Art.

It's about this time each year that the artform of being an educator comes into play. The skill and science of teaching is certainly helpful, and perhaps underrated, in many respects. We've been through the process during the semester, however, and now comes time for review. There are so many factions in the classroom that make figuring out the right balance difficult. So the remainder of this particular post will simply be brainstorming on getting my students towards mastery of the Civics/Econ. curriculum.

I feel fairly confident about the historical aspect of the course. The colonial period through the War for Independence was removed from US History and few years ago and now resides in Civics. We will still drill and role play some, but for the most part I think it's time to move on from here.

I've got some kind of idea in my head with the Amendments--especially the Bill of Rights and a few select others--but I can't seem to flesh it out. I had the students today collaboratively create rough sketches of the amendments with illustrations/pictures/etc. (ie 2nd amendment they get to put guns, 8th electric chairs, and so on...) I think that by placing these images along with them and then perhaps selecting the better ones for production and display in the classroom will serve most of the students well for trying to remember them. Even if they don't translate the knowledge into correct answers on the EOC, I think that at least they will retain the knowledge of their rights as citizens.

Let me point out how backwards our system of education is. Notice the last sentence in the previous paragraph. What are we doing?

Legislative powers (delegated/reserved/concurrent) I'm not too concerned about, but we'll see how the review goes tomorrow. Currently I'm thinking some kind of matching game with the three categories posted somewhere, and the students would be charged with placing the particular power in the correct category. I want to make some kind of baseball game out of it, but I haven't quite figured out the details of that yet. I'm good at big picture stuff, not great at translating into practice...

As for structure of Congress and How a Bill becomes a Law, I feel that a few more trial runs with our 'mock Congress' addressing issues such as dress code/lunchroom food/etc, that the process will be learned fairly well by the students.

Executive branch is a different monster. There are so many executive agencies--some independent, some regulatory, and then the Cabinet, and the bureacracy... It's tough to convey the breadth and depth of governmental power in this respect, so if anyone has any ideas feel free to post a reply. All 1/2 of you that happen to read this weblog.

The Law is fairly straightforward as well. The process they can grasp; the jurisdiction is a bit trickier.

Political parties and elections. Yeah, so since probably 75% of the American people in general don't seem to understand the Electoral College, that stacks the odds against me for convincing 15 year olds of how it works. I was thinking of a campaign commercial for the effects of media and a bit of political spectrum... We'll see how the time constraints play on that one.

Economics. Yuck. Who really cares about the producer price index? Supply and demand is easy to convey, but the differences in GDP and GNP--I love the blank stares when we try to get that one across. Much creativity will be needed to address the Econ section. Need to hit local govt some too.

Ok, enough incoherent rambling for now. Three weeks from tomorrow is the End of Course exam. So plenty of time for good, thorough review. I just want it to count and be meaningful rather than just effective for test taking. Does that make me weird? hahaha

dt