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Day One Hundred Forty

Okay, so today? So busy. I did not have nearly enough hours to do all the things. But it was still such an awesome day, and I had a ton of fun.

I whipped through a bunch of grading during my prep time, helped Mr. O do the paperwork for his cert. hours and chatted with both him and Mr. CS about upcoming PD stuff. Then, during flex time, I proctored the citizenship test and helped a bunch of students doing make-up work/retakes, then taught my classes.

In Global Studies, students shared their current events write-ups, and then I recapped what we'd covered in the last two classes about the DRC and Rwanda. At the end of last class, when I was teaching about the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide, I asked them to think about what they'd have done if they were in charge of the US at the time. Would they have intervened or not? Today, I went back to that question, and had them think about the risks and benefits of that intervention- and, more broadly, of any military deployment- because I wanted them to see that it's a complex decision, and that no matter what we do, there are positive and negative consequences. Even doing nothing is still doing something, you know?

So students talked that out, I wrote what they said on the board in a pros/cons chart. Then I asked them all to do a little reflective writing and answer the question I'd posed: if they were in charge, what would they do? I loved how many of them put their hands up to share what they'd written, and how they had different views and different reasons for their views. It really made it clear that it wasn't a simple decision. The students in my second section said they wanted to hear my answer, too, so I gave it after they gave theirs.

The last question I asked was, "What do you think the US actually did?" Mixed results on that, and I'm curious if any of them will Google it over the weekend because my response was, "You'll find out next week!" right before the bell rang. It was a perfect cliffhanger, and the students in two out of the three sections groaned at me for it. I was delighted.

Best thing? The Principal was observing my third section, so he got to see all of it, and it was awesome.

After that, I ate a quick lunch, changed into my track clothes, and got Mrs. R set up to cover my APGOV class. She played Kahoot with my students while I was on the bus with the track team for the first meet of the season. We traveled about an hour and a half to the host school. The team was in high spirits, everyone was excited to compete, and they did so well. Every team had to help run the meet, so I was out at javelin with Coach A for basically the entire meet. Luckily, javelin was in the middle of the field so I could still see my sprinters.

They had a good meet. The boys won, the girls finished in the middle of the table. The sprinters contributed a lot to that. There was one issue with the relay girls, the Head Coach handled it, and then they ran super well. The boys 4x100 team won in a big way. And, all around the events, our athletes set down benchmark performances to build from. Plus, Coach O and Coach G had their first meet experience, and learned how fun it is to be with this team.

We'll keep going from here.

Day Ninety-Five

I sometimes joke about how I need a clone in order to get things done, even though I am a wizard, and I was really feeling that today. I spent my prep time helping Mr. SF get ready to teach his first real lessons in American Studies (students were doing state testing for the last two days, so he was just supervising), drafting an email to my department to communicate what was discussed at yesterday's leadership team meeting, putting together a supply order, and then actually getting my lessons together.

Luckily, neither lesson required much set-up. I just had to upload some materials to Classroom, prep my whiteboards, and hook up my projector. In Global Studies, we were discussing the aftermath of WWI. I lectured through a set of notes about war trauma, damaged infrastructure, the flu pandemic, shifting views on race and class, the seeds of anti-colonial movements, the KKK backlash against Black veterans in the US, the Treaty of Versailles and the conditions in Germany. I ended with Hitler's emergence in Germany. I supplemented my notes with images, which was really effective. Then I gave a research and citation assignment as a follow-up; students chose one topic to learn more about, and they have to tell me four additional facts, cite their sources in-text, and create a works cited page. It's a simple assignment, but it works for building skills and a bit of knowledge.

I had to go to a meeting halfway through my third section, so Mr. CS came up to cover for me while students were doing that research. It's his first experience with the ninth graders, and that group is particularly good, so he enjoyed it. He told me later that he was a bit blown away that some of them thanked him when class was over. Some of his tenth graders do that, too, but he wasn't expecting it from students he doesn't teach on the daily. He's excited that he'll likely be teaching a lot of them next year.

The meeting I was at was a Google Meet, so I did it in my office (best decision Mr. N and I ever made was cleaning up the staff room and making the adjacent offices usable again). The Curriculum Coordinator set it up with me, The Principal, The Middle School Principal, and two of the consultants who have been helping with our PLC work in order to discuss a new law that's made some changes to NH's requirements for social studies. The Curriculum Coordinator wants my department and our middle school counterparts to meet to do some vertical alignment work with the new law in mind, so we were establishing an agenda and timeframe for that.

I hopped off the call with an, "I have to teach about the US government now!" which got the expected laughter, wincing, and good luck wishes.

I had just enough time to eat my lunch before the bell. Then it was discussing the Declaration of Independence and the NH 1776 Constitution. Was there a realization of real-world relevance when one student brought up quartering soldiers and not prosecuting them for their abuses? Yes. So then I made the point that one reason why we study our foundational documents is because many of the things they say are still so relevant.

I had students tackle the Articles of Confederation, too, and explain how the national government was structured and what powers it had. Then I asked what weaknesses were evident, and that's where I ended the lesson for the day. We'll pick it up next class, of course, and while that'll probably be tomorrow there is a slight chance we get a cancellation due to cold weather. Yes, we're the north and all, but there are negative temps forecasted for tomorrow morning and, on top of that, the windchill could reach -30. That would make my district think twice about having kids waiting at bus stops.

We'll see, though.

I had an IEP meeting after school. I was late because I was helping Mr. O with some new semester things, but everyone knew I would be and was okay with it. It was an unexpectedly quick meeting, so I went back up to my classroom to write up sub plans for Mr. SF to follow for the next few weeks. That took me about an hour, so it was late when I left, but at least there was still daylight!