TE 865 - Adventures in Social Studies Teaching

I wrote this for another class, but I wanted to share it here.  If you read it, please leave a comment or two! In a world that was about to undergo a trial that had not been experienced by human beings in living memory, the death of Kobe Bryant at the end of January was a harbinger of all that has come in the early days of the decade. His death showed the delicacy that surrounds life; everything is brief. Freedom is fleeting. Love is fleeting. Life, itself, is fleeting.   His death put his extraordinary achievements in life into sharp focus. One of those, his Oscar-Winning Short animation,  Dear Basketball , details his love affair with basketball using personification, and Kobe thanks to the sport for all it has done for him, before revealing his reasons for letting the game go at this stage in his life. So, I began to think, what entity in my life would be my Dear Basketball? What in this world has shaped who I am and who I would become as I journeyed through ...

To my Students, I taught myself to read at the age of three. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do; it just happened. And since this time, I have been a self-directed, self-guided learner, one that can find interest happily for hours in the most mundane types of learning tools – textbooks, newspapers, and even instruction manuals, if there is nothing else available. I am quite happy to sit and watch documentaries and learn.  When I wanted to redo the floors in my house, I talked to a bunch of people because I don’t think that YouTube was popular at the time; today, it would be a cinch for me to watch a video and get the answers. I know how to do this because my teachers taught me, not necessarily how to complete floors, but to learn how to find information.   So, if I had to take stock of the things that I want you to be as students, as current and future facilitators of learning, I have to take stock of my self as a teacher and facilitator of learning. What ...