Welcome to my classroom!
Although I have taught a variety of courses from History, Leadership, Music, and Technology, my primary experience in recent years has been 9th and 10th grade History. This page is a collection of some of our work.
Our Website
This is our portal for our exploration and learning. We are a Google Apps school, and this Google Site links assignments to their own accounts in Google Drive. In addition to each unit of study where I provide links and resources we also have ongoing longterm projects and social media. |
Our Big Question
Throughout our study of Western Civilization, I have wanted my students to generate their own questions. In this yearlong project, students found meaningful topics of interest to them and have created what we call the Big Question. I was impressed with these "unGooglable" questions they asked "What is happiness?", "Do we have a soul?", "How will technology transform education?" The journey to the answer of these questions is in the form of a blog. In their blogs they set goals, assess themselves, participate in a conversation with their peers and a greater conversation outside of school. The German poet Rilke advises us to "try to love the questions themselves ... Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way to the answer." |
Our Virtual Art Galleries
In my History classes, I have wanted my students to connect art and culture throughout our different time periods. Why do we create? What is beautiful? What is meaningful? Instead of just my sharing and presenting meaningful artwork, I have experimented with my students developing their own virtual art galleries with work in different time periods and cultures that are meaningful to them. Howard Gardner (2011) writes that students should assemble a portfolio of beautiful objects and experience, perhaps fashion their own objects of beauty, and arrive at their own aesthetic sensibility. This year, I decided to have them use Pinterest for their virtual galleries and have been satisfied with their work. |
Your Personal Silk Road Journey
Our 9th grade Social Studies class is entitled Ethics and World Cultures. We begin the year with an overview of Ethics and the study of the novel Of Mice and Men. This gives us a context in which to study ancient cultures and world religions. I want my students to see that humankind has always been seeking answers to the same questions. For our final capstone project called My Silk Road, students went on a virtual pilgrimage. They were given $20,000 to plan and take a trip of a lifetime visiting the great sacred places and shrines of history and create an extended travel blog. The students finished with a concluding post of what they learned on their journey. |
The Gettysburg Address
During this school year, I came across an interview with filmmaker Ken Burns about his upcoming documentary on the Gettysburg Address to be shown on PBS in April 2014. The film focuses on students at the Greenwood School in Vermont, a school for boys with learning differences, as they work to memorize the Address. The film interweaves their story with historical content of Lincoln's speech. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the battle and speech, Americans are encouraged to video themselves reading or reciting the speech and upload it on the accompanying website Learntheaddress.org. I believe that the ideas in the speech are worth reading and reflecting upon, but I also believe that the skill of memorization helps exercise the mind that is still needed in our age of instant access to information. I created a page for our students, and we added our speeches to the greater conversation.
During this school year, I came across an interview with filmmaker Ken Burns about his upcoming documentary on the Gettysburg Address to be shown on PBS in April 2014. The film focuses on students at the Greenwood School in Vermont, a school for boys with learning differences, as they work to memorize the Address. The film interweaves their story with historical content of Lincoln's speech. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the battle and speech, Americans are encouraged to video themselves reading or reciting the speech and upload it on the accompanying website Learntheaddress.org. I believe that the ideas in the speech are worth reading and reflecting upon, but I also believe that the skill of memorization helps exercise the mind that is still needed in our age of instant access to information. I created a page for our students, and we added our speeches to the greater conversation.