Social Distancing

Happy St. Patrick's Day from my home.

If you tuned in a bit early you may be experiencing the background of my life, some hard-core traditional Irish music. Music gives me comfort in times of stress. I've found that I return from time to time to something soothing, such as music when I feel things are out of control.

You'll find that there are things like that in your life too. And I urge you to find those sources of strength and comfort and embrace them.

The game plan is that you need to pick up the slack created by the closure of the school and proceed with your own education. The other teachers, Dr. Zeches and I will be available to assist you on this new journey. It is a path that is not easy. Many adults require close supervision to get their work done. But, on the other hand, children around the world are having the same issue you are facing and they have faced this issue before. So, let's be patient with each other.

In the next few days, and probably weeks, we'll be facing many new issues in our relationship. Let's face these issues with love and compassion, knowing that there are challenges and that we do not know everything there is to know about the challenges faced at home.

In general, I plan to work through China through the year about 1450 CE for Sixth Grade, European imperialism from the time of the Congress of Vienna to the start of the First World War among the Seventh Grade and finally, for Eighth Grade I plan to wrap up the Gilded Age and, like the Seventh Grade, you'll be entering a period around World War I also.

Parents: I'm generally going to be live when I start work, and provided I can work with the video on, I'll allow that. The schedule for my being online is 10 AM- Noon, Monday through Friday. I'll be posting the call-in telephone number and the video link on Google Classroom. As the situation clarifies I'm sure there will be adjustments.

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Lecture to 7th Grade on the Great Depression

Good morning scholars. Thank you to the students who were able to attend the in-class session. Here is a summary of the lecture: We are currently experiencing an economic downturn. Within our lives we've seen another contraction in 2007-2008, with earlier contractions in 1988 and of course during the period we are currently studying: The Great Depression. Classical economics calls this the contraction side of a Kuznets cycle. However, classical economics says these cycles are caused by variations in the supply TRENDS of labor and other resources; variations in productivity TRENDS relating to efficiency with which those supplies are used; and variations in the average intensity with which resources get used-- in other words variations in rates of unemployment. (Economics, Samuelson, McGraw-Hill, 1967. P. 244) The Samuelson text goes on to say that fiscal policy can provide relief for these conditions. As you progress in your education you'll hear this called Keynesian Econ...

Home fix-it projects are the rage among people these days. For me, getting my things out of storage after several years it has meant returning things to a condition to enjoy. A case in point is my teak table. Five or six years ago it was a central piece of furniture in my home. I'd invite friends to come over for dinner or just an evening in my garden. I had a fire pit, a green and inviting space and, under a trellis, the teak table. Maybe it was overdone. Maybe it was part of the ambiance of the space, but I put up miniature lights, candles, tiki torches (it was in the Midwest and there are those darn mosquitos). The grill would be going. A homemade sangria would be available. There were comfortable chairs for everyone. Each winter the teak table would be put away. And each spring it would be returned to the garden. Moving the teak table was a two-person job. But five years ago, maybe six years ago, I tried to do it alone. My partner at the time had become distant. Shortly...

Tough Love

This morning I wrote an angry letter to parents. What led up to this was students not passing open-book quizzes, and in fact answering questions with "IDK". IDK stands for I don't know. How the hell can a student get to the 8th grade and try to pass a quiz with IDK as an answer. Who the hell have they gone to school with? What these students try to do is retake the SAME quiz, asking one student to help them with the answers. Also, getting under my skin is the request of some of these students to get help raising their grade. Their grade, currently, is composed of readings and worksheets on the readings. That is about a third of their grade. And, it is marked as a binary: either you did it or not. The remainder of the work is the weekly quiz. One student asked why they didn't get points for a short answer on the quiz given that week. I've since decided that the tsunami of work that is being submitted, does not allow me to read and evaluate even short answer...

My First Year Teaching

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