First semester thoughts and reflections

So....my last post was August and talked all about next week's post and all I'd have to say about preparing for a new school, grade level and course.  So much for that I guess.  And even though it isn't really the end of the first semester yet, it seems like this may be one of the few times I can sit down and write.  First and foremost, I love my new position.  Not a minute has gone by where I regret changing districts and schools.  And that is not meant to be a knock on where I was, I liked my colleagues, admin, students, etc.  But from the minute I decided to go back to school to get my teaching certifications, I think I always envisioned myself at the high school level.  I really love teaching AP too.  I really like my honors classes too, but AP is a great challenge and I feel that I can really teach a lot more of the nuance and fun parts for history rather than just the boring names and dates.  But this fall has been a whirlwind, trying my best to get ahead of AP students in really knowing the content before I teach it.  Now the big challenges are trying to cover the big idea things without hopefully skipping over other minor things that might be on the test, providing them with enough information to prepare them without completely overwhelming them with so much information, and trying to make class more than just notes and reading, and more notes and reading.  I've been lucky to find some really good and organized teachers that teach APWH online and through twitter to steal some of their ideas, or at the very least, validate what I've been doing.  I even created a website for my AP students to keep all of the things in one place for them, notes, assignments etc.  The new site has probably been one of the big things that have drawn me away from my blog here, but it's been really good for the students, their parents, and anyone else trying to keep up with the class.  I'm also hoping that in the spring as we get into more modern history, I can find more ways to make the content memorable and fun and engaging for the students too.

I know one big thing I want/need to do more of are class discussions/simulations.  We had a really good debate on Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and we have a State Building simulation coming up that I'm very excited about doing.  The students will have to be various foreign leaders from all over the world in the pre-Industrialization time period.  Should be fun.  I think another one I'll do is have the students be various African nations and they will have to convince me as the imperial power to come and make a deal with their country to establish a colony peacefully.  Should lead to good discussions and hopefully the students will more importantly learn about the Early Modern leaders and the Scramble for Africa that way rather than just reading about it.  I'm sure I have lots of things to reflect and say, but trying to come up with them all now seems impossible.  My big resolution after trying to get back in shape is to blog more regularly (I feel I've made that one before too).  Hopefully I can do better with both.  Until next time (whenever that may be, hopefully next week or two once school resumes), thanks for reading

The post before I post about school starting back up

So much for well intended plans.  My early summer blogging plans were to write down and chronicle our adventures of daddy daycare.  I guess I underestimated my time.  Chasing around the twins is certainly tiresome and any down time has been spent starting to prepare for the upcoming school year, trying to have the smallest bit of a normal social life with the wife and kids, or sleeping.  It has been really enjoyable to spend the summer with them, not the most productive as far as school preparation, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.  We survived the beach and our first birthday and are on the verge of walking.  Then the trouble will really begin for me and the Mrs.  But I digress.

Some things that have helped get me through the roughly 8 weeks with nearly no adult contact (in no particular order)

• The nursery at our gym, big thanks to the ladies who work there.  The daily break was much needed for everyone
• Arrested Development re-runs
• Nap time (not long enough most days, but beggars can't be choosers)
• The World Cup and ICC (very stoked for the upcoming BPL season
• Perusing spotify to catch up on several albums I've missed and finding new music
• And lastly, the fact that the kids can play on their own and be self-entertained or entertain one another.  The breaks every so often have allowed me to relax, work, or have some kinds of interaction through social media.

I'll have more next week when the kids go back to daycare full time.  Only 9 days until my first day at the new school and two weeks until students first day.  Very excited, a bit nervous with all this AP stuff I need to do, but we'll figure it out.  Hopefully by next week's post I'll have a concrete plan as to how the first week will go.

Summer musings

So here is kind of where we get to the "and more" parts of the blog as we're now out for summer vacation.  This will definitely be a busy summer as I'm moving schools, grade levels and districts.  I'm in some ways sad to be moving on, I met and worked with some great people and my three years at TMS shaped and molded me into the teacher I am now.  But I'm very excited about my new school, one I've actually been trying to get to for a couple of years now.  I recently found out that I'll be teaching AP World History as well along with World History.  Definitely stoked to jump not just up to high school but potentially AP.  I have to take the certification course, but it's a great new challenge.  So my summer will definitely be spent preparing for that as best I can.  Also and more importantly this summer, I've temporarily traded my somewhat stressful job with another job that is even more rewarding, challenging and stressful; and that's taking care of my twins, now 10 and a half months old.  For 7 weeks or so, it's just me and them during the day.  Hoping we all survive and I don't stunt their development too much.  So much of the posts over the next few weeks will deal with my daddy daycare side business.

So far it's been 4 days really, and so good.  First morning was a bit rough, my son is wide awake at 6 AM or so.  But we made it.  The biggest change is meals, I'll be honest, my wife has done so much with them, I still feel a bit lost.  Thankfully the kids aren't too picky and then love any and all fruits.  I of course, dislike most fruits, so I've had more interaction with peaches and pineapples than I had in my previous 33 years in just the past week now.  But we've got our little routine down, thank heaven our gym has a nursery and I have a jogging stroller that they love.  Other than that, I get to take them on errands every now and then and have people marvel as if I'm carrying something completely foreign.  Had 4 people say "got your hands full huh" at the gym today when we came in.  I get it, two babies.  It's not that uncommon, just tell me their cute and let me continue my grueling shoulder workout as I carry 30+ pounds of baby and car seat to my car.

And how bout the World Cup!  Makes it much easier to be hanging around the house with the kids.  Games have been awesome, I scared the crap out of my son when Michael Bradley's shot was cleared off the line and then Jones scored in last night's game.  Gut-wrenching tie for the USA, but with some perspective, 4 points after 2 games is a great place to be.  Hoping for a good result Thursday.  I also can't believe Spain is done.  One of my 8th graders told me that they weren't going to do well.  I thought he was crazy.  His rationale like most 8th graders is "they suck."  Which I found ironic since half of the team played for his beloved Real Madrid, but nevertheless, he was right.  And my World Cup winners were out after two games.  Good thing I don't bet money on this kind of stuff.  As of now, I see Germany over Brazil in one semi with Netherlands beating Argentina in the other.  The Dutch look really good, and my beloved USA will make the quarterfinals before losing to Messi.

Alright, that's all I got, more daddy daycare thoughts and revelations next time and probably some ideas I'm kicking around for the upcoming year.  Thanks for reading!

Quick end of the year musings

I'll probably write more in a week or so after the school year finally culminates, big news but have to wait until it can be officially stated and shared.  Last couple of weeks here are always bizarre.  We put so much emphasis it seems to our tests this time, that basically from mid-May through our final days, testing is what consumes us all.  And while I was able to spice up review a couple of times with different review games like grudgeball, the kids are so programmed to study the old-fashioned way that any deviation from it leads to chaos.  I've realized that it is obviously something that I need to establish from the beginning of the year as to how we will review.  Problem is, I don't have many tests or exams, so when we now change our focus, it makes it a bit more difficult to all of the sudden change from the status quo.  Definitely some things that I need to work on over the summer.

It has been a good year overall, I feel like I was able to bring in more engaging assignments and activities and I've learned a ton from my PLN on twitter.   Sometimes it is tough to look back on the whole year when you're crammed into the same room for 4+ hours with a group of kids that are testing or waiting while others or testing.  The boredom and the kids penchant to feel that they're already done with the year can be frustrating.  But there were a lot of really good things that I feel we accomplished this year, the March Madness project among others, and I'm grateful that my students usually went along with me whenever I felt like throwing something together last minute to try new things.  I wish them nothing but the best as most of them move onto 9th grade and my 7th graders move up to the 8th grade.  Hopefully they'll be able to look back on this year fondly and take some important lessons with them to the next grade and their next set of teachers.

As for me, I'm now just over six days away from the summer and the start of daddy daycare with the twins.  It'll be a whole new challenge and exciting times as I run around and chase them all summer as they're learning to walk, talk and all other things that 10 month-olds do.  I'll have more time over the summer, so I'll look to keep this better updated as I prepare for next year's upcoming changes and also have lots of out of the classroom stuff to discuss like playing with the kids, the World Cup and the anything and everything else.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the final days educators if you're not out for the summer already!

The end of March Madness, CCSS pondering

So my classes have finally reached the end of our March (ok most of April) Madness.  Drumroll....... and the winners are Alexander Graham Bell for our Most Influential American and Gandhi for our Most Powerful World Leader.  Overall I think the experience was a real hit.  The students loved it, I had teachers telling me how the kids were talking about their match-ups and who won and lost in their classes, and teachers were even coming by to check out the giant brackets I had up to see how the tournament was progressing.  In the end I had four really good students make the finals and make some really good and persuasive arguments for their figures.  So I'll have to make a quick stop to Subway for the winners tomorrow, and it'll be a nice reward for a long project that took us literally right up to our spring break.  I think next year I'll look to condense things a bit, and I'll definitely need to seed the participants.  For instance, we're learning about Napoleon now with my 7th graders and a lot of them are saying that he's a guy that would have gone far in our tournament but he was unfortunately matched up against Gandhi in the first round.  But it was nice to hear my students say things like "are we going to do any more projects like this, this was really good!"  It was also great to see some of my students that might not normally consider themselves smart make it deep in the tournament and surprise themselves and their classmates.  It was a big hit, and I've got my work cut out for me these last 6 weeks to come up with some good and exciting things to do.  Thankfully, when I mapped out our curriculum for the year, I purposefully saved all of the wars for our last 6 week unit.  Hopefully my hunch will pay off and we'll have some very high engagement and lots of fun too.

Also, as we're gearing up for end of grade testing now and as I sat through our latest school improvement team meeting, I got to thinking about our new Common Core Essential Standards.  Now before you assume this is just another rant about how awful the Common Core is, I'll assure you it isn't.  It's more of a question that I have for you educators, especially those that teach history and social studies.  I'd love to know what you think.  For our standards, I'll be honest, they're incredibly vague.  An example is that students need to understand how individuals and groups have brought about change in NC and the USA.  There are literally dozens if not hundreds of ways that I can show and teach that.  It creates a double-edged sword.  I as a teacher have the autonomy to teach this standard how I want really.  I can explain it though the founding fathers, the early settlers, the civil rights movement, leaders of industry, you name it.  I have the power in my classroom (and my school since I'm the dept chair) to pick and emphasize which examples through history I want to teach.  As a teacher it's great because it allows me to play to my strengths and teach maybe something I'm more passionate about that something I'm not, as long as the standard is taught, it doesn't really matter.  But that's the problem, what if what I choose to focus on isn't what the people drawing up these tests focus on.  Yes, we'd love to live in a world where our students will get the big picture ideas and carry the big idea throughout historical events, understanding how all of these events are similar because they were led by individuals or groups changing and impacting society.  But that's rarely the case.  And when my students move on to the next level, their teachers aren't asking them if they know the standards, they wondering why they don't know certain key events or people.  I have 8th graders that don't remember or swear they never learned about Gandhi.  For me, teaching Gandhi when teaching colonialism and imperialism is a no-brainer, but that obviously wasn't the case for my students' previous teachers.  It is a paradox to me.  How can I get all of this freedom to teach within a standard (and yes the state gives us examples or hints for topics and events for these standards but it is hard to turn three examples into an entire unit) but then have expectations that the students need to meet knowing certain specific topics and events?  I don't have the answer, I know that much.  But as I said, I'm interested to know what you think.  Would love to discuss this more, so please comment or track me down on twitter.

Thanks for reading, one more day until spring break and 3 days until my first edcamp.  I'm excited about that and will share my edcamp experience with you all next week.  Until then, have a great one!

March Madness!!

The Madness has begun!  We're now just over two weeks into our March Madness projects and so far, they've been pretty good.  After the initial selection process and research, we made our brackets and the fun began.  The students probably chose about 80% of the our participants.  Found a website called challonge.com to make our brackets.  It was great, just plugged in the names, and they made a completely random bracket for me, mixing all of our figures up.  For the first round, we had a couple of no shows unfortunately.  The students can still get credit for the project, but we had a deadline and whether it was due to absence or laziness, if slides weren't in my hands, then they were not submitted.  We had a few slides with some pretty serious grammar issues, and others that didn't quite follow the guidelines, and it led to some surprising first round exits from the likes of George Washington, Rosa Parks and a slew of other great Americans.  Knowing the expectations, Round 2 was phenomenally better.  All 64 slides were in on time, errors were fixed, information was updated and added.  The results were much closer too than some of the round 1 blowouts too thanks in part to the better presentations.  The google forms have been easy to use and check so I can get the results out quickly.  It has been great to hear other teachers comment how the students are so excited for about this project and are pumped if they win and really bummed out if they don't.  Also had several teacher comment how cool the project is, which is always nice to have your hard work go noticed by your colleagues.  As it stands, we're down to our final 32.  Of those 32: 12 are activists, 5 are explorers/heroes, 5 from our miscellaneous category, 4 presidents, 4 innovators, and only 2 celebrities.  It's an interesting mix for sure and I'm excited for our next rounds coming up this week.  We'll be down to the Elite 8, and then have our rounds in two weeks.  As we go farther into the project, I'll be trying to get more people from outside our classroom to add their votes and help us choose our winners.  We'll keep you posted.

Finally huge shout out to our #sstlap chats we have on Thursday are awesome.  It's a great group of educators that have pushed me to continually strive to be better and be at my best for my students.  It's been a lot of fun learning from them, and I'm excited about what lies ahead as we're now moving toward collaborating and joining forces outside of twitter too.

Thanks for reading as always, please follow me on twitter to keep up with all the goings-on from my class.

Ice storm boredom, e-books, MM update

So apparently the last three months or so, North Carolina has turned into North Dakota and no one told any of us.  I've lived or at least spent a lot of time in the various parts and climates in this country, and while NC can be incredibly helter skelter, this has been ridiculous.  I think in my first two years we lost one maybe two days tops.  We're now on day 8 and that is a low number for most of the districts around us.  We're used to 40 degree temperature changes, but rarely has it brought the ice, snow, sleet and cold that this winter/early spring has brought.  So we're out again today and it'll of course be in the 60's by the end of the week.  And since our daycare is through one of the community colleges in our area, they stay open and closed with the school.  So it's daddy daycare again.  Last time I did this, the twins were pretty young still.  Now my son is nearly crawling, both are much more active so the job is a little more difficult although they can now entertain themselves and one another a bit better.  It's a joy to stay home with them, but I know I'll be completely worn out by tonight by them too.  The only downside is I'm sure that our daycare bill will be the same even though my wife or I have had to stay home with them during these closings.  Such is life I guess.  Been a fun morning chasing my son around and occasionally finding sometime to play on the Google web store to get some new extensions and apps while they took their morning nap.  A big fan so far of following extentions:

• Shorten Me - shortens your url when needing to copy and paste it
• todoist - daily organizer and to do lists
• save to Drive - not bad but is only good for pages with no links.  Great for copying articles, texts, recipes, etc
• Send from Gmail - so outlook stops coming up
• Google calendar - easy way to add stuff rather than opening a new tab

On another money gripe, kudos for whoever came up with the idea that graduate students have to pay to graduate.  Wish I could have been there for that meeting.  Gee, we're getting tuition money from these students that we don't have to house or feed...how else can we stick it to them though.  It just doesn't seem like it's enough.  But I digress, complaining isn't going to get me anywhere, and it isn't going to get that fee to go away either.  So I'm down to just two reflective essays for my portfolio and a research paper and that's it. Roughly 5 more weeks and it'll thankfully be over with.  There have definitely been some things I wouldn't have learned without these classes, but there have also been some filler and other parts that really just reassured or reiterated what I already knew or taught.  Probably the biggest thing that I took from all this, was I learned how to create an e-book.  They are time consuming to make, but it is a great way to have your students learn about any kind of content and they are great for different learning styles as you can add audio and pictures to the entire thing for those that are EC or are just more visual learners or audio learners.  I did one in one of my classes for the Cold War, as just a way to introduce what the Cold War was and a lot of the key vocabulary that comes with it.  I think that over the summer when I get some time I'll look to make more of these.  At least that's the plan, we'll see how much time the twins really give me to do anything this summer.

In the classroom, we've assigned our American figures yesterday and started our research.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature was kept me from see my 7th graders, so we'll be moving things around yet again, but eventually we'll start up with our Most Powerful World Leader bracket as well.  I plan to post as much as I can here and on twitter.  I'm hoping that by sharing our progress and results, the students will take this a bit more seriously.  I know that a majority will because they are driven to do well and/or better their classmates, but hopefully this can get everyone on board to do well.  I also added a smack talk wall for the project, it should be fun to see them enjoy that part of it.  I'll have updates from both classes next week with where we are in our tournaments, I'm hoping to have the voting start of April.

Alright, back to chasing the kids around, this post has taken about 3 hours to write with all the stops.  Have a good one