Group items tagged

TCI, a leading publisher of innovative K-12 social studies curriculum, recently launched TeachTCI and LearnTCI, online instructional technologies for teachers and students.

When teachers sign in to their TeachTCI account online, they have access to all the resources found in TCI's print materials, plus links to lesson-specific discussion groups that facilitate professional exchange, an assessment creator, and a Classroom Presenter tool that translates the printed lesson guide into a visual format that enables teachers to lead dynamic classroom activities.

"TeachTCI turns the countless hours I would usually spend on lesson planning and activity development into a one-stop, shopping-like experience for everything I need for class. The fact that it is online makes it easy for me access these resources from any computer and allows me to work as easily from home as from school," said Steve Innamarato, a social studies teacher at Central High School in Philadelphia.

KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Seniors here at Kwamfundo high school sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff room last year because their accounting teacher chronically failed to show up for class. With looming national examinations that would determine whether they were bound for a university or joblessness, they demanded a replacement.

Here in the Western Cape, only 2 out of 1,000 sixth graders in predominantly black schools passed a mathematics test at grade level in 2005, compared with almost 2 out of 3 children in schools once reserved for whites that are now integrated, but generally in more affluent neighborhoods.

Re-thinking the Rankings

B-CC had been ranked as the nation’s 64th best high school on the 2008 Newsweek list, but it was missing from U.S. News’ top 100. One parent e-mailed: “Should I be worried?”

In the 2009 Newsweek rankings, released in June, four county schools (Richard Montgomery, B-CC, Thomas S. Wootton and Winston Churchill) were ranked among the nation’s top 100, with two others (Walt Whitman and Walter Johnson) narrowly missing

So why teach? It sounds exhausting, stressful, and almost impossible to do well! In fact, we teach because the rewards are outstanding. When your students tell you at the end of the year that they can’t believe how much they’ve learned…that is a reward. When former students, now in college, return to your classroom to get a hug, to thank you for what you did to help them believe in themselves, and to tell your present students what it was like in “their day”…that is your reward. I just received a letter from the parent of a former student who is now in graduate school. She wrote that she saw a quote and thought of me. It said, “You make a child feel good about himself and that’s a motivation to excel.” That is a reward. So, in answer to our questions of the 60’s, as teachers, we did change the world. We changed it when we taught children to believe in themselves and to share that knowledge. We changed it by teaching our youngest students to listen, to share, and to respect their classmates and themselves. We changed it by giving our students the tools and skills they needed to change their world. We made this a better world -- one child at a time.

People want support from Washington but not interference. They want accountability but not oversight. They want national leadership but not at the expense of local control.

And now that I'm here I'm even more convinced that the best solutions begin with parents and teachers working together in the home and the classroom.

This site was developed to provide teachers with a full range of resources and activities to support the teaching of landmark Supreme Court cases, helping students explore the key issues of each case.

The general teaching strategies include moot court, political cartoon analysis, continuum exercises, and Web site evaluation.