Teaching and Learning
Another Cool App: WisprFlow
In addition to Bevel, I have recently taken the plunge on another super cool app. This one is called WisprFlow and it seems to be taking over the Internet to a certain extent. The app is an AI voice to text app that I’ve been seeing in the productivity space online for more than a year. I finally decided to give it a try.
What’s cool about the app is that you can use it in any other app where a text box lives. That means I can use it to speed up my journaling, my assignment creation, my feedback on student work, my texting, my Second Brain note-taking, my recording of my food in Bevel (and in my other Google Doc food journal), my brainstorming, my blogging, and my interactions with Gemini and Claude. I’m still getting the hang of initiating it on my various devices, but I can already tell after less than a week that once I get the hang of using it–and train myself to think voice first instead of typing–I’m going to love what it does to my productivity.
Though it is still early days for me with Wispr Flow, I am very impressed with its ability to deal with the grammar of a stream of consciousness ramble. Indeed, this is one of their main selling points. It also does lists really well.
It is also worth noting that another of their selling points is that you can whisper and it will still accurately transcribe what you say (hence their name). So in a coffee shop, car, classroom, or living room (with someone else present) you can still use the app successfully. I have been very impressed with this feature so far.
For those worried about it training AI on your data, they give you the chance to opt out of that happening when you first set up your account.
Ragin' with Tom Joad
This past week we were learning about the Great Depression in my APUSH class. I usually have my students read an excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath while we are looking at the Dust Bowl and the experience of rural Americans during the early 1930s. I read the novel in high school (I think most California high schoolers my age were likely assigned the book at some point) and really didn’t like it. However, I read it again in my early 20s and enjoyed the novel immensly.
While discussing the book, Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Ghost of Tom Joad” came up. Knowing my kids, I also mentioned that Rage Against the Machine did a great, heavy cover of the tune. That led me to remember after class that Rage also did a fantastic cover of Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm, a song I was introduced to by the Dead.
Both of those songs are relevant now and the Rage versions, I think, convey the proper anger the lyrics convey more subtly. Enjoy!
Knock Down the House
Today was the AP Gov exam, so I had many students out of class for the test. On such days, I often do something in class that I hardly ever do–show a film in it’s entirety. Today I screened the same documentary that I showed last year. Not only is it relevant to what we are learning about in class (elections and campaigning), but it features a politician most of my students have heard of…Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
If one is remotely interested in politics in general, or left-leaning politics in particular, this film is worth your time. In a nutshell, the film follows four women running in the 2018 congressional primaries. AOC gets the most screen time because she is the lone winner.
What struck me about the film was learning about the struggles that lead these four women to try and win a seat in the national legislature. Amy Viela’s story is the most heart wrenching. Her 22 year old daughter was denied tests after being admitted to the hospital because she didn’t have insurance. She died soon thereafter of a pulmonary embolism. So sad, and so very fucking American. AOC’s father, whom she was very close to, died while she was in college.
I was also struck by AOC’s confidence and tenacity. Watch the film, see if you see it to. I know she has become the boogyman of the right, and it is clear to see why–she’s smart, articulate, passionate, and has learned from the trevails she’s faced how to approach daunting challenges. Knowing more about her having seen the film, I am definitely rooting for her. She’e absolutely pissing off the right people.
Serendipity and Big Spending in DC
This is first and foremost a post about serendipity. First, I googled this very information yesterday while talking with my father. Then today I see the infographic below with today’s date (!), with the same exact information I googled yesterday and read about on a different website. Super weird!
But then, as fate would have it, my lesson today in AP Gov was about interest groups. And you’ll notice if you look at the graphic below, that Washington DC has the highest per capita GDP of any of the United States. New York is second, and has less than the half of DC’s number. Why? Well a big part of it is all the lobbying money flying around in DC (though there is tech and aerospace there, too). Indeed, the initial reason I googled the stat in the first place while talking with my father was because we were discussing the fountain of cash that is our federal government.
Mississippi has the lowest GDP per capita, and while Oregon isn’t close to that number, it is closer to Mississippi’s number than DC’s.
On a related note, according to Open Secrets, the interest groups that spend the most money lobbying at present are:
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U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Typically the highest spender, representing business interests across various sectors.
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The National Association of Realtors: Their primary goal is to “unleash” housing inventory through legislative and tax reforms
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Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA): Represents major pharmaceutical companies, spending heavily to influence drug pricing policies.
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Business Roundtable: An association of CEOs from major U.S. corporations, lobbying on tax, trade, and economic policy. National Association of Realtors (NAR): A consistent top spender focused on housing and real estate legislation.
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American Hospital Association (AHA): Lobbies on behalf of hospitals and health systems.
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Blue Cross/Blue Shield: A major player among health insurance lobbyists.
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Meta: Their primary 2026 goal is to prevent a “patchwork” of restrictive state-level AI laws that could hinder development.
On Woodrow Wilson and His Wife Edith
Few Americans know that in a sense, we’ve already had a female president. Back in 1919, after the fighting in World War I had ended, President Woodrow Wilson went to Paris to help negotiate what became the Treaty of Versailles. It was the first time a sitting American president had ever left the country. The negotiations were famously convoluted and difficult. One of the elements of the treaty was the idea of a League of Nations, which had been the 14th point of Wilson’s 14 Points. I’ve learned from reading Paul Johnson’s book Modern Times that the idea for such a league was not actually Wilson’s.
Nevertheless, he came to believe it was necessary and was willing to fight for it. However, treaties in America must be ratified by the Senate. In order to win support for the League, in 1919 Wilson barnstormed the country, speaking to massive rallies in the hopes of turning the focus of public opinion onto the Senate. Wilson apparently had a small stroke in Paris during the treaty negotiations early in 1919. Back in the states, he had a massive stroke in America in the fall at the end of his speaking tour. The stroke was so debillitaing that Wilson was essentially bed-bound and out of commission for the last year and half of his presidency.
During that time, his second wife, Edith Wilson, became a sort of shadow president. Indeed, he had only just married Edith in 1915, so she had only been the first lady for four years when this all went down. I was aware of this episode from my reading of A.Scott Berg’s biography of Wilson, but was reminded about it recently while reading Johnson’s book. Indeed, I make a point to teach this strange episode to my students.
The quote below is from Johnson and it is what sparked this post. Not only do I think it is a great sentence, but I just taught the Treaty of Versailles last week so Wilson was top of mind. The second quote below from Johnson’s book shines a light on another noteworthy event in Wilson’s administration–the jailing of Social Eugene Victor Debs for speaking out against the war. Debs ran for president from jail in 1920 and garnered slightly less than a million votes. His disgust with Wilson is understandable. Debs, luckily for him, was pardoned by the winner of the 1920 election, Warren Harding.
On the Uniqueness of Oregon's State Flag
I grew up in California, and always believed Cali had the coolest state flag. I still do. However, there is only one state flag that has images on both sides, and of course it is Oregon’s. Up until yesterday, I did not know this about our state flag.
What I did know was the following. First, Oregon became the 33rd state on Valentine’s Day, 1859, which is why there are 33 stars on the front. The front of the flag also has the year 1859 on it, as well as the words The Union. This checks out of course, because the Civil War was just two years away, and threats of disunion by traitorous southern fire-eaters were near peak levels. (John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry and then Lincoln’s election in 1860 continued the insanity and lead to the terrible rupture that eventually killed close to 700,00 people.)
The back of the flag shows a beaver, the animal that brought the first Europeans and Americans to the region. Portland may be the alpha city of Oregon today, but Fort Vancouver, across the Columbia in what is now Washington, was the fur trading outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company and was founded well before Portland, back in 1825.
This sort of thing is neither here nor there, but good to know if you’re an Oregonian.
Of Ballots and Bullets
As a social studies educator, perhaps I should have already known this; but it was news to me. I’m talking about the etymology of the word ‘ballot.’ While watching an episode from the Great Courses class on Turning Points in American History (#15 Expanding Universal Suffrage), the instructor mentioned that the word ‘ballot’ comes from the Italian word meaning small ball. In that time and place people voted with small colored balls, often white or black. I had never connected the word ‘ball’ with the word ‘ballot’, despite their obvious similarity.
In the United States, up until the early 20th century, people voted publicly, though usually with colored paper, not small balls. The wisdom of the Australian Ballot eventually became clear and states learned to make voting private. Good move. Thanks, Australia!
Thinking about all this, it occurred to me that perhaps the word ‘bullet’ also derived from the same root, since bullets used to essentially be small balls. The word ‘bullet’ apparently comes from the Middle French word boulette, also meaning “small ball” or “small pellet.” This was a diminutive of boule (ball). So, same original meaning, but different language. Digging further, it appears they do both have the same root, descending from the Vulgar Latin word balla, which means ‘ball’. Makes sense.
Did Boss Tweed know any of this? Not likely.
An Old Mystery Solved
There is a bit of very early American history that I always touch on very briefly in class that was in the news recently. It has to do with the mysterious disappearance of the English colonists who settled off the coast of North Carolina in the late 1500s. The settling of Jamestown gets more attention because it was the first permanent English settlement in what became the United States. However, the settlers at Roanoke settled first by nearly 20 years. However, when one of their leaders sailed back to England then returned in 1590, the settlement had been abandoned. Everyone was gone. Famously, the word Croatoan was carved onto a tree and offered one of the only obvious clues. But until recently, historians didn’t know for sure what happened to the settlers.
The term Croatoan was a reference to a Algonguian tribe of indigenous people who lived on nearby Hatteras Island. Could it have been that the 115 missing English settlers had gone to live with the Indians and ‘gone native?’ Nobody knew for sure.
However, it appears new evidence has led historians to conclude that some of the settlers moved their settlement inland while others did indeed assimilate with the Croatoan people. The sleuthing apparently involved an old map, some good old fashioned digging in the dirt, and a lot of DNA analysis by the Lost Colony DNA Project.
Next year, when I cover this in class, I’ll have a bit more to say. Is a good reminder that all history is revisionist.
Watch the video below for the full story.
The SCOTUS Cases Required for AP Government
Below is the current list of required AP Gov cases. Roe was taken off after it was overturned in 2022. I was familiar with several of these cases through my teaching of AP US History. However, several of the Warren court cases were new to me three years ago when I started teaching AP Gov. Most infuriating on this list? Definitely the last one, which continues to wreak havoc on our democracy.
Marbury v. Madison (1803) In a dispute over “midnight judge” commissions, the Court established the principle of judicial review, which empowers the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress or the executive unconstitutional. This decision fundamentally established the judicial branch as a co-equal branch of government with the final authority on constitutional interpretation.
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) The Court ruled that the Necessary and Proper Clause granted Congress the implied power to establish a national bank and that the Supremacy Clause prevented states from taxing federal institutions. This landmark case significantly expanded federal power and solidified the hierarchy of federal law over state law.
Schenck v. United States (1919) During World War I, the Court upheld the conviction of a man distributing anti-draft leaflets, ruling that speech creating a “clear and present danger” is not protected by the First Amendment. This established that First Amendment rights are not absolute and can be limited to maintain social order during times of war or crisis.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) The Court held that race-based school segregation is inherently unequal and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine. This decision served as the constitutional catalyst for the modern civil rights movement and the desegregation of all public facilities.
Baker v. Carr (1962) By ruling that challenges to legislative redistricting are justiciable (capable of being decided by a court), the Supreme Court opened the door for federal oversight of state voting maps. This led to the “one person, one vote” principle, requiring districts to be roughly equal in population to ensure fair representation.
Engel v. Vitale (1962) The Court ruled that state-sponsored, voluntary prayer in public schools violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This decision established a firm “wall of separation” between church and state, prohibiting the government from promoting religious activities in public institutions.
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) The Court held that the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel is a fundamental right that must be provided by states to felony defendants who cannot afford an attorney. Through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, this case incorporated the right to an attorney into state law, ensuring a more fair and balanced trial process.
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) The Court protected students' right to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, famously stating that students do not “shed their constitutional rights… at the schoolhouse gate”. This established that symbolic speech is protected in schools as long as it does not cause a “substantial disruption” to the educational environment.
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) In the “Pentagon Papers” case, the Court bolstered freedom of the press by establishing a “heavy presumption against prior restraint,” even in cases involving national security. This ruling made it extremely difficult for the government to engage in censorship unless it could prove immediate, irreparable harm to the nation.
Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) The Court ruled that compelling Amish students to attend school past the eighth grade violated the Free Exercise Clause because it interfered with their established religious lifestyle. This decision balanced the state’s interest in education against the individual’s right to practice religion without undue government interference.
Shaw v. Reno (1993) The Court ruled that while creating majority-minority districts is permitted, districts drawn solely based on race can be challenged under the Equal Protection Clause. This established that race-conscious redistricting must be held to a standard of “strict scrutiny” to ensure it does not violate the colorblind ideal of the Constitution.
United States v. Lopez (1995) The Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, ruling that carrying a gun in a school zone is not an economic activity that affects interstate commerce. This marked a significant turn toward devolution by placing a clear limit on Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and reaffirming states' rights under the 10th Amendment.
McDonald v. Chicago (2010) This case ruled that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is a fundamental liberty applicable to the states. Using the doctrine of selective incorporation, the Court restricted state and local governments from implementing effective handgun bans.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010) The Court ruled that political spending by corporations and unions is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment and cannot be limited. This decision led to the rise of Super PACs, allowing for unlimited independent expenditures in political campaigns.
SCOTUS Case Resources
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is visiting my school in the coming days. I decided to read one of her dissent’s to help my students prepare for her visit. I decided to take a look at her dissent in Trump v. CASA (June 2025). I really enjoyed it and am going to do my best to work more SCOTUS opinions (both majority and dissents) into my regular reading.
I have discovered a few websites where one can access decisions and learn more about the Court. They are listed below. Now, more than ever, I believe active citizenship and defense of democracy requires ‘doing your homework’ on the issues that our judicial branch is wrestling with.
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Oyez (The Best for Context & Audio) A key feature of this site is that It offers a “synchronized” audio player where you can listen to the oral arguments while the transcript scrolls, highlighting which Justice or lawyer is speaking.
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Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) This collection includes a curated section for Landmark Decisions organized by topic (e.g., “Powers of the Presidency” or “Civil Rights”)
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Scotus Blog Another great resource!
Surviving Contact
The second part of the quote below resonates strongly with me as a teacher due to the fact that I often come up with ideas for a lesson that I think are great, that don’t land when I am actually in the room with the kids. I think all teachers can relate to this planning problem. Thankfully it happens less as one improves, but often an idea triumphantly sketched out in the summer, is a dud when rolled out in October. Of course, military planning also seems like an example where this sort of thing is often true.
What ideas of yours need improvement before facing the reality of other minds?
When Congress Locked Up a Reporter
Given the current state of affairs between the press and the schmucks in power, it feels like a good time to revisit a lesser-known episode from the 19th century Senate that makes today’s press-versus-politics drama look relatively polite. I came across this in my daily meanderings as an American history and government teacher.
In 1841, during a time of broadening interest in politics, Henry Clay (the bane of my APUSH students’ existence) engineered the creation of the first official Senate Reporters' Gallery: ten front-row seats directly above the presiding officer’s rostrum. It was a small but meaningful acknowledgment that the press had a role to play in a functioning democracy. Progress, right?
Not exactly. The Senate’s relationship with journalists remained deeply adversarial. Leaks were a constant headache for members, and at one point the Senate’s response to a reporter publishing confidential information wasn’t a strongly worded letter or a suspension of credentials — it was confinement. A journalist named Nugent was apparently locked in a committee room for several weeks after refusing to reveal his sources (though they let him out for meals). The Senate’s approach was essentially: sit in there and think about what you’ve done. To his credit, he apparently never gave up his source.
It was, as Senate historians note, not the last time Congress tried to dry up leaks by placing a reporter under a form of house arrest. Meanwhile, earlier in 1839, Democratic-Republican Senator John Niles of Connecticut was doing his best to block reporters from the chamber altogether, denouncing them as “miserable scribblers” making a “miserable subsistence from their vile and dirty misrepresentations” of the Senate’s work. You’ve got to appreciate a good 19th century insult.
The press prevailed, obviously…thankfully. But it has never been easy.
Screenshot below taken from www.dailypress.senate.gov/about/history/
7 Non-Evergreen Takes on the Iran War
America has started a new war. I don’t know what is going to happen, but as a social studies teacher I am doing my best to educate myself about what is going on, the context, and the possible outcomes. Below are links to a few sources I have watched/listened to about the situation. The talking heads in these videos offer a wide range of thoughts. I thought it would be interesting to post the resources, then come back next year and revisit this admittedly not very evergreen post to see what transpired and who was right about what they thought might happen.
Taming My Commute with The Great Courses
I am one of the unlucky members of the American workforce with a commute that requires extended driving on a freeway through a major metropolitan area. I live in the SW corner of the Portland metro area and have to crisscross the city to and from work in the NE corner of the city. I estimate that I spend about an hour to 70 minutes a day commuting. I’m aware many people have it much worse. Nevertheless, considering I’ve had the same commute for nearly 30 years, it gets a little old.
In the morning I am on the phone with my kiddo, so that stretch is covered. However, in the interest of enjoying the slightly longer trip home every day I have resubscribed to a service that I have enjoyed in the past: The Great Courses. The company started by selling individual courses on CD or VHS that one could purchase. Now, you can stream the lectures on your phone, or watch/listen to them on a computer or iPad. Their collections is vast and I am determined to get my money’s worth learning while I drive home every day. I, like others, don’t need another monthly subscription chipping away at my checking balance, but I think this one is going to be worth it. I’ll revisit down the road and share some of the classes I’ve enjoyed.
Three Ways I Am Using AI
I have been an avid adopter of AI, but at the elementary level of chatbots and Notebook LM. Claude Code is not something I’ve played around with yet very much. I thought I’d shard a few ways I have been using AI to either improve my teaching or help with an interest of mine.
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Asking questions while reading: I really enjoy being able to get context, word definitions, and descriptions of people or events while I am in the middle of reading something. This helps me better understand what I am reading, but I’ve found it also allows me to follow tangents that the book I am reading isn’t necessarily going to satisfy. At this point, I have a Project in ChatGPT called ‘My Reading’ where I ask all my questions. The idea is that the AI will start to understand both what I am reading and what I am interested in and eventually make it’s responses more personal. That said, of late I have been using Gemini and Claude much more than ChatGPT, and I haven’t yet made the equivalent Gems or Projects in those apps.
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Creating tailored short readings for my classes: I organize my teaching around a specfic framework that includes what called an ‘IN." This is the part of the lesson where I am introducing the topic to the students. Sometimes my INs textual context descriptions. AI is great for producing these because I have gotten good at proving precise prompts that explicitly describe grade level, topic, length, as well as weather or not I want certain key words bolded and then defined. I can also pinpoint the context since I already know where I am going with the lesson. See example below.
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Diet and excercise evaluation: I have gotten into the habit over the past few years of keeping a Google Doc where I record a few details about my day, including my Oura ring score, when I start and stop my food consumption every day, what food and drink I consume, as well as my steps, mediation details, and exercise details. I have created a custom Gemini Gem that I have called my ‘Health Advisor.’ It knows my health goals and every morning I give my daily log and have it give me a score, along with notes and recommendations for the new day. I love it. Not only does is nudge me to make better choices, but I love that I get a daily score based on a specif rubric that I created (and can tweak anytime I like).
I have other use cases to share, but these are the most important for me at the moment.
Thinking about Robert Reich and William T. Sherman
One of the books I am currently enjoying is economist Robert Reich’s memoir Coming Up Short. The book is not a straight memoir, as Reich works in polemics about American politics and our economy while telling his life story in roughly chronological order. I tend to agree with his views, so I am not put off by the political digressions. Reich was born to a working class Jewish family and eventually earned a law degree from Yale, where he knew and went to school with Hillary Rodham, Bill Clinton, and Clarence Thomas. He worked for the Carter administration in the 1970s and eventually served as President Clinton’s secretary of labor. He eventually became a professor (at Harvard and Berkeley) and is now a pretty outspoken policy wonk advocating for a variety of progressive issues.
I have also been thinking about Union General William Tecumseh Sherman because I recently taught a lesson about his ‘March to the Sea’ during the Civil War. The essential question of the lesson was whether or not it is justifiable to make war on civilians and infrastructure, which Sherman did to great effect. As I write this, I realize that I am overdue in reading one of the biographies about Sherman, because it is clear to me that he is a fascinating character. A fact that I love about him is the willingness he had to do what it took to defeat the traitors during the American Civil War. That said, he was generally conservative, a racist, and was motivated more by keeping the Union together than abolition.
What might these two very different people have in common? The connection that comes to mind has to do with systems. Sherman had his soldiers attack the railroads (leading to ‘Sherman’s Neckties’) and farms (leading to ‘Sherman’s Sentinels’) as they marched through the South. He also didn’t feed his soldiers and instead had them ‘forage,’ which led them to steal from the people of Georgia as they made their way to the coast from Atlanta (which was left in flames). By doing this, Sherman attacked the system that sustained the Confederacy.
I see Reich as someone who thinks a lot about the reality of the economic system we live in. Rather than wallowing in theory, in his book Reich often explains the mechanisms and decisions that many people in power make that impact our society, for better and for worse.
I’m left wondering, what can one do to improve the corrupt and immoral systems we are a part of? Simple, every day choices made by enough people hopefully preclude the need for the type of choices Sherman had to make.
A Typical Day in AP Governmet
The teaching agenda below is from a week and a half ago in my AP Government class. We were early into Unit 3 (Civil Rights and Civil Liberties), which you can detect by the Learning Block (LB) number 3.2. This indicates we are in the second LB of the unit. This particular LB was about freedom of religion, specifically the ‘establishment clause’ and ‘free excercise clause’ of the First Amendment.
AP Gov has a collection of required Supreme Court cases that students need to be familiar with so this learning block was where I was able to introduce Engle v. Vitale and Wisconsin v. Yoder. This agenda ended up being too ambitious and we only got through the first case that day.
To teach the case, I have a published case study that breaks the case down into four parts: Background, Constitutional Issue, Majority Opinion, and Dissenting Opinion. We read it together than I always pair the reading with a short informational video (AP Gov required cases all have several video options available for review on YouTube). After that students work in pairs to answer a set of questions about the case.
The following class, students finished up the LB by looking at the Yoder case then doing some writing in their INBs (Interactive Notebooks) that forces them to synthesize their understanding of both cases.
It is worth noting that I usually start Fridays in all my classes with the one-two punch of a quiz and a self assessment. However, this week was a short week (due to the end of the winter break) so I scratched those two initial activities.
A Typical Day in AP US History
Today and tomorrow, I thought I’d share a couple of typical class agendas. The first is from last Thursday in my AP US History class. This was the final class period before the students took a unit exam. We started by finishing a Digital Inquiry Group lesson about notorious abolitionist John Brown. The plan was to have them answer the Essential Question for the Learning Block (LB), which was ‘Was John Brown a hero or a misguided fanatic?" However, in order to make sure we got through the last Learning Block of the unit, I had them chat about the EQ with a deskmate and then we reviewed together quickly and moved on. The next LB was about the election of 1860. For their IN (my version of the intro to the assignment), I passed out a short, empty chart about the elections of 1800 and 1824. I asked them to work with a partner to identify the winners of each of those elections and anything unusual about them. They chatted, then the whole class reviewed. After that I lectured briefly (about 12 minutes) about the 1860 election (using Google slides that I projected onto the whiteboard in the front of the room). Student were expected to take notes during the short lecture. After that, we had just enough time for students to process their learning by completing an SAQ (Short Answer Question) that I created as their OUT (which is my version of the wrap-up of a LB).
The Kids Are Alright
My school has a hybrid schedule. Two days a week the periods are 90 minutes long. I usually take that opportunity to start those longer classes with what I call a ‘whip around’ question. These questions are meant to let everyone share their thoughts and for me to get to know my students better. This week I asked my students ‘What is something that you are really into right now?’ I got a wide assortment of answers (from new TV shows, to baking, to taking walks at night), including references to music. To my delight, in my 7th period class four students mentioned listening to the Grateful Dead. This was an amazing surprise, though it makes sense in the wake of Bobby Weir’s recent passing. It goes without saying that I was stoked to be able to talk about my love of the Dead for a few minutes. Students even asked if I’d shared some Dead tunes in Google Classroom. (Mission accepted!)
Another cool thing happened at my school today. One of my former students, who is now a senior, organized a walkout and short march from our school to the district office. The whole thing lasted about an hour, but about 400 students participated. Needless to say, it is encouraging to see young people engage politically within the growing authoritarian environment we are all experiencing in the United States.
A Connection with the Past
I am teaching my students about the coming of the American Civil War. Today we read about and discussed the Compromise of 1850 and the attendant Fugitive Slave Law. Considering we are two days out from the murder of Renee Nicole Good and a day out from federal agents having shot two people here in Portland, students made some connections. Of course, some of my students are currently quite frightened by what is happening in our country. Others are seething. I noticed that it was quite easy for them to understand the anger and outrage northern abolitionists must have felt in the 1850s, when their federal government was behaving in such a patently immoral way. Unlike any other year that I have taught this, students are connecting in a unique and powerful way.
You might say events, along with an understanding of the past, are waking them up.
