This next summer will be another summer of adding to my teaching inventory.  This summer’s rewrite will be influenced by the following people / programs:

1.  Stanford’s Beyond the Bubble.  Which is a history scaffolding systems of dealing with primary and secondary sources which lead students to understand and empathize with primary and secondary sources.  This is a building block program to students being able to handle and master a Document Based Assessment (which I am going back to next year after a couple years of thinking that the Social Studies ISTEP mattered).

2. Stanford’s Reading Like a Historian.  This is a foundational program in my class.  Students must be taught to discern information found in primary and secondary sources.  They must learn to seek background when moved by the words of the past.

3.  Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide.  Reading is back baby (insert Dick Vitale’s voice over).  Weekly articles and a novel will be in my class.  Hello Tunnel in the Sky!!  I will be looking at Gallagher’s recommendations on novel reading, but I will find a level that is in my comfort zone.

4.  Kagan’s Cooperative Learning.  I have to find a way to teach my students to work in cooperative teams.  It is my weakness and it is a disservice to my students in the long term.

5.  My friends Brett Bontrager and Tim Wade who are business people who talked a lot to me about how employees cannot write with voice and argument.

6.  Expanding inquiry in my class.  The idea is to give my students a way to be creative with focus in my class…I need a rich sponsor to buy my class a Mac lab off of my classroom so that my kids can use technology in the assessment area of my class.

The best part of the summer is always the promise of the next year.  The chance to improve and grow.