U.S. History class

Thursday was the first day of school. Things went quite well in terms of teaching. I have 50 minutes with each of my classes. I told them that when I used to teach, I often wasn't even warmed up until I hit the one hour mark.

On Thursday, the middle and secondary school students had an assembly to discuss some of the new school rules. This took place during the 2nd period. That's when my U.S. History course meets. So, I didn't have U.S. History for the first time until Friday. I had a starter activity for them - a list of 20 events from U.S. History that they needed to put into chronological order. It was just an icebreaker activity, to get them talking to each other. There were three groups and they were competing to see who could get the closest.

I watched and listened while they worked and got to hear things like "What was the Mayflower?" "Who were Lewis and Clark?" "What was Pearl Harbor?" You see, I have 9 students in my class. None of them are U.S. citizens, nor have any ever lived in the United States. A couple of them visited the U.S. once, though! While a few of the students are Azeri, one is Polish (father works for the Polish embassy), two are Scottish, one is Japanese (father works for the Japanese embassy), one is Turkish, one is Russian. Not surprisingly, their history courses have not included long units on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving Day, the Lewis and Clark expedition, etc.

I believe this will be the most interesting class I have ever taught.