Week 1 — 1/31-2/3
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012Fresh Start; New Beginnings — Whatever cliche you call it, it essentially means that we are starting a new semester so your performance from last semester goes out the window and the opportunity to be successful from the beginning exists again. I often start out the new semester asking students to reflect on the last semester — what worked well and what didn’t. I’m always appreciative of the honest answers that students provide about their own contribution to their education. Most reflect that they could have done more. I also ask about what they will do differently this next semester. Most students say they will study harder or that they will try harder. But what does that look like?
Life would be much easier if we could simply state we wanted to try harder at something. If that was all it took, I think I could have been an Olympic swimmer. The bottom line is that it takes more than an intent to try harder — it takes action. It takes an honest reflection on what we did not do well and then developing a plan of the real changes we are going to make. Identify the concrete changes such as I will not miss more than one homework assignment a month or I will meet with a study group before every test. Without developing such a list, “try harder” really doesn’t mean anything.
Your teachers do this sort of self examination all the time. We realize that sometimes the best intended lessons don’t work. We spend hours examining our projects each summer and reflecting on the parts that failed and making the real changes to try and ensure the same problems don’t happen again the next year. Sometimes our changes work and sometimes they don’t. The point is that without this sort of honest reflection then we will continue to utilize practices that don’t work. They will lead to continued frustration, and in some cases, failure.
So as you start this next semester, ask yourself — even if your teachers don’t ask you — what are you going to do differently. Then develop a plan of how you are going to implement those changes. Without such honest reflection, we are destined to repeat our performance from this last semester.
In World History we will continue the theme that we started at the end of last semester (Building a Global Industrial Society) by starting our in depth study of imperialism. This is a topic that has led to many of the issues that we are dealing with around the globe today and one that you will understand more in depth as you work on your Legacy of Imperialism project.
In US History, we are moving onto the last group we are studying in our Civil Rights unit. We will be examining efforts by Gays to obtain equality in our society and then we will finish with an examination of efforts by the government to try and regulate behavior based on racism or sexism. In Government (yes . . . government not economics) we will start our study by examining the role and function of government.
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TESTS
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World History: 2/16
US History: 2/23
Government: 2/23
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Homework
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World History
2/1 – P. 289 Standards check questions (both) & #3 (bottom of the page)
2/3 – Workbook p. 72
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US History
2/3 — Debate over Gay Marriage article and questions
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Government
2/3 — Newspaper analysis of government action and impact
– Government Syllabus signed
