A recent post in the AP US Government and Politics group got under my skin and I’m going to both share my thoughts about it here and expand the subject a little bit. The thrust of the post was that a teacher had significant percentages — 50% even — of students being absent on a …
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Tuesday Talk… with Rayna Baum Lifson
I met Rayna Baum Lifson when we were taking courses together at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. We quickly saw kindred spirits in one another in terms of our philosophies on education, views on social justice, and musical taste. I have always admired her passion and drive, but am particularly in awe of …
AP Gov: The Fake Polling Project
When I started teaching Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics I had my students conduct a survey on a subject of their choosing. They were taught the basics on proper polling — and given a list of what not to do. The project was nothing exciting or out of the ordinary, but it sufficed to …
Flashback: Egypt 2001 – Set a course for adventure
What follows is my lengthy journal from my first student travel experience, in July/August 2001. I didn’t necessarily journal every day, so I did some reconstruction shortly after the trip. Names have not been changed to protect the guilty. July 20, 2001 Utter exhaustion, yet I probably won’t be able to fall asleep. I guess …
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Week in Review (November 3-9)
Weird week for a number of reasons. Sunday – I had completed a lot of work-related items over the previous couple of days, affording me a rare day to plant myself in front of the television for binge watching. From Saturday night through Sunday afternoon I burned through all of the second season of Jack …
Guest Blogger: Emily Trujillo, HHS ’21
Emily’s transformation from neophyte to award-winning debater happened in what felt like the blink of an eye. Seldom have I encountered someone so driven to improve. She is constantly studying others and learning from their positive traits and mistakes. When I learned about the Congressional Academy, she and Ryan Pierson were my first two asks, …
Bang, Johnny Bang: A Look Back at FGS
In the fall of 1994, Yuval Levin, Adam Keiper, and Andrew Keiper approached me about starting a club to discuss politics. I told them about Model Congress, a favorite activity I had done in high school. I went to the principal, got his blessing, and the first incarnation of HHS Debate was born. Sometime during …
Rubrics: Accountability and Subjectivity
For the first 2/3 of my teaching career, individuals teachers determined how to grade essays that they assigned. Different teachers valued different things, and there were clear disparities from one classroom to the next. A student could learn how to please one teacher one year, turn in similar work the next year and do very …
Political Party Project of 2040
Sometime in the early days of teaching AP US Government and Politics, I came up with an idea to teach students about political parties. I wanted/needed a fun activity for students to do in a group, and took some ideas from an even earlier mock election activity I had done where students made fake ads …
Genealogical Journey, Round 2
Two weeks ago I wrote about how I went from someone utterly uninterested in my genealogy to a semi-obsessed hobbyist. I spent hours of time online, went to Mormon churches that provided access to data that was unavailable elsewhere, and visited countless cemeteries. The bulk of my concentration was around my father’s father’s family for …
Fenster on Education 