HW 41 - Initial Internet Research on Schooling

Anthony J. Mullen 2009 National Teacher of the Year
http://www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/national_teachers/13292.cf

This source is interesting because this teacher of the year went to work on a factory assembly line after high school to support his family and then became a new York city cop for 20 years and then put himself through college, majoring in Criminal Justice. He’s a special education teacher for 9th through 12th grade students at an alternative school in Connecticut. His reputation is that he can teach any student, especially those who have behavioral and emotional problems. The source is interesting because this former cop talks about the keys to his success being passion, professionalism, and perseverance and describes what he means by all three. He uses his life experience to help him connect with his students.

Interview with Bill Bigelow
http://history matters.gmu.edu/d/6433

Bill Bigelow teaches high school history in Portland, Oregon. He make certain that his students do not think about history “as a series of dead facts.” He wants his students to understand that history consists of choices that real people make under certain circumstances, and he has them re-enact historical events. This article describes in detail how a creative teacher inspires a whole class of students and gets them to feel passionate about changing their society for the better.

2005-2006 Teacher of the Year – Jason Kamras
http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/teachyear/year2005.htm

Jason Kamaras entered the Teach for America program after graduating from Princeton and went into an inner-city school in Washington D.C. He made the students feel proud of the fact that the desegregation of all Washington D.C. schools came about because of a challenge that came from their school. He raised the math scores incredibly by giving the kids access to technology and using real-world problem solving. This article is a good source about the power of the passion of one teacher to change the whole culture of a school. Although he left the school for a couple of years to earn more advanced degrees, he returned to the school where he continues o teach and is treated like an assistant principle.

Philip Bigler – National Teacher of the Year
http://www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/National_Teachers/188.cfm

Interview with Maurice Butler
http://history matters.gmu.edu/d/7122

Interview with Michele Forman
http:historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6830

Welcome to History Matters
http://.history-matters.com/

This site gives a way of studying an event in history that can be really interesting because it is based on formerly secret documents that are now declassified by the U.S. Government because a certain amout of time has elapsed. The event discussed here is the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. The documents show evidence of conspiracy and show why there was a cover up. I think a study like this could engage a whole class and give a much deeper understanding about truth and lies and mysteries in the history we're taught.

Making History on the Web Matter in Your Classroom
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.3/schrum.html

History Matters seems to be a great resource for teachers to make history come alive in the classroom. One of the things History Matters does is give all the best websites for U.S history teachers to use. We all know that one of the drawbacks of the web is that there is just too much information and so it is really time consuming to sort out the good stuff from the garbage. This site does it for history teachers and it gets its funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I think this means it must be pretty good. Also, the way I found this site was by looking for articles about the best teachers in the country. Some of the National Teachers of the Year winners are featured on it.