Janelle Gendrano is a Hillsborough High School alumna who was a four-year member of HHS Debate and a student in my AP Gov class. She also performed in all the Variety Shows and Unplugged concerts from her sophomore year on. We grew close through Debate, but also music, and she left me with the single …
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US History: Mini-Constitutional Convention Simulation
One of the challenges of teaching the history of the creation of the U.S. Constitution is teaching why certain things were included in the Constitution and why others were not. The deification of the framers of the Constitution is at its heart quite silly: the document they produced was not the product of a coherent, …
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London 2003 Journal: We know how to spend the time, who cares about the weather?
A look back at the trip I took with my wife and six-month-old daughter in the summer of 2003. Little did we know that it would be in the midst of an insane heatwave. 30 July 2003 As a complete afterthought, I decided to check the passports information page at the State Department to make …
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Week in Review (December 15-21)
Sunday – I continued grading DBQs, but it was particularly slow going as I slogged through my second section of 24 students. I found all sorts of ways to distract myself, but by the end of the day they were done and I had read the opening paragraphs of the final class’s essays (allowing me …
Questions 16-20
This periodic column addresses questions that come up in the daily life of a teacher. There are likely hundreds of snap decisions we have to make, sometimes trivial, sometimes monumental. Over the last couple of weeks, these jumped out at me: What do I do when two-thirds of the class fails to follow directions?I had …
Shelter From The Storm
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane, caused the death of over 1,500 people and an estimated $125 billion worth of damage. Thousands of people lost their homes and had to evacuate various locations in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. It was the third major hurricane of the season and was …
Normalizing intolerance
Recently, the Hallmark Channel got themselves into hot water by making a very poor decision. Zola, a wedding website service, paid for ads that include — gasp — some same-sex couples kissing in celebration of their union. An organization known as One Million Moms, which is an offshoot of the American Family Association (designated as …
Tuesday Talk… with Peter McDade
I could probably write an essay about Professor McDade. We met through the Facebook group Theme Music. He became one of my favorite online collaborators, playing drums on many of my favorite projects. When I learned he was also a lyricist, we began a songwriting partnership that has produced a dozen songs, including two that …
AP Gov: The Media Ethics Game
The game was initially based on the game A Question of Scruples with a focus on controversial topics involving the ethics of the news media. It was specifically designed for AP US Government and Politics, but could be adapted for any subject or level. It has evolved significantly based on student feedback. SET-UP: Each player …
Hiding in the Foreground, Part 1
After I wrote my first song, it was anything but off to the races. My inexperienced writing muscle never developed all that much and I was slow to write other songs. The second one was based on a silly title I was gifted, “Show Me Your Magic Places.” It seemed like the obvious thing would …
Fenster on Education 