of Education has received grant money to sponsor some training and programming around developing sample curricula in different subject areas for school districts to have as samples as they move toward proficiency based education. I applied for and was accepted into the Social Studies Community Teacher-Leader Group. We had our first training and worked to identify the needs of teachers across the state in developing social studies curricula. We will be developing workshops to run locally in the Spring and then run them again this Summer at a state-wide workshop. It was nice to meet the teachers and begin to develop a network of teachers interested in working on Social Studies stuff. More to come on this!

The Maine Council for the Social Studies Board had its annual Holiday Business meeting. We met over dinner at Joyce's in Hallowell and processed the feedback from our Conference evaluations in October. We also discussed some ideas for next year's conference and some of the information we learned at the National Conference in New Orleans. Its always great to have a bit more of a social time with folks during this time of year. More to come form the Maine Council in 2016!

Here we come down the homestretch to the Holiday break, with 7 school days left!