As student enthusiasm began to wane for full-class lessons towards the end of the academic year, I pivoted in all my classes to end-of-year research projects in the remote context. Although independent (or small group) research and analysis isn’t always the best way to keep students engaged remotely, it presents opportunities for students to follow…
Category: Teaching
Climate Change and Social Studies
A couple of years ago at the start of the academic year, I utilized climate change as a case study to understanding how power functions, as well as how political issues look different at different levels of analysis (community, local, national, regional, international, global). It turned out to be one of the most energizing starts…
Teaching about Africa
I don’t know how to teach about Africa, and yet it must be done. That might be a surprising admission for someone who lived on the continent for three years, who has studied, wrote about, and talked about Botswana, the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Somalia, South Africa, and Tanzania in some depth, and seriously considered…
Motivation and Remote Learning
More than ever before, especially as we approach the end of a largely remote school year, I’ve heard from students, “I just don’t have any motivation, Mr. R.” I’ve found that motivation and enthusiasm for learning are contagious. When a few students get excited about a topic or idea in an in-person classroom setting, other…
Remote learning
Teachers across the United States, and probably much of the world, will tell you that this year has been one like none other, and they are not exaggerating. What many of us now take as normal – a virtual room full of student avatars, varied uses of synchronous and asynchronous time, participating in the chat…
News & Structural Violence
Last week, a handful of students walked (or logged into) my classes asking about what was happening with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the interesting elements of the news cycle’s return to the conflict is the way the news cycle itself responds to an escalation in violence on the part of Israel or Palestinians, but…
Expert knowledge
Why are we so confident about what we know? We assume expert or high-level knowledge in many fields of knowledge for which we have no rational basis to assume we are experts. Even in fields where we might justifiably be called experts, we regularly fail to make the best possible judgments, decisions, or predictions. Obviously,…
Hope
What does it mean to have hope? I have struggled often with being hopeful in what I frequently find to be a depressing world. Our planet contains vast natural wonders that defy imagination, and most of the people I know best strive to live good lives. Yet, we humans perpetrate death, destruction, and needless conflict…