I just finished writing an email to my supervisor that I’d been mulling putting together over the course of the last month or so. Some quick background: I decided mid-year that I wanted to go back to teaching World History. I think of my career as being in segments — the introductory segment (where I …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Tuesday Talk… with Amy Collins
I met Amy Collins at an eventful three-week National Endowment for the Humanities program that is the subject of several questions in this interview. Amy and I became good friends over the course of the seminar and keep in touch on Facebook, and when we happen to be in the same city, which has happened …
AP Gov: The Coronavirus FRQ #4
College Board refers to the fourth free-response question (FRQ) as an “argument essay,” but it’s not an essay. It’s a short answer argument. I have a lot of issues with how CB has chosen to do this year’s exam, but that’s just part of a larger frustration with how they’ve configured the exam. Most of …
How Does the Wedding Playlist Hold Up?
My wife and I were married in August 2000. We decided early on that we wanted a DJ for the wedding rather than a cheesy band, but we were deathly afraid of having someone play all sorts of music we couldn’t stand. Eileen called some prospective DJs to feel them out about how receptive they …
Week in Review (April 11-17, 2020)
Is it week five of being home or week fifty? I haven’t quite found equilibrium. I actually thought last week might be the beginning of something, but I found myself on my computer from 8 am to well into the afternoon each day this week, and for the first time since January I started having …
US History: Manifest Destiny Nearpod
For this week’s content-heavy lesson, I thought I would give my students a choice: do a self-directed Nearpod at their convenience, or tune in for a lecture using the same material at an appointed time. I ran into some technological issues along the way and am not entirely thrilled with my adaptation of a Google …
Seniors and the college acceptance roller coaster
We’re at the time of year where students are getting college acceptances. My seniors are some of the highest-powered students we have, so there are some who’ve heard good or bad news from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Others are awaiting word on May 1 (or now even later). I remember one student a number of …
Continue reading “Seniors and the college acceptance roller coaster”
It’s Past Time to Make the Call on the School Year
A few weeks back New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced that all of New Jersey’s schools would remain shuttered until at least April 17. In the interim other states started to make the difficult, but pro-active decision to announce that their schools were done for year, at least in terms of face-to-face assemblages of students. …
Continue reading “It’s Past Time to Make the Call on the School Year”
Tuesday Talk… with Kevin Staton
I met Kevin Staton in the Gilder Lehrman Transatlantic Histories program that took us from New Haven to Sierra Leone. Kevin is a relentlessly positive, gregarious, and faith-driven person who sees the best in everyone; in other words a near opposite to me! Despite our differences we got along great, bonded over the wonders of …
AP Gov: Equal Protection
How to teach the last portion of Unit 3 in an accelerated fashion… well, the good news is that the vast majority of my students are seniors and they had US History II last year, either the AP or CP level. Regardless of which course they took, they should have spend a good chunk of …
Fenster on Education 