As you know I blog about politics because my attitude is that you can ignore politics as a teacher, but that does not mean politics will ignore you. In the classroom, I try to use culturally relevant materials and to approach lessons from that point of view.

Normally, teaching fifth grade in an “open” presidential election year would be great. We learn about U.S. history, we’ve just finished the Revolutionary War period, and are into the founding of our nation. I haven’t even tried to talk about the current election with the kids yet. Instead, I’m trying to build a base in a couple of areas.

1. The fundamental ideas that the nation was built on, but;
Not turning that into a “worship” of the documents;
2. Things that didn’t work out, and didn’t get worked out until later and then MUCH later;
3. Spending some time with Franklin’s statements about the Constitution and it’s various imperfections. Read the rest of this entry »

Howdy, long time, no write. I apologize, but life has been happening and that leads to less writing. Can you tell I’ve been teaching cause and effect lately? I’m doing Colonial American history with the class, and that will be the topic of this post. Read the rest of this entry »

I could share an earful about the return of benchmark testing (which was on hiatus with the switch-over to the SBAC) and how it’s making a mockery of recent calls by the President to limit testing, but I’d rather talk about my classroom and what’s going on. I’m going to focus on mathematics, and a particular aspect of my instructional practice that’s working, and what needs improvement.
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A recent case of mistaking biology for pornography has hit education. It’s not the first time folks have gotten worked up about exposing the children to unwholesomeness. When I saw this I recalled an interesting moments in my classroom that I had recently. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I’m not anywhere close to writing these updates on a weekly basis, I’m not going to label them that way for this year. I’m instead going to concentrate on writing for you my dear readers, when I can, and let the posts fall where they may.

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