Yesterday, New York State’s governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the schools of the hardest-hit state in the country during the pandemic would remain physically closed for the remainder of the year, leaving just six states remaining. One of the six is New Jersey, which is the second-hardest hit state in the country. There has been …
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US History: Teaching Sectionalism During the Pandemic
I have historically tended to organize my classes around the textbook’s structure of time periods. I typically do give readings from the textbook along with questions that I’ve crafted, and that material serves as the spine of material, while lectures and individual and group work (in history labs) provide the rest of the bones and …
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Yale Model Congress: Our First Year
If I had access to my classroom, I’d be able to pinpoint the year, but let’s go with November 1995 as the date of the first HHS trip to New Haven, Connecticut to take part in the Yale Model Congress. It took a lot of finessing the powers that be to allow us to make …
I Don’t Like the AP GoPo Redesign (Part 1 of 2)
In 2019, the College Board rolled out revisions to the AP U.S. Government and Politics curriculum. They explained the reason behind this was that the Gov test was perceived as the least rigorous of the AP exams, and as a consequence a large number of colleges didn’t reward any college credit to students with high …
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Tuesday Talk… with Adam Gold, HHS 2002
Adam Gold was part of a bumper crop of middle school kids ready to reinvigorate HHS Debate the moment they stepped into the school. Usually our freshmen arrive too late to join in on a fall trip, but that year we made an exception and the crew became the core of a club renaissance. Adam …
AP Gov: FRQ Exemplars
Last week I shared two free-response questions (“argument essays”) that I would be giving my students. I gave students the questions over the course of a couple days, offered written critiques of all of them, and gave students the opportunity to revise any that had been less than satisfactory. This assignment was not wholly formative …
TV Watching Update
I last updated my TV show review list over a month ago. It doesn’t seem nearly that long ago, but the calendar doesn’t lie. Naturally I watched even more TV than usual during the time that I’ve been isolating. I’ve also watch a lot more movies, but I’m focusing for now just on the television …
Week in Review (April 19-25, 2020)
The days continue to blur together. I usually know what day of the week it is because I have to teach particular lessons, but on Tuesday I said to a couple of Debate members, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” referencing our Google Meeting for the club. And a few minutes later, I started wondering, “Is today …
US History: James K. Polk
For this week’s content-laden lesson, I did a Google Slideshow on James K. Polk. This week I decided not to do anything to adapt my existing presentation for distance learning. I just ran a Google Meet, sharing the screen while I lectured. I did a truly old school lecture where I didn’t have a single …
A Lesson in De-Escalation
Schools operate under the concept of in loco parentis, where we are legally responsible for the well-being of (mostly) minor students despite parents not being present. As a result, we have rules that must be followed and enforced. We typically think of this as a primary job of our vice principals: when students get into …
Fenster on Education 