I totally screwed up last week. We were studying the basic differences between judicial activism and judicial restraint. We had just finished up making the point that a judicial restraint oriented court is typically more conservative in that it is less likely to overturn precedent and more likely to see the law as static. A student disrupts the chain of thinking with this question… Continue reading →
Inspired by stoic philosopher Epictetus, I worked through the 3-Step conversation technique from Teach Different to create an essential question for a US history unit on imperialism.
The idea here is very raw. Read this and reply with your ideas. And if you try this out, I’d love to know what happens.
Back story:
Around 10 years ago I watched my student teacher try a strategy in US history which she learned about in her methods class. She played a short video showing a wild party at a speakeasy during the 1920s. At the party were scantily dressed men and women dancing around. After two minutes or so– during which students were noticeably confused– she stopped the video to show one of the women close up. She stood in front of the projector screen and gave a simple command:
“Hi! I’m a flapper. Interview me”.
Without delay the students started firing questions at her, ranging from “What is a flapper?”, “Why are you dressed like that?”, “How are you getting away with drinking alcohol?” to “Who was invited to the party?” I remember thinking to myself– ‘what an innovative way to get students to start asking questions‘.
Yet I never tried the strategy myself…until this week.
I was in a time crunch teaching the founding period in AP government–feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the primary sources required from the College Board. I’ve already had classroom discussions on Federalist 10, 51 and 70. Students are a little burned out. I needed a quick, imaginative idea for teaching Brutus 1— the seminal work which lays out the philosophy of the Anti-Federalists.
My mind raced back 10 years to that experience with my student teacher. What if I came up with a way to use the ‘Interview Me’ technique to inspire student questions on a primary source? Why not give it a shot? It’s not a Socratic seminar but who cares? As long as the students did a close reading of the document, and developed some cogent questions, my objectives would be met. And it might actually be fun.
2. Before setting them off to read it, I said they would have a chance to interview Brutus I (played by me) with 15 minutes left in the period. He would clear up their misunderstandings.
3. With 15 minutes left I sat in front of the room and said
“Hi! I’m Brutus I. Interview me”
I fielded their questions and students took notes based on my responses. We went right to the bell. (I screwed up here. I should have allowed at least 30 minutes for the interview.)
I haven’t assessed them yet but in terms of student interest in the activity and the quality of their questions, I was pleasantly surprised. They were amused with my performance. I didn’t dress up at all. I just made sure that I assumed the character of somebody who was afraid of centralized political power, large republics and a national Congress which would abuse its authority through its power to tax. It actually wasn’t hard to pull off from my end. It ended up being like a bizarre 15 minute co-presentation with my students as assistants.
There was something about the interview format which motivated students to ask questions. It brought a different energy to the room. Because they were interviewing me, they didn’t seem embarrassed at all about their confusions. They went along with it.
I see some adaptations for next time:
1. Tell a studentto study the primary source beforehand and run the interview for the class.
2. Find two primary sources; divide the class; give one source to each section; have each section stagean interview. Maybe they could plan out questions beforehand so the interviewee knew what was coming and they made sure to cover salient points. Sounds like a mini-class project waiting to happen.
Has anybody ever tried this technique before with primary sources? If so, what did you do and were you successful?
Any ideas for improving this? The input would be great! Thanks.
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Mahatma Gandhi
Essential Question: Is sacrificing for others always the right thing to do?
I just experienced this first hand during a discussion on Plato’s Crito and Martin Luther King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail (one of the required documents in the redesigned AP government course.) Continue reading →
Organic farm serviced by students from local elementary and high schools.
Over the summer 2018 I learned about the power of questions in the most novel of places, Kenya. I participated in an educational trip organized by Me to We, a path-breaking service organization based in Toronto, Ontario run by two social entrepreneurs, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger. Both have fascinating stories about how they seized on an idea for improving the world and wouldn’t stop until it became a reality. Their appreciation for questions is what I’ll remember most. Continue reading →
Last week I attended a fantastic AP government redesign workshop through Northwestern University led by Vanessa Lal ( @vlal ). I was heartened to see that inquiry is a centerpiece of the new format. In fact, the College Board has designed specific Big Questions to underpin each of the five broad content categories: Foundations, Interactions Among Branches of Government, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, American Political Ideologies and Beliefs and Political Participation. Continue reading →
We’ve all seen the images, heard the audio and read the tweets. The immigration debate has everybody busting at the seams on both sides.
And August is just around the corner.
And we know what that means.
Students will be walking into our classrooms confused, tired, angry and needing answers. And we will be trying to figure out ways to teach a historical, psychological, sociological or political understanding of the immigration issue while at the same time resisting the impulse to impose our own opinions– a delicate and seemingly impossible burden.