Welcome to American Public School

This week we are exploring the history of American public schools. You can check out Tuesday's video here. I asked you to focus on the agendas and intentions of those providing or advocating public education as we have for the other education systems we have looked at this semester. Consider the importance of education for a democratic citizenry for example.

Thursday, we will wrap up and review. Our student mentor will lead the class in a special exercise on discernment. We will also work out the details for our final exam. Breakfast will be provided.

Reminders for wrapping up the semester:

• Please check the Campus Portal to confirm that I have given you credit for all of your work and attendance. If you find an error, please let me know immediately.
• You have been sent a link to a course survey for the class. Please complete the mandatory survey so that I can submit a final grade for you.
• The final exam will be a two-part take-home exam, due in TurnItIn via the class Moodle by the end of the scheduled final exam period, Thursday, 12/13, 10:30 a.m. You may complete it any time beforehand once it's posted.

Collaborative/Cooperative Research Project

Nice work today! Out class's research outline (google doc) is still open for modification. You can update it with your sources and images and anything else you think would be helpful.

The presentation (google slides) is also ready for you to work on. Please find your slide and coordinate with your team to add images and presenter notes. Some groups may need more than one slide. DEADLINE: Wednesday (tomorrow) at 8pm.

Our presenters will be Ethan, Faith, and Paige, who will coordinate and practice before the conference, making sure that they can say all that needs to be said within the time limit.

The conference is Thursday, during our scheduled class period, in the chapel. Please come on time or even a little early.

Affirming Your Values

Our seminar won't meet today on campus, so we will explore the topic of Values Affirmation remotely and do the exercise our own. You can find the Values Exercise on Moodle. Please do the exercise in writing (takes about 15 minutes) and afterwards, read this article. Please bring the completed exercise to class on Tuesday. They will be graded P/NP.

Hope you all have a happy and relaxing Thanksgiving!

Welcome to the Nazi National Political Institutes of Education

Well, that was grim. Please reflect once again on the agendas of those who provide education (governments, families, communities). Whose/what agendas are at play in your education?

On Thursday, we will finish up and polish our research project in class and be ready to present it at the Freshman Research Conference that afternoon (3:30-5:30 in 113 St Mary's). The research project outline is available as a google document. Before class on Thursday, please add your/your group's research statement to it as indicated in the document. Include links or images that you think should be included in the presentation.

Welcome to the Medieval European University

Hope you all enjoyed visiting the earliest European universities and seeing their connection to the Islamic scholarship we explored last week.

We are now moving into serious research mode. Our topic will be Dyslexia, broadly. You have already created an annotated bibliography and zeroed in on a specific research question. Some of you will be coordinating with others who have closely related research areas. For Tuesday's class, please write a clear short summary of your research findings.

Welcome to the Maktab & Madrasa

Hope you all enjoyed your whirl-wind tour of the Maktab and Madrasa. If you didn't take good notes on where, when, and what about them, get notes from a classmate who did.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT

Have a good look at the Annotated Bibliography assignment sheet I handed out today. If you were not in class, you can find the handout on the Moodle. Make sure that the instructions are clear to you and bring questions to class if they are not.

THIS THURSDAY, 10/25

Attendance is mandatory.

• We will meet in the library for class on Thursday. 

• Fall 2018 Social Justice Speaker Series, at 6 p.m., in the Chapel. 

SAVE THE DATE

Freshman Research Conference, Thursday, November 15, 3:30-5:30, location TBA.

Midterm Exam

On Thursday we will have our midterm exam. It will be a take home exam, due before midnight, through TurnItIn on the class Moodle. You may study together (recommended), but your answers should be your own (TurnItIn knows). There will be no class meeting on Thursday. Email me right away if you run into any difficulties.

To prepare, review the class blog and your notes. You will need to be able to briefly define/summarize the neurosciences concepts we have explored:

1. Growth vs. Fixed Mindset; 
2. The Adolescent Brain; 
3. Stereotype Threat; 
4. Effects of Stress; 
5. Neuro-plasticity; and 
6. Dyslexia. 

Strong summaries will include an example of an experiment described in the article or talk.

You will also need to be able to identify on a map the locations of the ancient schools we've visited and, in a sentence or two, describe the education system of each place and the purposes they served in their societies:

1. The Eduba of Mesopotamia
2. The Imperial Examination System of China
3. Greece (Athens and Sparta) & Rome
4. The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac of the Aztec Empire

Neuroplasticity

I hope you all enjoyed your way-back machine visit to the Aztec schools last Thursday and our trip to the Charles Armstrong School for Call to Action Day on Tuesday.

Today we reflected on our Call to Action Day experience. How does what you did at CTA Day relate to what we are exploring in our seminar? I'm excited about the idea of extending our community engagement with the school to our research project and beyond.

Next Tuesday, we will review what we have learned so far this semester and create a mid-term exam together, which you will take on Thursday. 

Here's the link the the Tedx talk on neuroplasticity that we watched in class today.

Call to Action Day!

We will be meeting on Tuesday at 9:15 on the Quad to check in, fill out some paperwork, and pick up our lunches. We will walk up together to the Charles Armstrong School, where we will get an introduction, divide up to observe some classes, and then have lunch with the newly-elected student council. We should come away with a stronger understanding of Dyslexia and how our education system can be adapted to better serve those with learning differences.

Perhaps the most important Call to Action available to us in our democracy is to VOTE.

Election Day is November 6! 

Hat tip to Dr. Kristen Edwards for the following information:

If you live in California, the deadline to register in person, online or by mail is October 22. Residents who miss the deadline can still register at an election office and vote with a provisional ballot. The vote will be counted when the registration is verified.

Remember that you can only be registered to vote in one county and in one state. So if you registered back home, which is far from Belmont, make sure that you will receive a mail-in ballot.

For CA voters, you can register to vote or find out if you are registered to vote here:

https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/

For voter registration information by state, go here:

https://www.theroot.com/make-this-go-viral-the-voter-registration-deadline-for-1829462310?utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=theroot_facebook

You can also check your voter registration and to register to vote in any state at vote.org:

https://www.vote.org/

You can also register to vote in any state here:

https://vote.gov/

Stressed Out?

Today, after visiting China, we watched a Ted Talk video on stress. If you weren't in class today, please watch it before next Tuesday's class.

Also for Tuesday's class, please download the New York Times article, How to Help Teenagers Embrace Stress, read it, annotate it, and summarize it (you know the drill), and bring it to class.

Finally, I am happy to report that it looks like all systems are go for our Call to Action Day adventure at the Armstrong School. Turns out that the people I talked to there are NDNU alums and are excited to have us visit. More details to follow.

Welcome to the Chinese Imperial Examination

It's time to get our class research project under way. Please have a look through the dyslexia resources found on the Armstrong School website. Choose one to explore, and bring a short written summary of it to class on Thursday.

On Thursday, we will visit China to explore the history of the Imperial Examination System. Please read the article found at http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html before class.

Welcome to Plato's Academy and ....

So this week we looked at education in Greece (Athens and Sparta) and Rome. It is funny to think of the Romans as the first to drop PE and music from the schools. Next week we will look at the Chinese Imperial Examination System.

For Tuesday's class, please read carefully the article I distributed, "Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male," and make purposeful annotations to it. You can also find the article on-line (with explorable links to the research discussed).Bring your written answers to the following questions: 

1. What are some hypotheses as to why men outperform women in a cluster of tests related to spatial ability?
2. What did the gender-priming experiment show?
3. What is "stereotype threat"?
4. Describe four of the experiments cited in the article that demonstrated the affects of stereotype threat.
5. What does the brain do in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex?
6. What social-psychological interventions can ameliorate the achievement gap? (N.B. look up words you aren't familiar with.)

If you look for the answers to these questions as you read and annotate, the task will be easier.

Perspectives on the Adolescent Brain

Today we watched two videos about the adolescent brain, Sarah-Jayne Blackmore's Ted Talk, and Dan Siegel's presentation for the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. What did you learn from them? Do you think one video was better than the other, and if so, why? Where was the overlap, and how did their information or approach or purpose differ?

For Thursday's class, get ready to go to school in ancient Greece and Rome

Welcome to the Eduba (Sumerian School)

On Thursday, we will visit Mesopotamia and explore the education system of the people who invented writing, the Sumerians. Please read up on 9 Things You May Not Know About the Ancient Sumerians before Thursday.

Here is a link to a very short video from Oxford about cuneiform writing and cutting edge technology. If you are curious to know more about the Sumerian flood story, check out this video.

Dorothy Stang Presentation in the Theater Tuesday

We will leave directly from our classroom on Tuesday at 9:25 SHARP to meet in our four FYS sections "pod" in the NDNU Theater for a presentation with Q & A by Sister Rosanne, who wrote the book you read this summer. If you haven't read the book, check it out on reserve in library before Tuesday. You can find the summer reading questions on the Moodle page for our class. Bone up and be ready to discuss.

Finding and Sharing Good Information

As a seminar, we are working both independently and collectively. We are exploring new topics and ideas, and we are teaching and learning from each other. The next assignment does all of this explicitly.

Creating a Collaborative Bibliography
The assignment due in class on Thursday has four parts:

1. Find an on-line scholarly article on a topic related to learning. It can be a primary or well supported secondary article as long as it includes strong supporting evidence and good references. Opinion pieces and overly simplistic popular articles won't work. (Make sure you are not posting an article that someone else has already posted.)
2. Post the link to your article in the comments on this blog post. I will review the posts as they go up and let you know if your article doesn't meet the above criteria.
3. Download and do a close reading of your article with purposeful annotation. (Harvard's "Thinking Intensive Reading)
4. Write a short précis (summary) and be ready to discuss it in class. On Thursday, everyone will introduce his/her article to the class for discussion.
5. Your annotated article and summary are to be turned in to me at the end of class on Thursday unless you are on the soccer team.
6. SOCCER TEAM: Please do yours as above and be ready to share as soon as you get back. Good luck!

Growth vs Fixed Mindset

What do you have a fixed mindset about? How can you promote a growth mindset in yourself and others?

Here's a link to the Ted Talk by Eduardo Briceno and the Stanford Talk by Carol Dwek, on "Developing a Growth Mindset" that we watched in class today. You might want to watch them again without classroom distractions.

For Tuesday's class, please remember to bring in one concrete suggestions for our Call to Action Day  activity.

Have an excellent long weekend!

Welcome!

Welcome! This blog will be your best source for information and assignments. Please sign up to get email updates so that you don't miss a thing.

Before Thursday's class, please read the article, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids." Use the methods described in class and in the Harvard Reading Strategies to purposefully annotate it, and then use your annotations to write a one-page summary/response to the article. Both your annotated copy of the article and your response will be due in class on Thursday. More help and information about purposeful annotation (close reading) can be found on-line here.

In addition, please review the summer reading questions about the life of Sister Dorothy Stang. If you haven't yet read Martyr of the Amazon, please grab a copy on reserve in the library, and spend a little quality time with the book.