Sometimes Fences Set Us Free
My first year teaching, I had only one prep. I had four sections of U.S. History, fifth hour plan, and finished my day monitoring whatever in-house detention was called – essentially a second planning period. Compared to what we normally do to baby teachers, it was an amazing schedule.
Nevertheless, within about six weeks I was fresh out of lesson ideas. I’d done a few lectures with moderate success. I’d written my own 25 – 30 questions over several textbook chapters in hopes of guiding students through some form of close reading. We even spent an entire period looking through pictures, maps, and graphs in whatever chapter we were on, asking questions and making inferences – pretty cutting-edge pedagogy for me in those days.
I hadn’t yet grown comfortable with artsy-fartsy options, so I’m sure we didn’t color or fold or turn content into children’s bedtime stories, but I did my best to keep things engaging. I was scrambling to stay ahead of my students in the textbook – if not by a chapter, at least by a few sections – and I loved it, even though I was pretty sure it would kill me my very first year.
But as week seven loomed, it was time to break things up a bit. We needed a… a… project of some sort. Something hands-on – maybe collaborative! Something where they did most of the work while I caught up with grading, and lesson-planning, Something sort of fun, but still, you know… educational – or at least educational enough.
But what to assign? What sort of project should it be?
I vaguely recalled something from teacher school about the importance of “student CONTINUE READING: Sometimes Fences Set Us Free | Blue Cereal Education
What Not To Wear: Joan of Arc Edition
Most of us have at least a working familiarity with the story of Joan of Arc. A simple (but not impoverished) French peasant girl, she began hearing voices from God telling her she was going to save France from the English and their Burgundian allies. Through some combination of cleverness, sincerity, and miraculous signs, she convinced Charles VII to let her lead French soldiers in battle and eventually secured his coronation.
Having outlived her political usefulness, Joan was then pushed aside. She was captured by the English, put on trial for heresy, and burned at the stake when she was only nineteen years old. In her final moments, she begged for a cross to be held before her, high enough to see through the flames. She called out to Jesus while she burned.
It’s a gripping tale, and surprisingly well-documented for its times. Accounts of Joan pop up everywhere in the historical record, as do endless legends, rumors, and interpretations of her life and death. By far the most detailed accounts were the trial records so carefully preserved, first by those who wished to condemn her, then several decades later by those who wished her redeemed. For five months, Joan was questioned, criticized, badgered, and abused by learned men with little interest in legal or spiritual truth. Their goal was to destroy her reputation, to invalidate her apparent CONTINUE READING: What Not To Wear: Joan of Arc Edition