Period 2: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 1 - Class Recap

Earth, as seen from the Apollo 17. This is probably the most famous image of Earth from space, and is sometimes referred to as the "Blue Marble" picture. Found on the consistently incredible (bookmark and come back every day) NASA.gov - Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Dear class,

That certainly was an interesting class. I am not sure what it was about today, but there seemed to be an almost class-wide lack of focus. Possibly because it was a Monday after a sunny weekend. Possibly because the class just was not all that interesting (which I have a hard time believing, but could totally be true). Whatever the reason, I really had a difficult time quieting everyone down, making sure that people were paying attention to what was going on, being prepared, and other aspects of class that should really be entirely up to you guys. Take some ownership of class! It simply just will not work if I have to do it all. That, as we saw today, would take up most of the class.

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?

Soundtrack: "Wavin' Flag" by K'Naan. Lyrics here. Selected for today because Ricardo suggested it to me, because it was his birthday.

AGENDA 5/18/09:
News Brief
Reflections on Goals/Unit/Class
Civil Rights
Final Paper Note Taking

Homework: Bring sources (at least one more) for next class. Continue to work on research project! Read blog recap!

For next class, I want you to have a solid choice for your topic that you want to research, as well as multiple (more than one) sources to take notes on. Thanks!

News Brief: We had a few good topics to talk about this morning, but none that I actually took note of to post on the blog. However, I did have a couple of items to point out in class and on here. The first was this article: CNN.com - Woman elected in Kuwait says gender in politics is 'history'. Super interesting article, I thought! Exactly what we were talking about at the beginning of this unit with how women can have an impact in the Middle East. Yay, progress!

I also pointed out that President Obama is meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. Here is a recap of what they talked about, supposedly: HuffingtonPost.com - Obama, Netanyahu Meeting: Obama Says Israel Must Stop Expanding Settlements. Again, EXACTLY what we were talking about in class! Cool to see how it all relates, right? :-)

Breanna chose to bring this article to talk about: CNN.com - Abuse of child 'witches' on rise, aid group says. Such a sad story! Furthermore, it is talking about Nigeria, a country that we know a lot about, right? Very interesting! Education is the name of the game!

Mary, you are up next for a news article! Anything currently going on around the world outside the United States. Thanks!

Reflections on Goals/Unit/Class: At the start of this section, I had you pull out your goal sheets from the beginning of the semester (if you still had them), or make a new sheet for goals. I asked you to write a little reflection about how things are going, what you can improve or continue to work on, etc. I read all of these, and generally, I am glad that you are participating on this! It is really important to set goals for yourself, and come back to those goals from time to time.

I then asked you to use the second half of your sheet of paper to do the activity that we had done at the end of last semester. The questions that I wanted you to respond to were: 1) What do you like about this class? (What about the structure gets you excited to come in the morning?) 2) What can the class improve on? 3) What do you like about Mr. Fritz as a teacher? 4) What can Mr. Fritz improve on?

To be honest, I have not read all of these yet, but I did glance at them, and I am really thankful for your honest feedback. It really does help me out (and in theory, you as well)!

Civil Rights: To start this section of the class, I asked you to get out another sheet of paper and I projected this quote for you to reflect on (like Mr. Hardin's class): "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." - Mohandas Gandhi.

After a really great period of focused work (I could tell you guys were used to doing this), I had everyone come up and write one example or thought you had that came to mind as you were thinking about the quote. I thought all of these were really interesting! The point to doing this was as a warm up to think about the fight for civil rights.

Next, I asked you to help me brainstorm about what, exactly, civil rights were. I started this by asking the class "how (have) your civil rights been violated lately?" We had some interesting stories about freedom of religion, and freedom against search and seizure, amongst others. Mary helpfully pointed out that civil rights are rights that you are born with, which I called "natural rights." Generally, I think this was a great way to begin the unit and thinking about all of this!

Final Paper Note Taking: During the final few minutes in class, I had everyone go up to the board and write down what their idea for their final research project is. I was not expecting a really concrete idea, but many of these seemed entirely too vague or not thought through enough. Again, your homework was to think of something and bring in a news article about it! That is your homework for tonight as well!

For the rest of class, I had you take notes on three separate sheets of paper in your folders. I think I probably could have done a better job at teaching this, but hopefully everyone understood the main points behind all of this. Here is exactly what I typed on my laptop, for future reference:

YELLOW SHEET:

One sentence or a short thought, directly

Quote "in quotation marks" (Author, page number) – in parenthesis

Indenting multiple sentences

Commentary on how or why the quote relates!

RED SHEET:

For paragraphs or chunks –

Paraphrase! (take the paragraph, rewrite into your own words)

PURPLE SHEET:

For the entire article –

Main points (what is the abstract?) of the article.

Put this in your own words – paraphrase, summarize
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That was just about the end of the class! I hope that everyone has a wonderful rest of the day. Please come prepared to focus and learn on Wednesday! We are almost to the end of the year! Keep working hard, please. Post comments about anything you think is interesting or any questions that you have about what we are doing! See you next class! :-)