Many thanks to NYS Assemblyman Bob Oaks for coming in and speaking to the kids about the Constitution on short notice. He did a great job and we really appreciate it. He spoke for 20 minutes on the role of the Constitution and how the Constitution affected the kids. Next year we are shooting for Sen Robert Byrd, one of the promoters of the Constitution Day Bill.
Number 1 kabillion on the list of unfortunate side effects of the war in Iraq: The President has the ability to start a war. As part of our Constitution unit we review the powers of the different branches and I have a little review checklist as an end of the day activity to refresh their memories. I would say 3/4 of them choose the President as the one who “starts a war”. Congress has to give their approval.
The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.
The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.
“It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something,” said David.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.
My favorite part.
The two friends said they didn’t take the action looking for publicity, but rather to show leadership in combating what they say is frequent bullying in schools.
Continuing to confirm my theory on Canadians.
Constitution Day is coming up. We are still struggling to find something that will engage everyone in the Constitution. We’ll see what happens…..
Everything went very smoothly for the first three days. Almost too smoothly. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. I have done this too many times to know that they can’t stay like this for very long. 
With the A and B Schedule, I only saw the 9th grade twice. The one thing I was doing too much of is reading to them. I read the course syllabus, I read the remedial study hall plan, I just read too much. I hated it, they hated it. I moved through it as quickly as possible, but it was just too boring for too long. But it is the early administrative stuff and it has too be done.
I have a lot of kids in one 11th grade section and they are all buddies and can be a difficult group to coral and move towards the same point. They want to go their own way and I am trying to get them to go my own way. So I led off with, literally, the first words out of my mouth were, “You are a big group and we are basically filling this room. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It is your choice, we can make this a long year for both of us or we can make this an easy year for both of. You decide. I am Mr. Potter and this is US History. Welcome. ” I have never done that before; usually a little more open. They were quiet for awhile and it seemed to work. We just have to keep this moving forward. I need to keep them right where I want them. Let’s see what they look like in November.
As a group, the Social Studies department is trying to increase students’ awareness of the outside world. Someone realized that we didn’t have to force current events, for lack of a better term, down their throats.
Each classroom has this big box with a screen that shows moving pictures on it. Where does it get these pictures? Some say through the air, others say the cable running from the wall to the big black box. Me? I say there are little stone age people creating all the scenes inside the box. *attempt @ humor, now turning off*
So now, we are going to turn CNN on during homeroom. I know it sounds very logical, but we just didn’t think of it.
