Teacher Aaron Mauer, who has 2 teams in the @eracismproject debate finals (one just debated and came in second to Think Global Argentina) and another that is debating next Wednesday against a school in China, shares an email to his students. The debate will be open to the public (I shared the links yesterday) and will be next Wednesday - the US students are coming in at 7:30 am and the students in China are debating at 9:30 pm . The thinking required to be able to debate and compete is important - I especially like his emphasis to his students about one of the main reasons his first team didn't win - a lack of current events knowledge. My aunt was a history teacher and she had students read the newspaper the first 10 minutes of class every day -- no discussion, just reading it and then putting it away and time to teach. I have a friend who has just started a political blog that said that one thing made all the difference for him. Lest you think she didn't cover her content - she did -- she just made time for current events. We have so many standards for history - but are we allowing students to learn about history as it is being made? I doubt it. This is a great read and shows the importance of global literacy -- we do have sign ups happening now for the eracism project for next semester if you want to enter a team (middle school and high school students) Aaron says," ]2. Current Affairs - a very interesting statement from a judge from another country and one that has me thinking things over as a teacher and in my curriculum. She mentioned that we need more current affairs in our research. She stated that anyone can pull from a historical text, but students should be able to show understanding of the world in which they live in. Pretty powerful and therefore if you see anything in the news that could be used bring and perhaps work it into our already existing script."
