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.

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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?

Transition from STEM to HISTORY

It has been a LONG time since I wrote a blog post. Way too long!
I have been concentrating on other things and the blog has taken a backseat. Some of the other things I have been doing:

The STEM Teacher Podcast:  THIS has even taken a backseat because I am no longer teaching STEM! I have revived it though. Instead of pushing out an episode once a week, I am on track for once a month. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. The link to Anchor is above.

The Kingsford Flivver Flash! Podcast: This has been a TON of fun! I started this podcast to highlight the amazing things surrounding Kingsford football. If you like high school football, Michigan, or the Flivvers, check it out.

The Kingsford Flivver Flash! Blog: I just started this after reading an article that said if you want to increase your podcast audience, start a blog. That article pushed me back into this blog too.

Changing Jobs
I was incredibly blessed to be hired as the STEM teacher for Woodland elementary. I can't express how it has changed my life. With that in mind, I struggle with elementary students. I like to think that I was very good at teaching the younger students, but it took everything I had, every single day. I would get home and have NOTHING in the tank for my family.

When I had the opportunity to apply for the 8th-grade history position, I jumped at it! Sent in my letter of intent, stoped in to see the principal, etc. I made it widely known that it was my dream job. When I was told I was selected, I could not contain my excitement!

Two reasons 8th-grade history is my dream job.

1) I get to teach the "Masters of the Universe!" Just ask an 8th grader and most of them have everything figured out. Everything. So teaching someone who already knows everything is a challenge and a reward.

2) The content for Michigan 8th-Graders is the founding of our country. From the treatment of the colonies under King George III to the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, Bill of Rights, War of 1812, Manifest Destiny (We do play the old school, "Oregon Trail" game!), the Civil War, etc. I love every bit of it! The opportunity to put students into the Constitution almost every day is amazing. With the craziness of our world and the media spin, it's awesome to be able to go to our founding documents for true answers.

Change in Plans

Teaching, much like life, throws us curve-balls now and again.
Sometimes those result in a a, "STIIIIIIIIRIKE!"
Other times we hit a home run....this week has bee a HOME RUN!
(See the baseball reference....)

Coming back from spring break (I had one day of break due to working for the Army...whomp whomp) I had the idea of getting out our Keva planks and building some bridges.  We haven't done that in a while. We have been doing a lot of brain work lately with dice and cards, and clay. I wanted to get some things moving with building and breaking things.

When I came into my room, I was happy to find some things I had ordered showed up!  Two big kits of K'Nex and some laserclasrroom light kits.  I received some ZOOB's earlier in the month and had been waiting on the K'Nex to show up so we could do stations.

I threw my bridge idea away and within about 15 min. had a plan to work with our new toys.
It has been a riot watching my students explore with our new gadgets!

I took the light kits to the middle school and it has been great watching 5th graders work together on different light experiments.

As always, you can see more on Twitter.

Better than a Video Game!

he last few weeks I have been trying to give my students some tools to use over Christmas break. I have been giving them simple STEM games that they can play at home either by themselves or with a few friends/parents/relatives/people/whomever. 

Two weeks ago we played "STUCK IN THE MUD" and "KNOCKOUT." Both simple dice games that reinforce the idea of probability. My students had a blast playing, and I had a few come back and say that they had played at home.  You can see my score sheets HERE! Make your own or print these off!

This week we are playing a simple form of YAHTZEE!  I have it scaffolded for EK/K/1, 2/3, and 4th grade. With the younger students I only give them two dice and one roll. The middle group gets three dice and two rolls, while the 4th graders get five dice and three rolls. It has worked well! I was a little concerned (as I often am) with the EK and K groups, but they are adding and having fun. I know that my students will have screen time this Christmas break, but my hope is that they will put the iPad down for a fun STEM game with some of their friends
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SPOOKY SKELETONS!!!

Because it's close to Halloween, we HAD to do something fun with skeletons! It's pretty neat to see what students already know about bones, and how much they don't know!  I have had a few classes that were able to name the largest bone in the body (Femur for those who didn't know....no judgment here.) I have had ZERO classes able to name the smallest bone (Stapes..it's in your ear.) We had some "homework" to do while watching our skeleton video.
1) Where is the largest bone in the body and what is it called? (Upper leg - Femur)
2) Where is the smallest bone in the body and what is it called? (Ear - Stapes)
3) How many bones make up your skull? (21)
4) What do bones make? (Blood)
Then we had some fun making skeletons!
We started by making legs, then arms, then a rib cage.
The grand master challenge was to make an entire skeleton out of our Keva Contraption blocks.
Check me out on TWITTER for more pictures!

Knees in the Breeze

The 5th grade STEM class meets for 5 days in a row.They are on a rotation with Art, Music, Gym, Computers, and STEM.  Even though I only see them every 5 weeks, being able to have them for a few days in a row means we are able to do some pretty cool stuff.

Wile E. Coyote rocking the chute!

This sections project is to build a parachute.  After some brief discussion about what a parachute is, the history of it, how it works, and the science behind it, we get right to work using newspaper and masking tape!
It is really interesting to see the different designs that 5th graders can come up with.
At the end of the week we take the parachutes out to the Flivver Field grandstands and drop them off.  Some of the parachutes work REALLY well, while some...don't. Either way, we had a lot of fun and learned a lot about how parachutes work and what causes them to fail.
It has been a great project. Pictures really don't do the project justice, so I ask that you watch the video we made.
Check out our YouTube video here!
Check me out on Twitter to check out our latest project!

Christopher Columbus: The worlds biggest FAILURE!

Watch his story here!

With Monday being Columbus day, I thought it would be a great week to talk about one of the biggest failures of all time!

Floating Easy

That may seem harsh, but Christopher Columbus failed miserably at his mission.  He was trying to get to India.  He missed by about 15,000 miles. Not his fault though!!  He thought the earth was a lot smaller than it really is.  It's hard to fault a guy for that when most of the world still believed that the world was flat!  Almost everyone he came across told him he was crazy for one, thinking the earth was round, and two, for wanting to go sail off the edge of it. 

So how do you celebrate a man who failed.  Easy! Christopher Columbus may have failed at his attempt to find the West Indies, but he was brave enough to try! He could have listened to his critics and not tried at all, but, because he was persistent, he opened up trade routes with the Americas and is credited as the first European to set foot on these new lands. 

It's SINKING!

He tried so hard, that he succeeded, even in failure.

The boats come in all shapes and sizes. A few students have realized (Sometimes before and sometimes after) that a wider boat works better. Next lesson? Displacement! HA!

The main lesson this week is that even when the world (flat or round) is against you, you should always go with your dreams. Even if you fail, you may end up doing something extraordinary.

There is saying that says, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars."
That's what Columbus did. You should too.

See more on TWITTER!

Football / Life Lessons

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Coaching football has taught ME some very valuable lessons. These lessons held true at Gwinn, L'Anse, and here at Kingsford.

I have learned to never (ever) assume that players know what I'm talking about:

"We need to shift into cover three when they show us twins to the boundary."

Blank stares. Gotta put that on the white board, show it on the field, then show them on film VanDusen!

I have learned to over simplify things. A thinking teenager is a slow teenager. I want my players to play fast which means I have to make the thinking easy and/or non-existent.

More importantly, I hope to teach young men valuable lessons.  Not only about the game of football, but also about life.  Here are three lessons that have been prevalent this past season.  They are in no particular order, and this list is FAR from inclusive.

1) Master things that take no talent.  This isn't my quote, but I absolutely love it. In football, this means watching film, reading scouting reports, going hard every play, etc.  Every football coach I know has a story of a player who had the heart of a lion. He gave absolutely everything he had to the game, yet never got very far due to a lack of talent. That player is usually a coaches favorite, despite the lack of output.  This player, although they may not be a great football player, will succeed in life because they are attempting to master the things that take no skill. They will find their skill, whether it's being a plummer, lawyer, or teacher.  They will find out their skill and their mastery of talent-less skills will serve them well. of In life it can mean being to work on time, driving without distraction, and paying bills on time.

2) You play exactly how you practice. One of my favorite stories (I don't know if it's true or not...) comes out of Iraq in 2003.  A group of American Soldiers got into a small gunfight. Prior to getting back in their trucks and moving to the engagement area, a young Soldier stooped over and began picking up his brass. His sergeant yelled at him to get back in the truck and he did, but a VALUABLE lesson was learned.  In training, that Soldier would take the extra minute or two to pick up his brass, because when the training event was over, they would have to go pick it up anyway to turn it in.  He was fighting exactly how he trained.
In football, however you practice, that is how you play. Do you carry out your fakes? Do you block till the whistle? Do you force your players into a tight huddle?  Whatever you do on the practice field, expect it on game night.

3) You can't control what happens to you, you can only control your reaction to it. (Again, not mine, but I love it!) Last night, our quarterback rolls to his left on the second play of the game. He spies an open receiver, squares his hips, cocks the ball and begins his throwing motion. The ball slips out of his hand and the defender who was chasing him down from the back side had a gift land right in his hands. He returned it for a touchdown and we go down 6-0.  We couldn't control the rain making the ball slick. We couldn't control the defender ripping through a great block and pursuing from the backside.  We couldn't control the fact that he was able to take it back for six points.  All we could control was our reaction to it. 
So what did we do?  We got a great kick return. Ran three plays for 45 yards and a touchdown.  Then we scored the two point conversion. Now we are winning 6-8. I like that reaction.
In life all kinds of crazy things can happen. You can set the conditions to be in your favor, but at the end of the day, you can't control what happens to you. Flat tire. Car accident. Hail storm damaging your roof. What are you going to do about it?

I love football.
It is an amazing game and I have build some incredible relationships with coaches and players that I couldn't have anywhere else.

Aaron Rodgers was quoted in ESPN magazine as saying, "I hope I don't just do this."
He said that after winning the Super Bowl. (Read the Article Here)

I can reflect on the past 10 years of coaching and know that I do more than just football. Some days my day seems DOMINATED by football, and it is.  But I also know that those young men who snap their helmets on every week are learning lessons that will help them do more than, "this."