There have only been a handful of movies that I have walked out of needing to just sit and ponder. In the Name of the Father, Shawshank Redemption, Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List come to mind immediately. Hotel Rwanda is the same sort of movie.

I have done a good amount of reading about the Rwandan Genocide, and even spend several days at the end of my Holocaust unit studying it with my world history students. The movie did an amazing job of capturing the mood of the chaos that must have reigned during those 100 days. I was even more surprise to later read that Paul Rusesabagina – the main character – was an advisor to the movie and even there during a large part of the filming. No pressure Don Cheadle. That fact does further authenticate the movie for me.

What the movie touched upon, though not as much as the Frontline special that I show in class, was the lack of action by the west, including the United States. They even used an actual news conference by a Clinton Administration State Department official stumbling over a question about the difference between acts of genocide and genocide. I don’t understand how we could sit and watch. How we could argue about semantics. Now, I don’t understand how we can look at the Sudan, call it genocide, and still not intervene. It is always an interesting class discussion when I prompt them to think about when the United States should intervene. With the invasion of Iraq, last year’s discussion was even more lively. This year’s group will likely be the same. We help in a country that doesn’t seem to want help, and not in a country that really needs it. The kids usually come up with some good reasons.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from two students saying they were confused about the propaganda project that we had started last Monday that is part of my Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe unit. They had apparently gone home and tried to figure out the project on their own. The problem was that one of the students missed the last week, including two days that I discussed in significant detail the definition of propaganda and the different techniques used by propagandists. That left the other student to explain everything, needless to say his grade last semester disqualifies him as a teaching assistant.

So, they decided to ask someone. Enter grandfather. All that the second student can remember about propaganda is something about the government lying during war time. Well, his memory of the lesson appears to have been completely distorted. So the grandfather, thinking I'm misinforming my students gets upset and calls me communist (as related through the student in an e-mail).

I'm just old enough to know that calling someone a communist is not a complement of any kind. I can remember as child in the early 80's calling other kids I was getting along withcommies. Today's kids, for the most part, have no real concept of communism, the Cold War, or the Soviet Union.

Now the grandfather wants to talk to me. I am certainly looking forward to that call.

This is almost as bad as when I compared discrimination against various groups and the possible escalation of prejudice. A kid told his parents that I thought discrimination against homosexuals was the same as the Holocaust. That was quite a jump.

I think I need to prepare a list of disclaimers to be signed with the syllabus.

At the beginning of the semester several of my classes were at 40 students - I know for some this is the norm, but for us this is something to complain about. So after some quick discussions, it was decided that a couple special program classes would be discontinued (both of which were at 21 students) and both the US and world history classes would be balanced. I generally believed this to be a good thing. First, I only have 38 desks. I could get more, but for the first time in years, I like how my room is currently configured and more would disrupt it. Second, one of the three classes, needed to be smaller. The other two are two of my better classes and I could handle the larger numbers.

So they balanced out the classes, my special program class of 21 became a class of 38. Fun. Then the shocker. Six students are transferred out of my US History class of 40 to another teacher. Four of my eight A's from last semester, the biggest contributors to class discussions, and not one of the kids I would have picked. They all showed up at once to sign-out, a couple are close to tears. They all went to a great teacher, who shares the same teaching philosophy as myself, but he has a student teacher and while she may turn out to be great, it is hard to tell the kids that the experience will be the same.

I know that last year I would have been more indifferent to all of this. Part of it was the lack of sleep (my youngest son was waking up 4-10 times a night) and the other part was that I just didn't feel as connected to my classes last year. This year I seem to have reconnected. My classroom dynamics are, well, more dynamic. Hopefully, in a couple weeks, the changes brought by the new semester will settle and we will return to a state of normalcy. (An inside joke for you US History teachers - I just spent the week teaching the 1920's).

We all know it, some even knew it, but here are a few statements made by the current administrataion.

Well, period one has finished at least. I need to record some initial reflections that I will probably expand upon at a later time.

• Group Work - I have always struggled with developing a group assignment that forces ALL members to participate. During the first phase of the project, that worked perfectly. However, during the last part that we finished today, there were several groups where a number of people just sat there and talked - leaving their team members to do all of the work. Even after I spoke to them about it and threatened a grade drop. And this was my best class; no doubt some of the other classes will be even worse.
  
  
• The Wiki - Love the Wiki. The ease of adding and changing pages is amazing. Overall, I love TikiWiki. Plus, teaching the kids to add information took all of five minutes. When I do a more indepth Wiki project during second semester, I think the technical side of it will not hinder the completion of the project. This is the first time that I have used a new technology and it didn't slow down the process. It absolutely has a tremendous value. For this project, I only provided group logins, for the next one there will be individual logins, which will add to the chaos, no doubt.
  
  
• The Content - The underlying idea is to have students making educated choices. While deciding upon the strategies and weaponry do fit into this idea, I was overall not impressed with amount of energy put into the choices. While I bounced around helping the groups, I was also making last minute changes to the Wiki and setting up each group's section.
  
  

My students are currently neck deep in my Strategies of WWI Wiki-WebQuest. Right now they are figuring out what weaponry and tactics they will be using to either defend or attack their assigned enemy. To regulate what they can do, I have given them a number of supply points for each round. Just a minute ago, one student approached me, with her cell phone in hand, and asks if these points are like roll-over minutes for the next round. It made me smile.

Yesterday I saw a student with one of those key chain pets that you have to feed, pay attention to, etc. I told her that is was so five years ago. I can remember confiscating a number of those at least five or six years ago.

One of the cool things about being a high school teacher is watching the evolution of popular culture. For nine years now, I have watched teenagers buy into the latest fads wholesale and help drive the movement of the moment, for the moment. Until the next thing comes along at least.

After wrestling with the content of my World War I Wiki project and then the Wiki engine, I am finally in the implementation stage. We have started with a research phase today, so the students will not actually be posting to the Wiki for a couple days.

The final form of the project actually looks a lot like a WebQuest I made a couple years ago call Strategies of World War I. Students will research the tactics and weaponry used during the First World War and then they will be given scenarios where they have to try and implement their acquired knowledge against one another. When I did the WebQuest the first time, I did some quick calculating to determine who "won" the battle. This time around, I'm putting that burden on the students. The competition element actually comes in the attempt to determine the most realistic results. I'm excited to see how the classes do with this part. This was a departure from the original idea that had the students progress through the war and make decisions that lead to the next step. Unfortunately, the information available and the limits of the history made that particular idea unworkable for this content. I will try that idea next semester.

The Wiki engine I finally decided upon is TikiWiki - which actually is more like a content management system with a Wiki core. I like a couple of the other engines a bit more, but TikiWiki has a login feature that the others do not have - a must with high school students! I even have a couple of my better "techie" students looking for ways to easier hack the system. Hopefully it is secure enough.