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I happened to see this clip on TV this morning while having my cereal and getting ready to head off to my practicum placement. In it, Rhee addresses the security issues and says that the security company "went under" and that is why police were called in. This was a big topic among my teachers today at school.... they feel that the story about the security company "going under" is false and are pretty angry that they had NO security last Friday and that teachers had to take turns outside the school acting as security.

Oh good gravy. What next?!

I thought this might be interesting to share in light of what is happening with DCPS. Yesterday was my first day at my practicum placement and during lunch a few teachers were talking about the "buzz on the blogs" and the firings. All of them mentioned the students protestes by the students at the Duke Ellington School.

The kids protesting in the videos, most of them were my kids! They are so wonderful. :)

THis is fantastic! Thanks for posting it. Interesting that Fenty says no teachers will be taken out of classrooms . . . John, maybe you should call him . . . ;-)

"Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high, Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow ..." I will be singing this all day long in my head! This made such an impact in my childhood.

This article caught my attention because my practicum placement cooperating teacher has a bulletin board and he encourages students to bring in newspaper articles that catch their attention. However, he has said that he hopes that they will not all be about sports stars and entertainers. Yet, the students are constantly talking about entertainers (especially Lil Wayne - he's all the rage in middle schools apparently!) and sports starts. I feel like a story like this could be used to help inspire the students to stay in school - seeing people they admire commit to their education could be very valuable.

This is sort of a basic review of how and why we as teachers might use film in the classroom. This is my first post on this issue; I am searching for some more in-depth sites that might have models for lesson plans. Many sites have lesson plans based around a specific film; a site that provides lesson plan templates that are applicable across a wide variety of films would be more applicable/useful. However, the comments made here by Paris provide a good base from which to start thinking about the idea.

The Valley of the Shadow (also called the Valley Project) website is a part of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The material in the site documents the lives of two communities during the Civil War period; one community from the South and one community from the North. The site is an online library or an archive filled with primary resources such as letter, diaries, census records, government records, newspapers, speeches, maps, images and other materials. The site contains thousands of documents. The archive is divided into three sections: The Eve of War (Fall 1859-Spring 1861), The War Years (Spring 1861-Spring 1865), and The Aftermath (Spring 1865-Fall 1870). An example of one such document is a letter written in August, 1864 by a young militiaman to his parents telling them that he is well and that he will be sending home his pay. I have added a few lines because I find it so interesting and compelling. The letter comes from a camp near Petersburg. Dear Parents it is with the Greatest of Pleashure that I seat My self to inform you and My Brothers and Sisters that I like it well and am well feal Hartey like ite beter now than Ever I did I hope that youens Ar all well and all the Rest about [unclear: tomstorm] ile now state to you that I Received your Letter last Knight And was Glad to here from youens And was glad to here that Youenes wasened yet dissturbed By The Johneys Rebes you Stated in your letter that tha Wes moveing every thing out Of Town now if tha wold be men tha wold take In the same document but another page, the young man writes about his pay. Read this letter we ar getting Paid off to day I draw 1.20.10 that is one hundrad 20 dollars 10 cts Ile ex press 1 hundrade 10 dollars and mebbey fifteen dollars I dont want to ceep so mutch money here I cend it to you and if you want to make youse of it whi you may get the Chirldren wat ever tha want that is in the eating line And Close but you must be A littl

I ran out of room in the box above.....anyway, I am not certain what the citation rules are regarding this but I found the letter on the website that I have bookmarked, The Valley of the Shadow. Anyway, it is a great site….there is soooo much more.

I think this is a great story about an individual who gave up a successful legal career to become a teacher. It caught my attention because the teacher with whom I am doing my practicum placement left a career at the State Department to become a teacher for some similar reasons.

My search for information on how schools are funded also turned up this website, which has video links to each of the episodes from "Where We Stand: America's Schools in the 21st Century." Each of the clips are certainly interesting, though not really telling us anything we don't already know. The fifth segment deals with the question of how we finance education.

Yesterday I had to prepare and deliver a lesson on archaeology to our grade 7 classes (Ancient World History) for my practicum. I actually used this site in my preparation. Under "Outreach and Education," there is a section called Archaeology 101 where you can get basic information on archaeology. There is also a glossary, a list of books and a list movies. They have an archive of well developed lesson plans too. However, I found another lesson plan that I modified and used that was a smash with the kids……even to toughest, roughest, hardest to reach students were engaged. If anyone wants a copy of it let me know and I can post it on our Wiki. Anyway, since archaeology applies to almost all of history, this site is quite useful.

I know we've all heard about the rather controversial Capital Gains program - where DCPS is paying students cash awards for good academic performance and behavior - but I wasn't certain how much anyone really knew about the specifics of the program. I just recently learned that my own school - Emery Educational Campus - is participating in Capital Gains. I can say that my own students do not seem to take the program very seriously, or at the very least not enough to study more to make certain they perform well on the mandatory assessments (said one student: "I don't really care about the extra money").

They have "Tech Tickets" at McKinley, it's just a huge joke because the rewards are like breakfast with Mr. Pinder the principal, who they hate. Last Wednesday, they started joking around about starting a black market for tech tickets, at least they are inventive about it. But it doesn't motivate them.

The New Deal Network is a site that I am using in preparing my curricular unit. The site has an archive with documents such as the Fire Side Chats with President F. Roosevelt, photographs, and audio tapes. I like this site because it really takes you to that place in time so that you can see and hear what was going on in the culture as well as in the government. The site also has lesson plans and resource links for educators.

Alan, that is so funny I just posted and noticed that you too had posted this site. It's great, don't you think? I am actually using a Fire Side Chat from FDR for one of my socratic seminars in my curricular unit. There is also a lesson plan about arts and the depression that I am going to adapt for the unit.

I was frustrated by my inability to find primary source documents on my last mini-lesson for the Conscription Act; however I was happy to stumble upon these in regards to this week's Takaki reading. PBS already provides a great wealth of resources to teachers - including lesson plans - and I couldn't resist posting this one. The rest of the site includes other primary source documents as well as images, all broken down over periods that correlate to episodes from their "The West" series.

In reading this last chapter of Takaki, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to my personal favorite from this genre of "alternative" interpretations of U.S. History, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." His chapter on the history of Reconstruction is very insightful and I remember being utterly shocked the first time I read it. In searching for lesson plans based around his text, I found this website. You simply have to sign up for membership (it's free) and you have access to resources and lesson plans based around each of the chapters in his seminal work. This website is co-produced by Howard Zinn himself.

In reading this last chapter of Takaki, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to my personal favorite from this genre of "alternative" interpretations of U.S. History, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." His chapter on the history of Reconstruction is very insightful, and in searching for lesson plans based around his text, I found this website. You simply have to sign up for membership (it's free) and you have access to resources and lesson plans based around each of the chapters in his seminal work. This website is co-produced by Howard Zinn himself.