Happy 4th of July!!!

Well, the day after I videoed myself, my class continued to work on the roll call vote sheets for percentages. They started asking questions about some social studies topics that were tangentially related (at best) to their packet of votes, so we got off of math pretty quickly. They kept asking questions, I kept answering them, and pretty soon class was over. I think we spent a grand total of 20 minutes (out of 85 total) doing math.

Two particularly funny exchanges happened in the midst of this social studies discussion. The votes were broken down by Democrats and Republicans. Someone raised his hand and asked what the difference between a Democrat and Republican is. I was just about to answer when one of my students raised her hand and said "Oooh! I know this!" She pretty much never has that reaction in class - never - so I thought it would be a great time to let her answer since she seemed so confident. Her answer to the question runs something along the lines of: "Well, I'm really Republican. And, the reason why, is because, um, well, all Democrats like abortions and gay marriage. Although I suppressed my initial reaction to completely dissolve into laughter, I was able to keep a straight face and say that her answer was AWESOME for two reasons: 1. It illustrated that the difference between the parties lies in their differing opinions about how public policy should be formed, and 2. It illustrated the danger of making sweeping generalizations. We then had about a 15 minute talk about stereotypes and the mistake of applying general statements of fact to specific cases.

The other question I wanted to share required even more delicate talking and quicker thinking. We were talking about impeachment (specifically that Supreme Court Justices can be impeached) when one of my students interrupted me to yell that Bill Clinton had been impeached. I explained that yes, this is a good example of impeachment not being followed with removal from office. A few minutes into my answer to the next question, a saw another hand and called on him. This question, which I completely should have anticipated, was "Why was Bill Clinton impeached?" Well, I didn't really want to get too graphic, and I didn't even think to explain perjury (not that I wanted to do that either), so I settled on asking if you were supposed to have boyfriends and girlfriends if you're married. I explained that Clinton did, and that made a lot of people very angry. Finally, I pointed out that this is a good part of the impeachment process because even though enough people were mad enough to impeach, he was not removed because after some time and examination of evidence, it turned out that he didn't actually break any laws - even though what he did was bad.

On Thursday, I microtaught. Microteaching is what we call it when we teach in front of our ACE classmates. It was in my social studies class; we taught 20 minutes of the lesson plan we turned in last week. I got very good marks on that lesson plan, but it still required some adjustment, so I fixed it up Tuesday night. We usually split high school and middle school teachers into two different classrooms so that we do not have to have every person go one at a time. Unfortunately, there is one more middle school social studies teacher than high school social studies teacher. I was dumb enough to volunteer to be the one teacher that everyone watched. I also went last.

So, I was teaching in front of 20 first and second year teachers during the last 30 minutes of class before a four-day weekend. My mentor teacher said afterwards that I had to "deal with the business end of everyone wanting to get the heck out of class for a long weekend." I actually didn't feel that they had been too terrible, and I felt that the lesson went very well. I got a few pieces of criticism back, but it was very helpful. The upcoming week is going to involve planning multiple Practicum classes (all of the remaining 10 days' worth, to be exact) and planning a unit for my world history class next year (it's due Friday for a class). I think I'm going to try to do a unit on ancient Greece. It should be good and interesting since I had an entire semester-long class on that topic last semester.

Sorry this has dragged on for a bit. I will post again soon to update on my weekend.