3rd trimester begins

Tomorrow is the beginning of 3rd trimester for us - that means 3 straight months with little time off. Its going to be an intense academic period for both teachers and students. We have a lot of things to get done. For my sophomores it means a lot more research and writing. For my freshmen it means learning to do intensive research and how to write a history paper.

We start this term with "What is Culture?" for US History and "The Development of Written Language" for World Studies. Both cool topics I'm looking forward to covering.

March Break Almost Over

This is week 2 of our 3-week March intercession. I wish I could say it has been entirely a break. Last week and this coming week are being taken up by debate prep. We have the final tournament of the season this weekend - the Chicago Debate League City Championship. It was originally supposed to be a DePaul University's downtown campus but has been moved to Chicago Vocational Career Academy on the far southeast side. The kids have been working their butts off preparing and I feel very confident of their success. This is a major tournament for us and I hope the work pays off.

Otherwise, I'm also deep in planning for third trimester. The kids don't know it yet, but there are significant writing assignments in their future. Should be fun.

History Fair and end of 2nd Trimester

The great Lindblom History Fair has begun! I have many projects that have been completed including several papers and documentaries. As expected, there are a few excellent projects and quite a few that are, well, not so excellent. It seems that many of these projects turn out so that it is a nice looking board with some great visuals and whatnot but very little in the way of historical analysis and interpetation.

One of the things I stressed most was that each project had to answer the "so what?" test. When I look at an exhibit's topic, I need to have the answer. I need to know why the topic is historically important and what the impact is. Many of these projects come oh so close but just fall short of that benchmark.

I'm in the process of grading all of these projects, which count as the final exam grade for this trimester. We'll see how students grades fare after this. I have a feeling there will be some very disappointed young people after the grades are entered. What will be interesting though is showing all the parents the projects this Friday on report card pickup night.