SJ and EJ

When I read through my students' GL interviews, I was astounded by how much they left blank. Most students freely admitted that they did not understand the concepts of social and environmental justice. We worked through each of them, but in the end, ran out of time before we could arrive at a satisfying student-generated definition. We'll need to come back to this. In the meantime, I'm encouraging some of the kids to finish their GL interviews (I will raise their score when they do). I think it would also be beneficial to go back to these interviews at the end of the semester as part of the portfolio process to reflect on how their views might have changed.

I still have some thinking to do before tomorrow's class meeting. It seems like there is so much to do. I plan to distribute class jobs. I also would like to discuss attendance and revisit the class norms. There are also a couple of small issues like cell phones (they have been ringing in class) and attention during guest speakers (One World Now was in class for a few minutes today and we didn't have 100% eyes on the speakers.) I want to set a high standard for future guest speakers and for class presentations.

On a side note, today in class while we were doing the name slap game, a student spotted a spider on the floor. Quickly, another student shouted "kill it" and a third student stomped it to death. Wow, definitely not a GL-type action. I plan to address it briefly tomorrow at the class meeting: was everyone comfortable with the way the class handled that situation? On one hand, I don't want to make a big deal about this. But I also don't just want to drop it. The way I reacted today was to have them all sit down and take a name quiz individually (instead of the fun class quiz that I was planning to do). They had to list as many names as they could in the class and I would divide the total number of names by the total number of students in class to get an average total on which I will base their class grade.

I'm feeling a little tentative about diving into the Community Leaders project this week. In our temporary site we only have one computer lab right now and it is not easy to reserve. I'm also weighing how to approach the project. Like Kate's classes, my students will need a lot of guidance with the research. I don't want to rush them through a project without making sure that they have the skills to do a solid job. There seems to be a lot of scaffolding for the oral presentation, but not as much time dedicated to the actual research. Also, a few questions/thoughts came up while I was reading through the lessons again tonight:

• What is the ideal length of the oral presentation? 3-5, 5-7, 0r 7-10 minutes? There are references to all three time limits in the curriculum.
• Did we decide on a size for the groups? I'm thinking 3-4.
  
• I think that some students will want to choose local community leaders, maybe even people they know. And some will prefer to take a more historical or even global approach. I think both ways are fine, as long as they focus on what it means to be a leader.
• I like Kate's idea of doing the 4 directions activity before starting the project. I think I'll try it on Thursday.
• Can we talk a little more about the model presentation on day 8? (maybe we can collaborate on coming up with a subject).
  

I really like the idea of looking at the election, maybe at the candidates' stances on environmental issues/energy. The difficulty is that the students don't have the background from the water and energy units yet. And if we wait until after water, the election will pass us by. If we weave the election into the community leaders project, students could look at 3 issues (environment, energy, and one of their choice) and compare the candidates' stances on them. Then we could use this information for our first official class debate, as Cat suggested.

I'm feeling the need to make a calendar. I'm already behind on the leader project and I haven't done anything with portfolios. I want to make sure that we are on track to make the first visit by the 1st or 2nd week of October.

I think that's all for now.