We are simply "Skipping a Stone" across U.S. History

 I talk with my students all the time about all of the U.S. History events that are contained in our 8th-grade Content Level Expectations set by the Michigan Department of Education. 
(CLICK HERE for Marzano Style Lesson Design)

I also try to explain the fact that what we cover is "One-inch deep and a mile wide on a vast lake of knowledge." Meaning that we cover a variety of topics from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, etc. but we don't go too deep into any of them. We cover all of those topics (and more) in a nine-month school year, whereas we could spend a semester on each of them individually. I guess that's what college is for.

I try to link events together by using a TIME WEB on my board. Right now it is just a visual of what it could look like. Next year I want to fill it in with actual events showing how certain events are linked to other events and how personal experiences helped shape our history, just like our personal experiences shape the way we live our lives.

Continuing with my, "One-inch deep and a mile wide" analogy, sometimes I feel like we are simply skipping a stone across the vastness of U.S. History. We are just skimming the surface on certain topics while ignoring the depth underneath. I try to make the biggest waves, while also acknowledging the ripple effects and how, when they collide with ripples from other stone touches, other events were born.

My hope is that on the topics we do dive deeper on, specifically the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, I am providing the bedrock that our Nation is founded on so that my students will have a better understanding of our History when we only have time to skip that rock.

www.johnvandusen.com

Not Every Day Can be a Tea Party

In my first year of teaching, I taught what I thought was a great lesson on the Boston Tea Party to a group of 8th graders.

As my students were packing up their backpacks and preparing to leave I overheard a student say to one of her friends, "We should have a tea party like that! Pretty dresses and cool hats!" I thought about what had happened, and how I had covered the material, and realized it wasn't good enough. I went out that night and purchased a 100 pack of Lipton tea bags, re-arranged my tables to be "ships" and the next day held my class in the hallway until the bell. I gave a 30-second review of what had happened, then we proceeded to storm my classroom and throw the tea into buckets of water I had placed around the room. They got the idea and I was very pleased with their level of interaction and understanding.

If you were to ask those students today (They would be 28-29 years old...wait...what?! That can't be right!!)

***Pushes Ibuprofin out of the way to check the calendar......***
Nope. That's right. ANYWAY...those students might have only remembered one thing from my teaching that year, and that would be the lesson on the Boston Tea Party.

Not every day can be that.
Not every lesson can be fun, engaging, and interactive.
I wish that it could, but it's an impossibility. I have come to realize that fact and now share it openly with my students.  Being honest with them helps them mentally prepare for the lesson and also gives me credibility.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to teach lessons like the Boston Tea Party every day!
When we have those days, students are happy to learn and happy to engage in whatever we are doing.

When we don't have those days, my students know that they won't be throwing tea, hitching wagons, or developing the Alamo defenses out of their desks, and I find that they are more receptive and introspective.

For example, we are learning about the 14th amendment right now, and it's very detailed and technical in its writing and application. It's difficult to make it "exciting." However, by leading with the idea that "this isn't a Tea Party day" my students are okay with it. They know that I like to get them out of their seats and try different projects, so when we can't, it's almost as if they understand that the importance of the topic is increased and are more focused.

I will keep working on ways to make my lessons engaging both mentally and physically. I am a firm believer that my 8th graders should be moving, talking, and creating. Now that we have learned about the 14th amendment, maybe it's time to turn my room into the Supreme Court...

COVID NEW YEAR

On Friday, March 13, 2020 we were told that we would not be going back to school on Monday. It's been a year and a lot has happened. A lot of bad things happened. A lot of bad things. 

I'm exhausted from all the bad things.
Death, sickness, bankruptcy, etc.

I made the choice a few days ago to reflect on the GOOD things that have gone on in the past year. In some ways, the lockdowns and quarantines have forced me to improve some aspects of my educational life.  That's what this post is all about. Some of these things might have happened, and others most definitely would not.

Here are some of the good things as I reflect on the COVID New Year.

I Wrote (finished writing) a book: When I got back from Afghanistan, I was working full-time for the Michigan Army National Guard. I opened up a Google Doc titled, "Leadership" and every once and a while, I would open it up and write a few sentences about something I have been dealing with. After I left the full-time gig I would check on it every few months, reminiscing about all the great times and great friends I met while doing that job. When we closed school, I opened up that document and realized I had a lot of content! I organized that content and it will become a book this spring! Thank you to Darrin Peppard and Road to Aweome LLC for taking a chance on me!

Watch for, "LESSON 1: Leveraging Leadership in Everyday Life" coming in May 2021.

It will be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
You will be able to order an autographed copy at www.johnvandusen.com

Blog Series: When we closed down, we weren't supposed to cover any new material with our students. We had gone from the Proclamation of 1763, through the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, War of 1812, Westward expansion, Mexican/American War, and were just about ready to start in on the Civil war. I had a lot of material to go back over, but I also wanted to do something that would help in the following years.  So, I wrote a five-part series on the Declaration of Independence and a 10 part series on the Consitution. I put them in a Wakelet along with a podcast to go with it (See below). If you ever wanted to know the down and dirty of those two founding documents, check them out.
Declaration 
Consitution

America's Start Podcast: Along with the blog series on the Declaration and Constitution, I basically did an "audio blog" where I read them aloud. Again, if you want to know more about our founding documents, you can listen on your favorite podcasting app! America's Start Podcast

YouTube playlist: I am not good at relaxing. While I was quarantined for 24 days (Close contact....10 days +14) I started a Youtube Playlist called, "Teacher PD" with fast lessons for busy teachers. I did short videos on:

- Rocketbook
- Socrative
- Pear Deck
- Getting more steps at work
- Making better lists
- Growth Mindset

It was a lot of fun..and A LOT of work! But, I had the time. Check out the entire playlist HERE.

Pear Deck: This has been an AMAZING tool to help engage students, especially while we were virtual. Basically, it's a way for students and teachers to interact with Google Slides in real-time. I have used it A LOT in the last year, and 366 days ago, I didn't even really know what it did. Now I do and I use it all the time. I even use it when I'm teaching for the Army. I will never get to meet my Army students, our course will conclude before we will be allowed to be face to face. I know it's EXTRA hard to be a virtual student. I also know that Pear Deck makes it better.

Socrative: This is a fast and easy tool for making online quizzes. Again...watch my video above! You can make multiple-choice, true/false, and short answer questions. Students take it online and it's graded automatically. It's very user-friendly. 

Head Freshman Football Coach: This year's football season was a complete mess. We had two solid weeks of practice, followed by two weeks of not being able to see our players, followed by games, cancelations, and uncertainty. My team was able to play three games (two were against the same team, back to back with a week in-between). 

In our first game, we were down 20-0 at one point, and we looked like Freshmen who were playing in their first game. It was rough, to say the least. However, we caught some good luck (and recovered a fumble) and ended up winning the game 22-20. My players were ecstatic! We lost game two 12-0, and then headed off for game three against a JV team. 

We grew up A LOT as a team that night, and as young men. If you would have watched the first offensive series, you would have thought we were going to get beat 70-0. But we didn't. We dug deep and found a way to complete.  With the last play of the 3rd quarter, we went up 13-12. We had the other team in a 4th and 2. If we stopped them we would be able to run a few plays and run out the clock. 

Their sophomore quarterback tried to sneak the ball but was knocked back. He landed on his feet and squirted around the right edge for 4 yards and a first down. They ended up scoring on that drive and we just didn't have enough in the tank to take it back to the endzone. Freshman vs. JV's is a big difference. I am VERY proud of my team. They have that FLIVVER HEART!

With these GOOD THINGS that have happened during a terribly exhausting and precious year, I'm optimistic that 2021 will be full of GREAT THINGS!

www.johnvandusen.com

Stop saying, "I'm sorry."

Before you demand an apology from me...read on.

I didn't say, stop apologizing. I said, stop saying, "I'm sorry."

There is a more meaningful way to apologize.

Let's use an example to drive this point home.

Sam and Bill are both 3rd graders in the same class.

Sam walks over to Bill's desk, takes his pudding cup, and starts eating it. When Bill gets back from the water fountain, he sees Sam with a smile on his face as well as some of his pudding.  Bill is MAD and SAD! I would be too...I love pudding!

Bill starts crying and their teacher walks over to investigate. After about seven seconds, the truth is clear. The teacher reprimands Sam and he tucks his chin into his chest with a scowl on his face and says, "I'm sorry" as he storms away. 

Bill is still crying, Sam is upset that he got yelled at, and nothing has been rectified. On top of that, Bill and Sam will probably not be friends for the rest of the day.

Sam apologized, but it didn't mean anything. He said it because he knew he was supposed to, but it didn't have any meaning, feeling, or sincerity behind it. It was a "fire and forget" apology that did nothing to show remorse, support the healing of Bill, or mend their friendship.

newvoices.org

When something happens where an apology is warranted, there was usually a power imbalance in which the person who did the wrong thing took power away from whoever was wronged. In this case, Sam took the power away from Bill by taking his pudding cup and eating it. Bill was wronged by Sam. Let's see how we can remedy this power imbalance by having Sam apologize in a more meaningful way. 

Sam says to Bill, "Bill. Please forgive me for taking your pudding cup and eating it."

Sam, who originally had the power advantage, just tipped the scale in Sam's direction by the way he worded his apology. Sam is now at the mercy of Bill and his choice to forgive him or not for the infraction. Even though he will not get his pudding cup back, the ball is now in his court and he gets to make the decision, not Sam. 

He did not have a choice to eat his pudding cup. That choice was taken away from him. But he has a choice now. The scale will be tipped in Bill's favor until he makes the choice to balance it again by forgiving Sam. 

How we apologize and forgive each other can be very shallow with the "fire and forget" form of, "I'm sorry," or it can be meaningful and sincere by shifting the power imbalance to the injured person and allowing them to shift the scale back to zero. By placing meaning, feeling, and sincerity behind an apology, it will also speed up the healing process and let us get back to being friends, and hopefully eating pudding!

Try this technique the next time you have to apologize for something. You will feel a twinge of uneasiness as you realize you have given up all power on whether you will be forgiven or not. That decision is not up to you. It is up to the person you wronged. 

Time Web

 While I love teaching 8th grade U.S. History, I do with I hade more time so that my content wasn't, "a mile wide and an inch deep." So many of our topics are intertwined and deeper than the one or two days we get to spend on them. I am trying desperately to make connections in history stick together.
Enter:

The TIME WEB

I talk to my students all the time about how the points in history that we study are all interrelated. History isn't so much a TIMELINE as it is a TIME WEB, with events linking to other events happening at the same time, in the future, and in the past.

Today in class was a great example. While talking about the Missouri compromise and California statehood, a bunch of different points in history that we have already learned about came into play. Thomas Cobb, James Tallmadge, and John Q. Adams all predicted the civil war decades before it would take place.

We brought up the revolt of Nat Turner and how that led to first amendment issues in Mississippi when them offering a reward for the arrest and conviction of any person "who shall utter, publish, or circulate" abolitionist ideas.

We talked about how the women's rights movement, the temperance movement,  and public school reform all helped lead to the abolition of slavery. We talked about the tabling of slavery issues by congress, basically, "kicking the can down the road." We also talked about what it meant to, "Make a motion" and "Table" something.

We recalled the U.S. - Mexican war and how it was brought on by the annexation of Texas. It helped us to, "REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" and General Santa Anna. When President Polk asked for money for the war, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania brought up a Proviso that would ban slavery in any territory that was gained as a result. 

The gold rush to California in 1849 and the follow-on application for statehood as a free state-linked us back to the Missouri compromise and the "line in the sand" at the 36 degrees 30 minute parallel and why it wasn't drawn all the way to the Pacific ocean.

Our TIME WEB got a workout today, linking the founding of our Nation with several historical stops along the way on our mile-wide, inch-deep journey. Days like today make me feel like we are simply skipping a rock across the pond of history, touching only key points, and leaving out other vital topics.

My hope is that my 8th graders learn to love learning and make connections of their own.

Messy Desk

What does your desk look like?

Some days my desk looks great! I take 8 min. and put things away, throw away un-needed times, and I look really organized. Other days, it's not like that.  Why does it matter? Or does it?

Albert Einstein said, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

My desk is cluttered and my mind is not empty!
As for your desk, I think it depends on what your desk is used for:

• Primary workstation. You spend the vast majority of your time at your desk because that's where work gets done. When I was working full time for the Army as an assistant operations officer, this was how my desk was used. My life revolved around phone conferences, PowerPoint slides, Email, and producing orders.
• Supplementary workstation. You spend time at your desk, but it is used to enhance your job. This is how my desk is used as a teacher. I do work here, but most of my work is done away from my desk.
• Nonworkstation. You have a desk because you need a place to put some things, but you don't do any work there. This was my desk as a Company Commander in the Army. I basically used my desk as a place to put things while I went from task to task.

Taking a look at my desk today, I see a couple of coffee cups, a binder from the class I just got done teaching (on-line course for the Army), a few dry-erase markers, my Rocketbook (Check out my video on using Rocketbook), my keys, a bottle of cleaner, a 3D printed pencil holder with applicable pencils, pens, screwdriver, fork (what is that doing there?) and a checklist that I am currently working on.

This is definitely a supplementary workstation. When students come in tomorrow, I will use my desk for taking lunch count, attendance, and starting whatever prevention we will be working on. I will spend some time at my desk tomorrow, but most of my time will be spent away from my desk talking with and helping my students.

When teachers went from face-to-face to virtual, there were some massive changes in regards to our desks. First, our desk went from our classroom to our home. When we are in our classroom, our space is geared toward teaching, when we are at home, it is not. 

Where was your desk?

Mine was at first in the kitchen. I hung a sheet up in between the windows to help knock down some of the echoes. Second, it moved to our spare bedroom, again with a sheet hung up behind me. I look back at some of those early recordings and I laugh at how ridiculous it looks!

I ended up placing my computer in the basement on my workbench so I could stand most of the time. It was really tough to get organized at home without a primary workstation desk.

Clutter Helps

I think that having a desk with some clutter on it helps me manage my work. I tend to bounce around from task to task and by having "everything out" I remember things I need to do. About once a week my desk gets a good cleaning. Things get thrown away, put away, placed in places of priority so I remember to do them. 

How do you use your desk?
What does it look like?

Two-Hour Delays

When morning temperatures are below zero, it doesn't take much wind before I get the text message stating that we are on a two-hour delay. Now what?

Some will go back to bed, some will get up and get moving. I'm a get-up and get moving kind of guy, but I have to have a plan. If I don't jot down a plan for my extra time, I will waste it.

I don't work well from home because I get distracted by other things, and I don't want to go to my classroom yet, so I have been visiting a local coffee shop and bringing my computer. I place that last sentence in the plural because we had three two-hour delays last week. 

contrastcoffee.com

Contrast Coffee provided me with great tasting coffee, calm music, and a relaxing place where I can flip the lid on my laptop and catch up on things that have been on my to-do list. I never understood "going to the coffee shop" to work until I did it myself. I have been missing out!

Starting school two hours late provides a host of issues that need to be hammered out. Lunch count, attendance, normal morning routines are all jazzed up. Usually not a huge issue in the middle school environment, but with shared staff and 8th graders that move between the middle school and high school for band, art, etc. it can cause some friction.

The biggest issue I face is now I have two classes in the afternoon that will be run "as normal" and two classes that I won't see at all, and one class that gets caught up in the morning routine of lunch count, announcements, etc. 

That's the lesson management issue.

Again, if it's one day, no issue. When mother nature refuses to turn up the thermostat and we end up with three in one week, then it becomes something we need to work through.

Do you keep going through the content and have the afternoon classes get almost a week ahead of the morning classes? Do you do some SEL things in the afternoon to keep everyone at the same pace? 

I like the SEL idea because I think students and teachers both benefit from it. That's easy and covers one of the days. For the other two, I don't go ahead in the content, but I do expand on the topic we are studying. Teaching from 1760-1900 in U.S. history, we are, "a mile wide and an inch deep" in the content. When I end up with extra time, I dig a little deeper.

For this past week, we were covering Horace Mann and school reform. So naturally, I had my students come up with reform ideas for 2021. There were some very interesting ideas on how to make public education better, as told by my 8th graders.  Below are a few of the more popular ideas:

1) Start school between 9:00-11:00. Their argument was that they did not like to wake up early in the morning, and most of them took a class period or two before they were fully awake. 

unsplash.com

2) "Real Life" class. Students wanted to have the option to take classes that would teach them about taxes, how to take out a loan for a car, and how to do a basic home repair (fix a leaky faucet, change a tire, etc.) 

3) "Real Life" field trips. The students wanted to actually go to some of the places that they talk about in class. Virtual field trips and YouTube tours are nice, but it's not the same. **I looked into taking students to Philadelphia, where the Declaration and Constitution were written, but it is expensive.  Maybe we can take a trip to Lansing or Madison to see how government works.

These ideas may be the next step in making public education better. Thanks to those two-hour delays, students were able to think through some of their ideas and explain them to others.

Thanks, mother nature!

....we get the point...can you PLEASE get temps above zero?