At the end of the week I had a sit down with my new boss, Ken James, who is a pretty cool guy. I wanted to talk to him about American Studies and the trip to Boston. He explained how team teaching has and has not worked in the past, and the successful scenarios are similar to how I now teach with Mrs. Crabtree. We also briefly discussed how school policy and rules work, and overall, we just had a nice discussion for a couple of minutes. I am pretty stoked about the change.

We’ve begun going to talk to the current Sophomore Honors students about AP English & American Studies. Mostly the course curriculum they disregard until we get going because there’s just too much, and typically they can’t wrap their minds are AP vs American Studies vs AP Exams vs Dual Enrollment. I get a lot of the same questions each year, and I should start an FAQ or something! Anyway, this year we decided to start them on the technology early early… Like Now. Students are required to log into Gmail and create an account. My goal is then to reply immediately so my email is in their address book. I then add them to gTalk and open their contact book where I add them to my APES 0809 mailing group. Some of the students are also NHS now, so I add them to that, too. This way in July, I don’t sit for hours doing this. I’ve begun finding some on chat and one even thanked me for forcing the classes to use this set up!

This student also wanted to know when I would set up a Google Group for the 08-09 APES. I told him to remind me tomorrow night and I would do it. The group’s main purpose is to be a space where the students can begin dialogging about the course, the summer reading, the teachers, etc… I think it’ll really help.

This Friday we’re headed to Hamilton High School to observe their American Studies course before a meeting with their instructors. At last week’s meeting the admin laid down the expectations of how we, the AP Language and the AP US History teachers, will work together on everything. We will develop rubrics together and keep one gradebook. We have 40 kids per section, and everything’s based off of Advanced Placement. There’s definitely some perks to the program, including historical trips to Boston. I did this trip a couple years ago, and I am looking forward to doing it with a more education spin. We’ve got 80 kids signed up, and we’re ready to roll. The summer book is Rise to Rebellion on Jeff Shaara, and I will be reading it right along with them.

After school today we had a meeting about summer reading. In our district, we cannot really call it “Summer Reading” so we make it due 2-3 weeks into the school year. This really isn’t feasible anymore given all of the higher ed institutions who require summer reading for incoming freshman. Ladies & Gentlemen, get with the program. How do we keep minds fresh and continue to learn if we don’t require our students to use them? When was the last time you didn’t read something over breaks? Come on. Give me a break! Seriously, our district believes breaks are breaks. No work. Now this is an issue for me, a life long learner who reads voraciously (this past weekend I read the 464 page Change of Heart by Picoult), and how do we model this good behavior for our students if we tell them to just shut down over summers. No work. Just veg out. Ha! Not me! So we had a meeting about books today. I will admit I have never read Cry, the Beloved Country. But I need to. We picked it for our AP Language summer fiction read, but Ron Bromund and I realized that that book wouldn’t work for American Studies, so Ron came up with a new book: Jeff Shaara’s Rise to Rebellion, which floored me. I read several reviews, and I loved what I saw. I immediately talked with a colleague who read this book while walking the Minute Man Trail outside Concord. I bought it after school.

…. ok I think I rambled enough. I will get to the title of this email. Wikipedia. The last four years my perspective when it came to my students was DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA. If my students cited it, they got a zero on that. It was a do and die situation. Last year I began to realize perhaps the students who began there and went off to other places was ok. Then today, someone in our meeting asked if we should put a note on the summer reading instructions that says no Wikipedia. I didn’t believe I did it, but I stopped them right there. Um… Wikipedia isn’t the best source (I can write that Abraham Lincoln is our school football coach if I want!), but if you go there and scroll down, then use the citations and links to get elsewhere, then fine. Use it. Ugh. I said it. Wikipedia isn’t evil. It’s a good repository.