Over the last decade I’ve been introduced to a variety of different pedagogical methods that seem to be designed to replace learning about content with student-centered learning. While I would agree that anyone who lectures every day is a dinosaur, I don’t believe that there’s anything inherently wrong with lecturing. A healthy mix of different …
Continue reading “Gallery Walks: Are You Just Wasting Time?”
I met Staci Berger as an undergraduate at Rutgers University. My recollection of our first interaction was having an initial clash of personalities and opinions (imagine that). We became allies working on some political issues as well as friends. I’ve always known of her strength, drive, and commitment, and had periodically seen her name pop …
When I was in college, I saw Professor Michael Adas present a literal slideshow on Vietnam as a class ending activity. The slides were powerful photographs that he had collected over the years and he accompanied the images with protest songs from Peter, Paul, and Mary, Richie Havens, and other performers. He didn’t have to …
When I decided to become a Little League manager during my time at Rutgers, it was largely driven by having an activity to do with my Little Brother. I met with the powers that be and knowing that parents were automatically placed with their children, I asked them to extend the same courtesy to me, …
Continue reading “The Little League Draft: Girls, Girls, Girls”
I’m reasonably sure this is the day of the week that I’ll be skipping. I don’t directly share links to these posts and they can be somewhat laborious. There are times where I can talk about something that didn’t fit into any of the week’s posts, and the exercise of reviewing what I did is …
Continue reading “Week in Review (November 24 – November 30)”
Adam is the current president of HHS Debate. Under his leadership he has focused on significantly increasing fundraising to enable the team to do international travel next year. There has also been a surge of activity from younger members during his time as an officer. In the two years that I have spent as a …
I’ve been a big fan of simulations since my own days in school, so when I started teaching a government class, I decided to do a mock election. It took a variety of forms over the years, but was probably never more inspired than what occurred in 2003. I had two AP Gov sections — …
Continue reading “The AP Gov Political Party Conventions of 2003”
For years I have thought of myself as a traditionalist when it comes to language. Few things irritated me more than groan-worthy language usage: you know, like “irregardless” or “I could care less.” For many years the most common error I would see in student writing was the magical word “alot.” Oddly I almost never …
Ben Weyl is a 2003 Hillsborough High School alumnus who took several of my classes and was in HHS Debate for four years. He was always engaged politically in high school and college, so I was eager to follow his career path. I’ve watched his career ascent jealously — except when he was covering business …
My second social studies supervisor started his job by blowing every member of my department’s mind by letting us know that there was actually an allocated budget to buy supplies. Great way to win us over right out the gate. But then he encouraged us to adopt the History Alive program for our US History …
Continue reading “US History: From History Alive to HistoryQuest”
Fenster on Education