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Thematic History: Current issues – weaving rather than leaving.
It happened again. My newsfeed has coincided with my curriculum. I opened Facebook this afternoon to see a story from NPR today about a new book detailing how New Deal policies created segregation. In...
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Thematic US History: Power of Relevance
Students learn what matters to them. Sometimes they learn what matters to us, but it really sticks if it matters to them. In the final unit of our thematic US history course, we look at economics and...
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My Teaching Watershed: Five Days in July
A conference in Potomac the five days before we were heading to the beach for vacation seemed like a fine idea in March, a terrible idea in July, and a blessing in retrospect. The Science of Teaching...
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Walking the Walk: Taking Back the Weekend
Yesterday, on Labor Day, I experienced a powerful convergence when my passion for the Great British Baking Show combined with an impulse selection at the library, and one of the key insights I gained...
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The WSJ, the shower, and global trade
I am more convinced than ever that I need to make time to step away from work. I used to get up at 5:00 am to be able to get work done – planning, grading, etc. This year, I have been using the hour...
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Looking for the Sweet Spot: Modern World PBL/Inquiry
I am about a month into my PBL/Inquiry version of our Modern World class. I embarked on the class with the understanding that the content and skills would be the same as the regular Modern World class,...
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The Acknowledgment Page: Nobody Writes Alone
At the start of my US history classes today, I handed each student a different history book. They guessed a variety of reasons I was doing it – to help them with citations, to look at authors and...
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The Smartest Person in the Room is… the Room.
It’s about five minutes before my Modern World class starts. I feel like I’m taking a risk with today’s plan. I am having groups present their models of how to measure power in the world in the early...
View ArticleHistory Heresy
Primary sources are essential to studying history. Or are they? My professional circles tend to see them as the Holy Grail of history. Going back to the actual words people used gets us the real story....
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Escape Room Exam
I told my PBL/Inquiry-based Modern World History class they they would have a two hour learning experience during the scheduled mid-year exam slot, but it did not have to be a traditional exam. I asked...
View ArticleAuthenticity = Key 2 Presenting
After having my juniors do perfectly acceptable Ignite or Pecha Kucha presentations last quarter, my goal this quarter is for excellence. My experience is that students spend a lot of time researching,...
View Article“Slow down, you move too fast…”
I have that Simon and Garfunkel tune stuck in my head. I’m feeling countercultural in my classroom these days. Not because I’m feelin’ groovy (Google the song.) Actually, the rest of lyrics don’t...
View ArticleWikipedia isn’t the devil, is it?
Grandiose plans run up against real world time constraints. In planning the Cities project for US history, I envisioned this glorious accumulation and deepening of research skills, which would lead...
View ArticleComplexity and Time: Letting Go of the Grand Narrative
I just finished listening to a recorded talk by a former grad school professor who is close to publishing his magnum opus about the Soviet Union in WWII. In listening to it, I learned how his research...
View ArticleBrown Bag to Brown Box: Modern World History Final Exam
I wanted to create a capstone experience for my Inquiry-Based/PBL section of Modern World History. I had great success with doing the mid year exam as an escape room type activity, but I wanted...
View ArticleWhat Does It Mean to Master Content in a History Classroom?
A few years back I made an attempt to shift my history classroom to a standards based one. So as to not confuse the students and stress out the families, I still gave letter grades on individual...
View ArticleHelping or Enabling? Can more help be less helpful?
As we embark on the sometimes infamous junior year research paper in US history, I am wrestling with a perennial problem – how to help students enough but not too much. My goal is to help them learn to...
View ArticleWhat would Leonardo do with $.25 notebook from Staples?
So, I am trying something completely different with my Modern World PBL/Inquiry section. For the unit where the content is the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Enlightenment, I decided to use...
View ArticleMurder Mystery Exam
Last year I piloted an “escape room’ type exam with my PBL/Inquiry based Modern World History class. This year, I have two sections. One wanted an escape room, so I recreated that experience with...
View ArticleRevolutions Personalized
This year, being my second running a PBL/Inquiry version of our Modern World History class, I am hoping to do more to leverage the freedom the course gives me to help students tailor the work to their...
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