Many thanks to Tom McHale in Flemington, New Jersey for his comment on my Veteran Oral History podcast and blog post this week!
Tom’s team teaching approach combining Social Studies and English reminds me of one of my favorite classes from high school: the “combo class” taught by Mickey Bogart and Carol Adams at Manhattan High School in Manhattan, Kansas. Mrs. Bogart taught the US History portion, and Mrs. Adams taught the American Literature piece. This was a 2 hour block class: sometimes we would study literature for the entire time, sometimes all history, and other times a little of both. Making connections across content areas is essential for authentic learning to take place, but in my experience this is definitely the exception rather than the rule in US secondary schools. Congrats and kudos to Tom for being innovative and creative, as he seeks to further engage his students!
Check out Tom’s school website American Studies, which documents their work getting students to use blogs and engage more deeply in their studies. Tom’s blog, “The Open Classroom: Using technology, transparency, and discussion to transform education,” is also excellent and worth adding to your personal blogroll. He describes it as “A blog about teaching as a conversation with a special emphasis on weblogs, interdisciplinary teaching, writing, journalism, high school newspapers, and the culture of high school.”
Tom also recommends “Writing America: Classroom Literacy and Public Engagement” by Teachers College Press. Great recommendations from another educator passionate about teaching and learning!
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On this day..
- Advice for Church Digital Oral History Projects – 2014
- Why Choice Schools Are Essential in Public Schools – 2012
- Can Blogger.com Support Moderated Web Forms for Post Contributions Like WordPress? – 2012
- Tutorial: How To Upload a Video to YouTube – 2012
- Oklahoma City to Doha (narrated slideshow with SonicPics) – 2011
- K-12 Online Conference Presentation Teasers! #k12online10 – 2010
- FTC mandates disclosure for bloggers receiving freebies/payments – 2009
- Dell Mini10V Netbook, Ubuntu, Win7, and Hackintoshes – 2009
- XO Laptop for Christmas? – 2007
- Exponential blog growth – 2005
Comments
2 responses to “Great history resource suggestions from Tom Hale”
Thanks Wesley. I just wanted to add that I found the website describing the Keeping and Creating American Communities project (supported by the National Writing Project and the National Endowment in the Humanities), so visitors can check it out before they purchase the book: http://www.kennesaw.edu/english/kmwp/AmerCommunities/curricular_program/curricular.html
I think my teaching partner and I are going to try some version of this with our American Studies class. Keep up the great work. I’ll be reading.
Great, thanks Tom. I added this to my list of digital storytelling social bookmarks for my own future reference:
http://del.icio.us/wfryer/DigitalStorytelling