Remnants

My cousin Stuart has been named Principal of the Year in the state of Kentucky! Wow, what an honor. It really is not a surprise though, he is such a fun spirited and compassionate person. Being a principal really fits his personality. Growing up he loved to play games. When our family would visit, the cousins would always find some type of game to play that could include all of us. Of course Stuart would usually win, but that was never the point, it was to have fun. Great job Stu!

Photo by Chris Hall, The Courier Journal

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200903180540/ZONE09/903180312

Over the course of the year, my current events class has helped to create several bulletin boards for the room. Right now we are studying international news and each student is creating either a poster or PowerPoint presentation on one country. Part of their presentation is to include at least two news-worthy events happening in their country. I want the students to see news beyond our American perspective. As I was thinking about this idea of perspectives I noticed our local newspaper had a number of stories from around the world. I thought to myself that it would be interesting to track how many different countries might appear in this newspaper over the course of a several weeks. This idea has spawned our latest bulletin board in which we are tracking the news stories from around the world. After tracing a world map onto large paper using an LCD projector and www.worldmaps.com, I challenged the students to find as many countries as possible over the next few weeks. To help the students get an idea of where these countries are located I’ve created a color coded key and have labeled each article with its country name. I’ve also attempted to tape each article near its country on the map. I have also limited the students to articles found in one newspaper. We have a classroom subscription in which we receive 5 newspapers daily. My goal is to spend a few minutes each Friday going through our weeks worth of papers and finding articles to add to the bulletin board. So far we have about 20 countries.

To my great pleasure I am teaching an elective class at the middle school level this fall. The class is called “Current Events and the Media” and is a new elective. Though it is very fun to create a new class, it is also very challenging since no resources exist at the school for building the curriculum specific to this class. Several of the teachers and staff members have been very helpful with suggestions and advise since current event topics are included at each grade level within the middle school. My goal is to create a consistent AND flexible guide for teaching about current events. As the teacher I will provide the structure for learning as my students and the world provide the content. 

To begin the class I have asked these questions: what is a current event; what makes any current event news worthy; where do we get our news about current events; and will any of the current events of today make it into the history’s of tomorrow? We shall see where they led us this semester.