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As you step up your personal civic engagement, what lessons, inspirations, or cautions inform your teaching? Have you had experiences that it would be meaningful and appropriate to share with students? How can you invite and support them to share their own experiences? How will you figure out appropriate levels of emphasis on duty and encouragement?
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Like many others in this group, I have been incorporating a lot of reflective journal writing into my first unit and it has been engaging to see students so into writing. I will continue to have them do reflective journaling throughout the year.
Yay! Journaling seemed to have gone out of fashion in the last dozen years (Right around when MCAS started counting as a graduation requirement...coincidence?) I'm so glad to see it returning, as it does indeed help clarify thinking, organize thoughts, consider evidence and counterpoints. All things that should matter most in preparing students for college, career and civic readiness.
I draw on a number of personal experiences from my life when teaching. If the right moment arises for a personal interjection, I’m ready. Many of my personal stories include reflections of civic lessons of inspiration or caution when I was involved in: teaching in southern Virginia, training with the Marines at Parris Island, SC, traveling internationally and volunteering in my role as an AMVETS Ladies Auxiliary member. Keeping the level of professionalism in the classroom when discussing a sensitive topic can get tricky. Students have to be prodded to keep the conversation appropriate and on track. This is not always easy. There are times when the conversations run into verbal muck. Shut down sometimes has come quickly. Either at a later moment or the next day, I try to recap what went wrong...
Journaling with the students is a focus this year in a Career Essentials Beta class that I am involved with. Sweetly, the course embeds Catherine (Glennon) and my Civics lesson plan, which has now grown into a unit. The lesson unit was designed to allow students opportunity to share experiences. Appropriate levels of emphasis on duty and encouragement are yet to be determined for this civics unit. There is a huge learning curve as this Beta class tests the students and the teachers for the depth of the units of study.
Is verbal muck always bad? Not good if it's laziness or disrespect. But is there value in figuring out ways to work through it? (maybe through writing?) In any case, reflection the next day–hooray! Learning to improve skills of learning is the most productive time spent.
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