Celebrating Diversity: American Voices

Grades: 9-12

Teachers: Marita O'Neil and Jackie Brookes

Subject: English Language Arts and Social Studies

Project Name: Celebrating Diversity: American Voices 

This update was written by Alison Flowerdew, parent, and Yarmouth Education Foundation board member. The grant for this opportunity was funded by YEF.

Part One: Grades 11 and 12
David Mills is in the house!  Part one of Marita O'Neill and Jackie Brookes's grant, Celebrating Diversity:  American Voices -- Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, came to life today at YHS!  David Mills performed as Langston Hughes in the YPAC this morning for the Junior & Senior class.  He was a one man show!  He started his performance reciting Hughes's famous poem called The Negro Speaks of Rivers, then continued reciting Hughes's poems and short stories for about an hour. Throughout his performance, he used many different voices: male, female, young, old, black & white.

After his presentation this morning, he conducted a workshop on Blues Poetry in two Senior AP Literature classes.  The class read a Hughes poem titled Midwinter Blues.  After the students read the poem out loud, they dissected each stanza, line by line, discussing setting, structure, form, tone, meaning, repetition and rhyme.  The students then wrote their own Blues poem using the formula they'd just learned.  In the background, Mr. Mills played a Chicago Blues song, while the students wrote their poem.  At the end of class, a couple of brave students read their poems out loud and I'm here to report that Ms. O'Neill has some terrific poets in her class!  I could tell the students really enjoyed the workshop, because they personally thanked Mr. Mills and shook his hand on the way out the door.  

What a bonus for the students to have their English teachers and History teachers join forces to create this experience for them.

Part TwoOne: Grades 8, 9 and 10:

Part two of the David Mills grant started off with a bang today!  The YPAC was filled to capacity with Freshman, Sophomores and 8th graders as David Mills transformed himself into Martin Luther King Jr.

It was another terrific one man show!  David Mills recited excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches and letters, including "I Have a Dream", "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and "If I had Sneezed".  In between the speeches, he performed interludes to bring the audience from one stage of King's life to another.  One of the interludes discussed how King felt when the 4 girls were killed in the Alabama church in 1963, just days after giving his "I Have a Dream" speech.  It was a powerful performance.

This afternoon I attended a workshop in Mrs. Ruthman's Sophomore Modern World History class.  It was a small class, but they knew their stuff!  Mr. Mills started off the class by giving the students some historical context around the letter that Dr. King wrote from his jail cell in 1963.  He talked about the bus boycott, which lasted over a year, the protests in Birmingham (which was nicknamed "Bombingham"), and why Dr. King was imprisoned.  When talking about Dr. King's letter from jail, Mr. Mills explained how Dr. King appealed to the reader on an emotional and intellectual level through his high rhetoric.  Mr. Mills described the letter as an "epistolary poem", which is a poem in the form of a letter.  After the class read the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", line by line, they discussed setting, repetition, meaning, parallel syntax, alliteration, paratactic syntax, hypophora, antithesis, anaphora, periodic sentences and metaphors.  Did you get all that?  The Sophomores did!  They were a smart bunch.

After the lesson on the literary devices found in Dr. King's letter, the students were asked to write their own

"epistolary poem" and were asked to include the elements they'd just learned from Dr. King's letter.  They were charged with writing about an experience they'd had in their lives where they'd been misunderstood, hurt or disrespected by someone with whom they were not able to respond to.  The students wrote and wrote and wrote.  Mrs. Ruthman's class turned into a writing machine. 

I know this grant was written for the high school, but I thought you might be interested in a couple of quotes from the 8th graders who attended the performance this morning.....

"I loved it!  The acting was amazing and I learned a lot of things about King's struggles that I wasn't awarde of.  I had no idea how vicious racism could be.  I was struck by the phone threat King received where they said they would kill his wife and daughter.  My big takeaway was that hatred is pointless"  This 8th grader said he was very moved and said this program was one of his favorites!

"It was awesome!  Mr. Mills did a great job with the miming.  I learned a lot about MLK".  

"I thought Mr. Mills was a really good actor and I enjoyed hearing him recite the "I have a Dream" speech.  I didn't know he was stabbed and I'd never heard the "If I had Sneezed" speech.  I loved the ending, when Mr. Mills talked about how Dr. King didn't want to be known for his Nobel Peace Prize or his many awards when he died, but for the impact he left on the world."

A special thank you to Caitlin for letting me join her class today and to Marita & Jackie for writing this grant and for bringing this experience to our students!  And finally, thank you for including the 8th graders.  It obviously had a big impact on them.  

Global Awareness Project in 2nd Grade

Grade: 2
Teachers: Laura Wetmore and Cathy Wolinsky
Subjects: Reading, Writing, Social Studies
Project Name: FlatConnections - Building Bridges to Tomorrow in Grades K-2
Resources: FlatConnections Project

Once again we have a classroom participating in a global project communicating and collaborating with students across the U.S. and in some international settings. This year Laura Wetmore is participating with her class and they are posting to the project wiki. All classrooms are posting a multimedia greeting (called a "handshake") and a View from Our Window project. The project schools are divided into three working groups to collaborate on a topic, this year the topics will be Sharing Stories and Celebrations. Teachers are communicating via. email as well as a project "ning" and students are using Google Earth to "travel" to the various locations. This is an example of a project that meets the new Global Awareness theme of the updated Social Studies Framework.

This is a map of the schools in the project.

Global Collaboration Presentation

Grades: 11 and 12

Teacher: Amy Sanders

Subject: Social Studies

Project Name: The Arab Spring Project

Resources: Global Collaboration

Wes Fryer recently updated an audio file about visiting Amy Sanders' session on Global Collaboration during our Playing With Media Staff Development Day on March 16, 2012

This is an audio recording of Amy Sanders’ presentation, “Global Collaboration” at the March 16, 2012, professional development day at Yarmouth High School in Yarmouth, Maine. Amy teaches several high school social studies courses, including Arab Studies (in fall 2011) and Asian Studies in spring 2012. The official session description was: "Rapidly advancing technologies and globalization trends increasingly connect us to communities throughout the world. As educators, how can we prepare students for a world of growing cultural interaction and diversity? This session will share two collaborative projects undertaken this year and explore how each of these projects gave students an opportunity to: investigate the world, including research on significant global issues, recognize and respond to perspectives different from their own, communicate ideas effectively with diverse audiences, develop and practice new skills, show initiative and work creatively. We’ll share the challenges and successes of these projects, and invite discussion of other collaborative projects." 

The Power of 1

Grade: 9

Teacher: Grade 9 Team

Subject: Social Studies, Science, Math, English

Project Name: Power of One Project

Resources: Power of One Website

Hunger and food insecurity impacts people in our own communities and around the world.  Students at Yarmouth High School will learn about the issues of hunger, and develop projects that can make a difference.  Projects are open-ended.  There is no one pathway for making a difference.  Through the work, students will:

• Collaborate with peers and adults
• Plan and implement a long-term project
• Engage in discourse around social change
• Model Yarmouth Core Values including caring and citizenship:  
• Caring - Caring people show concern for the well-being of themselves, others and the environment.
• Citizenship - Responsible citizens contribute to the community locally and globally in active, positive, and creative ways and encourage the participation of others through cooperation and contribution.

Future Focus

Grade: 12

Student: Hannah Potter

Subject: Social Studies

Project Name: Future Focus Event

Resources: Maine DOE article

Future Focus event puts eighth-grade girls from central Maine in contact with Iraqi counterpart, women working their dream jobs

By Charlie Hartman

“Do you like Justin Bieber?”
With a roll of her eyes, Maryann replied, “Oh, noooo!”

Shrieks rang out in response through Given Auditorium at Colby College as 250 eighth-grade girls talked to Maryann Naman in Kurdistan, Iraq, live via Skype.  The girls, from four schools in central Maine, were at the morning keynote of Future Focus, an annual conference sponsored by the Waterville branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI).

Read the rest of the article and see the video

Fourth grade Book Group makes a Movie

Grade: 4
Teacher: Rosie Lenehan
Subject: Social Studies/Reading
Project Name: Biography

The Marvelous Munchkin book club recently read a biography of Harriet Tubman.  As they discussed Harriet Tubman in one of their meetings, they arrived at the conclusion that when she was alive, Harriet Tubman was relatively unknown.  They were troubled by the lack of recognition that she got when she was alive, especially given all that she did.  We talked about the reasons for this and we also talked about how it is that people become famous.  I gave them some options for individual or group projects they could do around the idea of making Harriet Tubman famous, and they decided to work together on a newscast.  This is entirely student-written, student-filmed, and student-edited, completed in about 2 hour-long blocks.  Also, it was done entirely using an iPad!  Enjoy!

(cross posted at http://room301classpage.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-club-project.html)

The Yarmouth Entrepreneurs Project

Grade: 12

Teacher: David Pearl

Subject: Economics

Project Name: The Yarmouth Entrepreneurs Project

Resources: Project Website

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the YEP! Over the next few weeks you will work with your partner(s) to design your own original business as you embark on a fictional journey of entrepreneurship.  You will be competing with your classmates to create the most profitable business.  The competition will result in a series of business proposals in front of our “Distinguished Panel” who will evaluate all the proposals and decide which business will be the most attractive and profitable for their investment.