Brian Melton - ELA Secondary - Illinois
I've spent a lot of time with many of my units connecting the curriculum to current events and I will continue to push our study of literature in this direction this year. I was a participant in the work done with #DistruptTexts and want to continue this work with all of our canonical literature.
I have been thinking a lot about "Wurthering Heights" and will be creating text sets on the discussion of immigration and the treatment of the "other" as we look at Heathcliff as "anti-hero." In what ways do we see the "other" excluded in our American society?
We will also be looking at "Taming of the Shrew" in the context of the #metoo movement. We will be looking at portions of "nanette" an how power, gender, and misogyny manifest in today's American narrative.
At every step of the school year we should be incorporating current events into our ELA classroom, disrupting the canon with diverse secondary sources, and giving students choice in both reading and writing. Reframe the context of the novel. Allow your students to see their world through the literature.
My name is Valente’ Gibson, a fifth grade teacher at Jackson Creek Elementary School. As a grade level teacher, I’m required to teach all subjects. Jackson Creek is a diverse elementary school located in Columbia, SC led by Dr. Sabina Mosso-Taylor. Next year, I plan to focus my teaching around helping my students’ bridge the gap between historical and current events, especially issues that largely impact students of color. For example, Rosa Parks’ role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott can be associated with Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest against police brutality. One way this connection can occur in the classroom is through socratic seminars. To begin, students will read articles about current events and issues while creating questions based on the framework of Costa’s level of questioning. In addition to the questions, students will create a quick-write to record their initial thoughts and reactions. Students will then lead the seminar by expressing their own thoughts and sentiments about the event. When implemented correctly, Socratic seminars can be a great way for students to engage with each other in a safe space, use their voices to ask questions, and speak their truth. It is important to allow students the opportunity for conversation because it allows them to engage in higher level thinking while also making them aware of the potential they have to incite change in their community and world, even at such a young age.
Connecting current events to our study of literature and our independent reading books makes the point that "theme" is not some hidden picture or message in invisible ink within a text. Rather, themes in literature extend beyond the text and apply to real-life situations. We can find a theme from Romeo and Juliet that surfaces on the NYT home page or in an OpEd.
Challenging students to find and make these text-to-text connections, as the NYT LN did last year, is especially revealing as it shows the kinds of themes students find most important in their reading AND the ones they find most relevant in the world around them.
I teach ELS at a college level through content-based language teaching or instruction, using current events as the nonlinguistic curricular content.
My go-to source are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I also rely on Flipboard, an app which has helped identify relatively obscure but interesting sources such as blogs and foreign media organizations. It's really helped expand the scope in a way that I could never have done on my own.
While my students are 'adults', however, I find that some of the recent current events can be challenging to tackle, e.g., #MeToo movement/sexual harassment, racial and ethnic tension behind the immigration debate, latest in the LGBTQ movement, etc. Added to that, since my students are international students, it requires special attention and sensitivity to navigate around the their cultural backgrounds, gendered identities and religious beliefs.
Similarly, while I have my own personal perspectives and opinions behind many of these highly contested issues, I need to be mindful to remain as objective as I can, so not to add any sense of bias to the discussions of these events.
Fortunately, all discussions have gone well, but I find it interesting that a lot of time is often devoted to helping students understand and de-code the culturally specific nature and dynamics that undergird many of the current events in the popular discourse.
Where and what do I teach? I teach 5th grade all subjects areas in upstate NY. What am I thinking about teaching differently in response to current events or issues? One subject area that has been on my mind in relation to the next school year is social studies. The fifth grade curriculum includes exploring governments in the western hemisphere in regard to differences in structure, as well as relationships globally. Rather than being more textbook/digital curriculum program driven, I plan on using current events to connect with the curriculum, This is important in order to provide students with a good foundation of understanding what is happening in the news, as well as our standing as a nation and the relationships we have throughout the world. As our POTUS meets with the various leaders, it is important to remain neutral in any personal political beliefs and discuss what is happening in the news continuously making connections to the curriculum.
I feel using current events in this way will be beneficial to my students.
For students to get the most out of any piece of literature, I encourage them to make connections to text, self, and world. In fact, that is what the curriculum revolves around. We start the year by discussing the importance of literature and what we get out of it. Is it only for our entertainment? It may take some students a little time to realize that the answer is no, of course. Making connections to self/text/world is not always something they can do right away---or they are simply not aware that they already know how to do it and have probably been doing it for years. In class, we read and discuss at least one article of the week that is about a current event that also connects to the text we are reading at the time. I also share TedTalks that are somehow related to the literature, even if it's not readily obvious to them at first. At least two times a week, students will walk in to class and find a prompt on the board that forces them to unknowingly (in some cases) make connections to the text we are reading. In class discussions, I will always ask them to make connections to current events. The point is to keep driving that point home---that connections can, and should, be made. By the second month of class, students naturally make the connections in discussions without being prompted. Many will also want to share with the class a video or article that they came across and ask me to share with the class.
I am a biology teacher, who primarily does long-term subbing and homebound tutoring. I teach the life sciences at the secondary level, including subjects of environmental science, forensics, and oceanography. Because I am in different situations with different level students throughout the year, I need to be able to manage and interest the students very quickly, in order to be credible as their sub.
With life sciences covering health, medicine, the environment, biotechnology, etc, as well as the traditional biological processes, it is really important to address current events. I love the idea of using the NYT learning network ScienceTake videos to begin a class. The on on Spiders Flying was fascinating and relevant-- everyone sees them and wonders how they got in certain spots. These videos are good to spur creative thinking, show what kind of 'out of the box' research is being done, and what the benefits are to understanding processes world around . After showing videos, I may ask for discussion with a partner, then a class share, and ask for students to jot down ideas /thoughts about what they learned. Why do this? To show how we as humans have a lot to learn about how other creatures (as lowly as a spider) figure out ways to survive, flourish and evolve, to pass on their genes!
Because I teach American Government and Economics, it is imperative that I bring the "outside" world into the confines of the classroom. As much as three times a week, my students read current event articles culled from the NYT and WAPO among other publications. A text book cannot duplicate the current nature of politics and the global economy. My students utilize an active reading strategy that engages them in the curriculum in a responsible and yet unoppressive manner. Traditional teaching via a text book and testing does not engage the student of today with the tools they need to understand the ever-changing world. Students are into the NOW, and we as teachers must keep up with our charges who are different learners than we were as kids. I hope to start the upcoming new school year by letting my students know that the "new norm" of meaness and disrespect from the POTUS on down is not normal. Civility must be demonstrated in the classroom if nowhere else.
As an English teacher, I am always encourage my students to make connections from our in-class text to the larger community and world around them. I find literature to be full of opportunities to foster a classroom full of independent thinkers, ready to draw lasting and life-changing revelations out of what we read.
For example, during our reading of George Orwell's 1984, I ask students to observe their own relationship as citizens to their own government. We also discuss contemporary examples of surveillance and the complexities of living in a world where Orwell would have never predicted that WE would be the ones wielding the cameras and creating our own society that challenges the boundaries of private and public life. Often, I will remind students of topics in our text and ask them to search for related articles in the news.
When we read Frankenstein, I ask students to research and discuss contemporary science issues such as cloning, stem cell research, and technology. I also find that students delve into more "social" based topics with Mary Shelley's work such as existentialism, parenting, prejudice, and identity. All of these universal concepts seem nicely make their way into discussions about current events. Discussing the "outsider" persona of the Creature can lead to rich and meaningful conversations about civility, diversity, and acceptance.
No matter the text, students can make an abundance of significant connections.
2
• Where? Queens, NY. What: ESL, Human Rights and Mindfulness
• What are you thinking about teaching differently next year in response to current events or issues?
My human rights class has always been built around current events; I never know what I'm going to teach until life happens. Since the new administration took over, our class focus has been very focused around immigrant rights: travel bans, ICE raids, DACA, the myth of the criminal immigrant, and now the separation of families. This is the first time we've ever made our own population the focus of the human rights class and I am guessing this is going to continue into next year.
Because news comes hot and heavy, if a current event is relevant to what we are learning, I will definitely discuss the correlation between the two.
Other than that I am too busy with state-issued curriculum to talk about current events. I teach 5th grade, and from what I have seen? Most kids are in tune with what is going on in the world.
I do have classroom elections every year though. I can't think of a better way to teach civics than to show kids how to have elections.
I feel it is important to connect current events in the classroom. There are many ways I attempt to accomplish this, however, I do a group discussion at least once a week entitled "In Da News." Students seem to like this format and they all participate in the discussions. Even when they do not always agree, and that's ok, they are offering their contributions and critical thinking skills that make the discussion a success.
As educators, we have a responsibility to prioritize our students’ lived experiences in informing the essential questions we address in our curriculum. We must create civic spaces that engage students like current and controversial issue discussions that lead to students communicating conclusions and taking informed action (service learning). The Parkland High School students and their peers from around the nation are not going away. They are demonstrating that civic engagement does not begin and end with voting at 18, but encompasses a wide variety of issues and strategies for taking informed action, from lobbying, to social media campaigns, to advocacy.
http://illinoiscivics.blogspot.com/2018/03/creating-civic-spaces-in-trou...
My students would say that one of the best things they did last year was read Clint Smith's collection of poetry Counting Descent then Skyping with him when we finished it. As a literature teacher, I can choose all types of texts to teach reading skills, but I love bringing in modern works and voices to help students explore current issues. Many students told me they had never read anything like Counting Descent in school and it offered them an avenue to consider a different perspective than what they are typically exposed to in suburban Atlanta. Yes, I teach reading, but I am also teaching thinking. Connecting students with modern writers, thinkers, and voices is of great importance in today's classroom.