As the end of each school year draws near, I feel a great deal of frustration. As students are overwhelmed with culminating assignments or the decisions that they made about completing school work for the previous 9 months, the demands on the teacher expand exponentially as well. As I work with the Growing Success system and school programs such as student success and credit rescue, I struggle to ensure that the decisions that I make maintain the integrity of the course, give students the opportunities they deserve or need, and maintain the intent of the ideals of character education. I find this overwhelming.

As you may have read in other blogs, the “Stand Up, Speak Out” event was an incredible evening of sharing and community. For me it served to exemplify, and personify, the Scope and Sequence of Facing History and Ourselves. On that evening, half a dozen of my students took the stage along with students from three other southern Ontario schools to perform their spoken word pieces. The performances were broken down into the five steps of the Facing History Scope and Sequence:

Today, former South African President and civil rights leader Nelson Mandela turns 95. In honor of his birthday, citizens around the world are donating 67 minutes of their time to the greater good in honor of the 67 years Mandela dedicated to public service.

If you are donating 67 minutes today, we’d love to hear what you’re doing.

I wanted to do my 67 minutes – theoretically, shouldn’t we do this every day? – but when I started thinking of what to do, I struggled. I often think that my work as a program associate for Facing History is contributing to the greater good. In fact, I think of teachers in schools worldwide as leading lives of public service. So aren’t we, I thought, kind of exempt from such calls to action?

But that feels too easy, (and a bit lazy). So let me ask you, as teachers, are we living lives of public service and, if so, to what aims? What would it look like if we were to commit 67 minutes of our classroom time to public service in a way that would truly honour Mandela?

With that frame in mind, I wonder if we teach and interact in a way that promotes the respect and freedom of students? Do we as educators actively promote peace, integrity, and conscience in our students? Do we fight for equality amongst our colleagues? Do we structure our classrooms and schools to promote harmony and provide equal opportunities for all our students?

And when we speak about Mandela (if that’s how we choose to honour him in our 67-minute class), how do we connect him to our students so that they see him in the monumental way that he spoke to our generation? When we speak about his legacy and his aims, do we address the inequities, the racism, the unofficial apartheids that exist in our communities, or the violence that continues today?

How will you use your 67 minutes of Nelson Mandela-inspired service?

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As an educator I have found that FHAO’s greatest resources are their human resources. Over the past few years I have been very fortunate to get to know each of the members of the Toronto Office, and as such have found a wealth of knowledge and support through them that I have been able to bring into my classroom. The Toronto Office runs a variety of workshops (such as the Bully Film Workshop, Literature Workshop, and the Facing History Urban Education Workshop, to name a few) that I have found invaluable in my personal and professional development. They run workshops that are immediately relevant to both our curriculum and our students. They deliver the information in pedagogically relevant ways, modelling wonderful new and creative tools and strategies as they take us through new and interesting (and though sometimes disturbing, frequently uplifting!) content.

Finding space to create movement in our lessons is important for our kinesthetic learners. If we do not find ways to engage them, we can expect to lose them. Moreover, movement is important for all students. It wakes them up, energizes them, and an alert student is more likely to learn. What follows is a lesson that was developed with the help of Jasmine Wong, program associate for the Toronto Office of Facing History and Ourselves. It relies on the use of the Gallery Walk, thus getting students up and moving. The lesson was designed specifically to meet the expectations of locally developed Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities course, CHG38 (see expectations as listed in the Human Zoos Lesson plan), but can be tailored to most History courses.

We always say that Canada is a young country, but that never hits home till you come to Europe. Here I am in Krakow, the old imperial capital of Poland, whose existence is first mentioned by a Jewish merchant in 965 CE. A city gradually grew on this important trade route near the important salt mines of Bochnia, which would eventually account for 30% of Poland's national income in the 15th and 16th centuries.

As educators, we want the answers as to why our students aren't learning. Do they have special education needs such as a learning disability? Are they lacking motivation? Did they get enough sleep the night before? Did they have breakfast? But how many of us ever ask: do my students feel safe? Overwhelming brain based research indicates the importance of students feeling safe in schools in order for them to be able to learn.

BULLY

by Hirsch, Lee.. Anchor Bay Entertainment, Inc..

Facing History Toronto is delighted to announce we have been able to add 3 'Bully' Film Educator Kits to our resource library*.

Regent Park. This is where I teach. Originally, this east end Toronto neighbourhood was a planned garden community, with a mixture of mid rise and high rise rental apartments; originally, a place meant for parents to raise children. What has happened over 60 years in Regent Park is that it has become isolated, closed off from the surrounding city, a place where poor and new immigrants have made homes. The community has had its share of issues common to many big city neighbourhoods such as drugs, gangs and crime, but Regent Park is not a community made up of big city issues, it’s a community made up of diverse people!

In “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Tyronne Howard notes the importance of finding ways to address the growing heterogeneity of our students cultural needs to “construct pedagogical practices that have meaning to students’ social and cultural realities,” (195-6). Literature Circles are a model that I used, which I have found to be an effective tool for engaging students using differentiation. The diverse nature of my classroom, which is common for an urban school, makes it is difficult to find a single text that will engage each student in the classroom. Since those students who do not engage and read their texts are traditionally the least successful, it is important to try and find materials they will.