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

The Wordle of what everyone had to say what everyone had to say for what they liked about this class! I was glad to see all of this, thank you for the participation here!
Good afternoon class!

Despite some continuing issues with attention, listening, focus, and being quiet, I think today was really a good day of class! We definitely accomplished a lot, and did many crucial things to get us closer to the end of the year! Your class is great to be around, but at times, I have to use some tough love to keep everyone on track. Generally, we did that today! On to the recap:

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

Soundtrack: "Say It Right" by Nelly Furtado. Lyrics here. I'm not sure if anyone really knows what this song is about, including Ms. Furtado, but man, is it catchy. As I said in class, it reminds me of a California road trip I took in 2007! Chosen for today because I searched my iTunes for "right" and this was the best song that came up.

AGENDA 5/20/09:
News Brief
Debrief Class Reflections
Martin Luther King Jr.
Final Paper Bibliography

Homework: Have research question formulated for next class, begin work on writing paper! Read blog recap! Have a great long weekend!

In class, we talked about aspects of a good research question. Is is specific enough? Can it be actually researched or tested? Is it interesting to you? All of these should go in to formulating your question. Please let me know if you need help here!

I cannot emphasize this enough: you NEED to be working on finding sources for this paper, taking notes, and answering your question. It is not like you do not have homework to do for the next six days. It is really important that you use this time wisely, so please do.

News Brief: I used this part of class to go over the essential questions, soundtrack, agenda, and homework, as well as talk about your Israeli-Palestinian projects (about half of which I have graded). Apparently, nobody is particularly interested in getting theirs back, because I did not have any visitors at lunch. Good, I am glad that I can take my time then! :-)

We talked about what we had planned for the long weekend for a bit, and also talked about the news of the day - which I didn't make any notes on, so I am not sure if the class and anything to say that I needed to look up. I do remember this being productive, as always. This section of the class is only as good as you make it! Pat attention to what is going on in the world, it is really pretty interesting!

Mary brought in this news article to share: CNN.com - Indonesia plane crash kills nearly 100. Really unfortunate! I pointed out that Indonesia is actually the most populous Muslim country in the world, not anywhere in the Middle East. I also talked about how safe (I certainly hope) the airlines here in the United States are. Look at the bottom of this post for a little recap of my trip this weekend and why I love airlines.

Allie, you are up for next class for a news article, about anything going on outside the United States. Thanks!

After Mary presented her article, she showed the class an incredibly awesome PowerPoint she made using her photography of nature, and making it relate to the conflict in Israel and Palestine by saying that the land would be eventually destroyed if they kept fighting. Good points! Thanks for this, Mary!

Debrief Class Reflections: This is always interesting for me to do, and I liked that most everyone was following along, hoping to get a glimpse of what people like about my class, and what should be improved. If you missed it, here were your answers again:

1) What do you like about this class?

What we learn about x 9, culture x 2, relaxed, not hard, news x 7, people x 5, agenda, blog x 2, soundtrack x 4, activities x 3, comfortable, safe, fun x 2, "not just textbooks," interesting x 2, everything, Mr. Fritz, not much homework x 2, relevant x 2, easy to understand x 2, debates, videos x 2, food, quietness, discussions x 2, energetic, happy

2) What could the class improve on?

Attention/listening/focus x 12, less homework, discussion, less lectures, more debates x 2, less talking/quieter x 7, more windows, less videos, more history, more games, sharing more, being interesting, not talking about sports, nothing, checking the blog, respect

3) What do you like about Mr. Fritz as a teacher?

Excited x 2, comfortable, not harsh, work hard/effort x 3, makes class fun x 3, focused, enthusiastic x 4, interesting x 3, good topics x 2, personality, music, loud (and clear) x 4, activities, learn from, cool, good at explaining things x 3, friendly/kind/nice x 4, smile, optimistic, helpful, blog x 4, easygoing, organized, awesome, style x 2, motivated, eccentric, understanding

4) What can Mr. Fritz improve on?

Reduce amount of homework, assignments are boring, making the class fun x 2, keep classes attention x 3, be quieter/volume (disturbs us in Hardin's class/only if needed) x 9, memorable activities x 3, games, music selection, slow down, "make note taking a little more fun" (less) x 2, handwriting (on board) x 4, talk less about what we already know, be stricter ("give lunch detentions for people who are bad or late"), explain more
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Really interesting stuff! My main point here was that it seems that you like what we study, but know that there are a lot of problems with your attention and noise level. Similarly, you like my enthusiasm as a teacher, but think I need to be a bit quieter. Sounds like we need to work on this together, so please, let's do that! I think we got better at this as time went along today, but the start of this class was a little rough.

Martin Luther King Jr.: For this section, I asked you to get out your notes on civil rights from last class. I then proceeded to hand out a sheet of excerpts from three different speeches, which can be found (along with many others) at MLK Online - Speeches.

The speeches that I quoted from were "Letter from Birmingham Jail," "Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech," and "I See the Promised Land." All incredibly powerful speeches, with some amazing context for when they were given! For instance, check out this excerpt from the end of the last speech he ever gave, "I See the Promised Land":



If that does not give you chills, I do not know what to tell you.

After reading through these excerpts, I asked the class (using volunteers and calling on random people) to tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind what MLK was saying. How was he trying to get civil rights? I thought that this was an incredibly productive conversation to have (I took notes on the board and asked you to copy them down). It was a little shorter than I wanted, but that is the nature of things for the rest of the year, since we also have the following section to work on!

Final Paper Bibliography: For this section of the class, I handed out a bright yellow sheet to help you with formulating a good research question and citing sources. I talked about how to create an easy bibliography, using the "cheat sheets" that were stapled in your folders. I used Suzie's book as an example for a source. Remember, for your final paper, you need to have at least four different sources, and three of them have to be a newspaper article, magazine article, and a book. Wikipedia is NOT a source, but it does frequently link to sources at the bottom of each page!

We brainstormed on the board the aspects of a great research question, like: being specific, testable, interesting, and easy to follow. For the last 10 minutes or so, we worked in class on developing your questions. Again, please see me if you want any help with it! Begin researching and answering your question! This should be a fairly lengthy paper - about 3-4 pages by the time you are all done. We will continue to talk about great ways to take notes and accomplish all the other objectives for the paper, next class.
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As I stated in class, this weekend I will be visiting my brother at college in Princeton, New Jersey, to help him pack up to come home for the summer. I am really excited! I am flying out on Friday morning and getting back on Sunday night. If you are at all interested, you can track my flights in the air here: Portland to Seattle (Horizon Air Flight 2172, 9:30 AM Friday), Seattle to Newark, New Jersey (Continental Airlines Flight 1680, 11:45 AM Friday), Newark to Phoenix, (US Airways Flight 77, 4:35 PM Sunday), and Phoenix to Portland (US Airways Flight 94, 8:10 PM Sunday).

Also, if you would like to see a really awesome website that has all of the flights I have ever taken in my life mapped out, check out this: FlightMemory.com - Ml007. I love flying! Looking forward to putting that Newark-Phoenix route on that page later! If you end up doing this, post a link to yours in the comments! I would love to see where everyone has flown to!

Finally, I told the class about an airline geek post I wrote for Period 1, during the Nigeria unit and the travel guides everyone was working on. Should you like to see how big of nerd I am about this all, you can check that out here: Off-Topic: The Airline Geek Post.

Whew! With all of that being said, I still should be fairly easy to communicate with this weekend, though it may not be as fast as you are used to. Please keep in touch and ask questions, post comments, or e-mail me with anything I can help you with! Enjoy the long weekend, and thanks for being so great!