The aim of this three week long exploratory unit is for students to stop focusing on the digital world that they know so well and begin to focus on themselves and their own feelings. This unit focuses on the power of choice and ownership for young children in what is typically a very structured school day. They will learn how to express themselves through different styles of poetry. These different poems will be explored online and then discussed. My students will then get the opportunity to create poems themselves. They will be given the option to work concretely or digitally on their poems; even given the option to make a hard copy and a digital copy of the same poem. Finally, at the end of the unit the students will be able to present their work as a reflection of their authentic selves and not a “persona” they are trying to create. They will share this work to a specific audience rather than posting for anyone to see to reiterate the importance of privacy and safety in a digital world.

When teaching Shakespeare, we add to the modern problem of social media distraction the mission to convince students to not only read text, but to read something 400 hundred years old and in verse! So why not allow both worlds to meet? In this curricular unit, young learners are given the opportunity to explore their own world of modern communication while simultaneously analyzing the Bard, comparing the lines of Hamlet to how they communicate with each other. Students will explore and analyze Hamlet’s many lines, whether they are meant as private meditations or public barbs, and translate that to modern modes of communication. Would Hamlet have used a public Tweet or a private “direct” message for any given sentiment? Who would he want to hear him ponder whether “to be or not to be,” and how would that look on social media? Through exploration of key, succinct lines in the play that would hold up well in today’s world of headlines, texting and Tweeting, students will delve into the character of Hamlet, his relationships with other key characters, and how words themselves – modern or centuries-old – can have a deep impact upon us, even in brief.

Storytelling is the oldest form of transmitting knowledge. Students in the 21st century need to be able to analyze and interpret stories in film as well as written text. In this unit students will analyze and compare four texts which contain embedded stories and magical realism, two narrative structures that can trouble readers but offer extraordinary riches. The central novel of the unit is the award-winning Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond which alludes to the fairy tale The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, a complex story that is actually taken up at the start of the unit. Kit’s Wilderness draws on the healing power of stories interwoven with topics of geology and dementia. The central film of the unit is The Secret of Roan Inish by John Sayles. A masterful work, it will provide a forum for analyzing cinematography as well as storytelling. Students can compare the use of magical realism and embedded stories in the novel and the film.

Students will then create their own stories, framing a fairy tale within it. They will also choose a novel and compare it to its adaptation.

History is a challenging subject to impart to students, especially 7 and 8 year olds. As with all subjects, showing a connection to their daily lives ensures its relevance and an enduring understanding. Students have some sense of their basic rights, but they do not know how these rights came to be and how they differ for noncitizens and those outside the United States.

The aim of this unit is to teach students how our constitutional rights evolved and why they are salient today. It’s divided into sections to ensure this complex topic can be presented at an elementary level. It will provide the students with an overview of the Constitution of the United States with a focus on the rights and privileges of citizens that will be most intuitive to children (1 st , 13 th , 14 th ,15 th , and 19 th ). Activities include producing a narrative writing, a research booklet, a dialogical notebook, and a take-action choice piece with an eye to promoting critical thinking about historical change. Upon completion, students will have a better understanding of their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and how they can contribute to the betterment of this country.

Middle school students are naturally fascinated by the world of forensic science, crime scene investigation, law, and criminal justice. This curriculum unit is designed to spark their interests and provide meaningful real-world connections to the standards they are learning in general science, with a particular focus on the application of properties of matter to the field of forensic science. Forensic science is based upon the recognition, identification, and evaluation of physical evidence, so it is the perfect theme for engaging students in the content of properties of matter. Students will develop a strong understanding of how physical and chemical properties can be used to identify crime scene evidence, as well as separate and analyze the components of mixtures. Furthermore, they will begin to develop their knowledge of atoms, elements, and compounds. This unit is packed with hands-on activities that allow students to: explore matter using scientific tools and techniques, apply the scientific method to new questions, use creative thinking and problem-solving skills to analyze crime scenes, and create arguments that are supported by evidence. Students will know from day one why it matters to understand matter!

Through this unit, 7th grade students will use the engineering design thinking process to create a prototype for a solution to an injury to the integumentary system. Students will begin by learning about healthy, functional skin and then learn about two major injuries to skin: burns and skin cancer. Following their research on healthy and injured skin, students will walk through the steps of the design process to create a prototype of a solution to the problem. At the end of the unit, students will present their work and findings. This unit was designed for 7th graders but can be adapted for students in 6th through 12th grade.

The unit is framed around the engineering design process to intentionally bring an interactive approach to learning which emphasizes the importance of the process to finding answers to problems, rather than simply the outcome. At the middle school stage of their academic career, many students are often simply asking questions to directly learn the answers, rather than valuing the process of discovering the solution. Through this unit, students will become equipped with problem-solving skills that will shape their thinking in and outside of the classroom. This unit is designed with hopes of engaging students in a new way of thinking by pushing creativity, inquiry, and inspiring students to value the process of discovering solutions.

This unit, designed for a Constitutional Law elective, but applicable to U.S. History/Civics courses too, will introduce students to the basic framework of Critical Race Theory and the need to disrupt the perceived neutrality of the law, while also interrogating the notion of colorblindness. Students will study the history of housing and school segregation in the U.S. They will examine the role the federal government played in purposefully creating and perpetuating housing segregation throughout the first half of the 20th century. They will have the opportunity to explore interesting primary sources, such as original HOLC Residential Security maps, which helped to create the basis for redlining. Students will also draw connections between housing segregation and school segregation, analyzing their reciprocal nature. Additionally, they will investigate the history of desegregation and resegregation of American public schools. Throughout the unit, they will look at the role the Supreme Court played and evaluate the extent to which the court worked to dismantle versus uphold segregation. Lastly, students will brainstorm, research and discuss ways to address persistent segregation today. In addition to useful resources, the unit provides tools and guidance for dissecting Supreme Court cases, implementing a student-led seminar and more.

This curriculum unit investigates self-identity, social-identity and the historical conditions that give rise to both. Using Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man students will examine the relationship between racism, exploitation and identity formation. Throughout the unit, students will use close reading techniques to develop an analysis of the nameless protagonist. Additionally, students will study the political figures and historical moments that are reflected in the Invisible Man’s identity. This unit addresses strategies for providing “non-traditional” AP Literature and Composition students an entry point into AP curriculum. At the culmination of the unit, students will write a literary analysis of the novel.

Too many of our teenagers were not read to when they were little and therefore have no nostalgic attachment to nor any interest in reading now. Simply telling them that reading is important to their success will not help these students form the socio-emotional connections to literature they did not make when they were younger. We have to give them the skills to make comprehension and complex literary analysis more gratifying than the mindless consumption of whatever easy entertainment their televisions and computers offer. If we can get them to need stories, and poems, and essays in the same way they seem to need the applications on their cell phones, then we can restore what was lost to the distractions, shortcomings, and traumas of their less than perfect childhoods. To do so, we must make reading feel fun and meaningful again (or for the first time) – rather than something that tortures our students and exposes their ignorance. This unit offers a multicultural exploration of the classic folktale “Little Red Riding Hood” as a path toward nurturing the bonds that literature creates between people and communities, giving us a sense of security, belonging, and purpose.

I decided to take this seminar because in my career as a literature teacher, neither myself, nor my students, have ever felt collective joy engaging with narrative writing. My students have experienced an entire spectrum of emotion engaging with family, school, work, and all other institutions of society, yet when it comes down to choosing what to write, and actually writing, there comes an immense emotional and cognitive struggle in both brainstorming and production. I have students who participate in youth groups, volunteer work, are life-long athletes, commute to school every day at 5 am, yet choose to write about the stress and eventual success of math class. I have students who have participated in organized protests, work near full time jobs, and experience moments of existential and cultural realizations simply by engaging in conversation at dinner, yet choose to write about overcoming procrastination. I’ve sought out and attended professional development, asked advice not only locally, but all over the country, and have done extensive research in finding a solution to no avail. The vast majority of training, practices and advice I found approaches narrative writing as stagnant, and therefore, were ultimately just different approaches leading to the replicated result of forced-structured, inauthentic writing, that sounds like an individual different from my students.

What I haven’t done, despite it being so clear, and what I’m sure I’ve unconsciously avoided, is approach revising my practice while analyzing through a lens of race, power and identity. Teaching students writing techniques and how to use them correctly has never been a struggle. The struggle is widespread silence, and exclamations of “I don’t know what to write” and “I have nothing interesting to write about.” The struggle is grading and providing feedback to stories involving death, trauma, and raw human emotion, in no commas, periods, or sentences. I am not only looking to make small adjustments for temporary moments of success, I am seeking sustainable transformation--and my experience learning this seminar is a start. In my research, I have learned history, language, and patterns that speak to the tension I am describing in not only narrative writing, but education at large. Through an exploration of anti-racist theory, I have learned new ways to think, frame and ultimately approach teaching the personal narrative. Through researching the work of experienced, and critically conscious educators, I have found many resources, and also, outlined an approach I have never attempted. Moving forward, I will curate big-picture factors and history leading to the dominant practices in my classroom, and also, give perspective on the fallacy of these practices. I will then curate the teaching methods to counter the dominant approaches aiming for a more unifying, reflective, rich, complex and anti-racist- approach in preparing for and teaching students to write a personal narrative.

If words are creativity, then they are art. This is where the discipline of creative writing comes in, as well as that of screenwriting and therefore film-making. The two forms of media, while wholly different, are inextricably linked by that foundational, historic art form – storytelling. In a modern educational landscape where screen is preferred to page, it may be advantageous to stress the importance of both. There are lessons we can get from reading words that no screen will show us; as there are artistic things that can be done with images that could never be accomplished on the page. It is imperative, therefore, to make it clear for students that it is not better to see the movie, but to see the movie too . The simultaneous study of original, written story and its film adaptation can be a powerful learning tool, especially when the film in question is a vast re-imagining, paying concrete due to the original classic story while updating it for the modern imagination and culture. This curricular unit explores this consideration for several classic stories and their modern, reimagined film counterparts, with the intention of allowing students to apply their study of adaptation to their own independent reading.

This unit grew out of a desire to make research in my English classroom more actionable. Every year sophomore students at our local urban magnet high school participate in a year long Social Justice Project of their choice. At the beginning of this year, when I asked my students to define social justice I received a variety of honest answers. One sophomore identified social justice as a negative term, a concept people claim to achieve in posturing but fail in action. Some students struggled to identify the impact of social justice in their communities, stating that the issues such as racism and gun violence were real, but they were unfamiliar with any leaders in their communities who were actively seeking to change things for the better.

While performing research on social justice issues, I noticed that students felt the compulsory need to use formal procedures to verify knowledge. When one student leaned deeply into conducting interviews with rappers in the community to learn about representation in the industry, he at first mentioned that he didn’t feel as though he was completing “real research”. In fact, as his classmates dug through databases constantly reframing their search terms to stretch for new information, they looked at him questionably and doubted the validity of his project. Individuals in the class also felt tension from learning objectives that required students to research multiple perspectives. To achieve this objective, students researching topics such as police brutality were asked to research a perspective that dehumanized and challenged their and their community’s lived experiences.

While the objectives of the original social justice research unit were well intentioned, they fell short in delivering on the most important aspects of social justice: the need for specific and localized action and a disruption of a colorblind ideology in research methods. The following unit seeks to identify and disrupt dominant narratives in social justice education and research. More importantly, the unit seeks to provide counter practices that make the ideals of social justice actionable by incorporating the methods of researchers from Latinx and Indigenous communities and tools for holding space for education through community discussion.

Using a primarily “quasi-bibliotherapeutic” approach, this curriculum unit seeks to afford adolescent middle school students an opportunity to discover and identify with characters, situations and/or literary elements within a narrative framework. By using narrative text, this writer seeks to provide an opportunity for students to discover and critically deliberate the concept of identity and its development. The term “quasi-bibliotherapeutic” is used to insinuate a connection with the reading of literature, generation of self-knowledge, and the crafting of an individual’s own identity narrative. It is not meant to imply that by reading the various texts contained herein a guide to self-discovery has been provided or such renderings will be therapeutic. This unit serves as an exploratory vehicle for the engagement of meaningful and thought provoking conversation with and between students. This unit should also provide fodder for student reflection on the concept of their identity as individuals and their placement within society. This unit may be used to supplement or enrich an existing middle school English language arts or literature curriculum.

Within this unit, I will take a three level design that is planned to make these courses more relevant to students and promote questions that interrogate the authority of statistics that students will encounter throughout the course and in their lives.

The skill of interrogating statistics is crucial for all adults in our society to become thinking consumers and users of data. In addition, it is important to deconstruct data to see implicit ideas of domination and subjugation that travel through numbers that can appear nuetral. Statistics shares a creation story with the field of Eugenics. Francis Galton, a mathematician who contributed many of the major ideas to statistics was also one of the originators of eugenics. The influence of eugenic thinking in statistics drives a notion of superiority, fitness and ranking alongside measurements. Milton Reynolds describes this in Shifting Frames:,” The term “eugenics” refers to a scientifically based, ideological movement dedicated to the reiification of race. It is the wellspring of scientific theories used to construct taxonomies of difference within the human family and to legitimize the subjugation of different groups.”.1 Statistics often does the work of justifying this subjugation through its “innocent” and authoritative work as a logical system. These embedded assumptions of superiority are validated by the seeming neutrality of mathematical calculations. The “taxonomies of difference” he describes are invalid and biased assumptions about difference that dominate our interpretations of data, however they appear as factual products legitimized by math.

We will be studying Macbeth and how the Visual Arts teacher can help enhance a student’s learning experience. The graphic novel form can help students interpret plot, character, and theme through its unique lens. This paper will examine both the purpose and the specifics of having students create their own graphic novel panels using Photoshop and Wacom (electronic drawing) tablets. One area of focus will be inclusion of detail. Deciding what to leave out is just as important as deciding what to leave in. Sometimes the reader’s imagination can conjure up an image that is far more powerful than any image an illustrator can create. Students will also closely consider the importance of visual clues to the reader, asking key questions as they proceed. For example, how will a sense of mood and atmosphere be conveyed? The same scene with different shading and or use of lighting can appear dramatically different. Character expressions are another consideration: How will the scene convey emotions?

Students will complete the unit – Four Scenes from Macbeth – having improved their skills in both literary interpretation and artistic technique.

Our bodies are finely-calibrated, organic machines that are capable of dealing with the fluctuations of our internal systems in response to stimuli. We are able to regulate these changes through feedback loops in order to maintain the self in a prime ‘operating condition’ known as homeostasis. While deviations from homeostasis may occur, the body has processes in place to eventually return to normal. Long term or highly disruptive deviation, to the point where the body’s natural feedback loops are insufficient at correcting the error, is an indicator of something abnormal at work—be it parasite, virus, or organ malfunction.

The Earth also displays similar mechanisms of homeostasis—complex feedback loops that allow it to regulate temperature, gas concentrations, and pH. Normally, small fluctuations are regulated within the system. Negative feedback loops maintain balance through chemical processes like the sink and release of carbon gases. However, as excessive fossil fuel combustion tips the scales, it is likely that we are moving further away from the point where these feedback loops are enough to return the carbon cycle to balance.

We can see symptoms of this deviation in alteration of the climate, increased warming, and the thawing of glaciers and permafrost. The study of these indicators allow us to monitor the disease and provide insight into the underlying cause. The feedback loops found in the carbon cycle are unable to rectify the anthropogenic carbon output post Industrial revolution, leading to some alarming trends. The greater the divergence from normal the greater the impact these indicators have on the system of the planet until, like the human body, there is irreparable harm to the system.

Is this warming a fever-- a planetary self-preservation system precipitated by the intemperate combustion of fossil fuels-- that aims to overcorrect the problem before returning to homeostasis in the geological timeline? How does a ‘sick’ planet impact our own health? This unit addresses the consequence of anthropogenic carbon sourced global warming on the planetary system and human physiology.

The Solutions based on Biomimicry for Personalized Health unit will allow high school students in the Biology or Health field to develop the skills needed to assess and design solutions to worldwide healthcare issues. The next generation science standards (NGSS) are used as a basis for the development of this unit and will be woven throughout the unit to allow practice and implementation of the standards. The question formulation technique engages the students with both local and world-wide problems in healthcare. Once the problems have been defined, students will begin to design possible solutions. Biomimicry, biotechnology and engineering will be applied to the possible solutions. This will allow for students to develop various routes in personalized medicine to a viable healthcare solution. The feedback and refinement process gives students the chance to test the sustainability of their design against economic, technological and other constraints. Students will create a computer simulation and prototype to develop the healthcare solution. Once the redesign process has been completed the students will research how to pitch their new engineering healthcare solution. The format will be similar to ‘Shark Tank’ and validators will have the opportunity to question the students on their innovation as well as decide whether they are interested in investing. Overall, the unit is a comprehensive personalized health unit that includes all science and engineering practices and the engineering performance expectations.

This unit is a multidisciplinary unit created for a high school math classroom, designed to combine statistics and hydrology. In this unit, students will learn about the water cycle and water budgets within the watershed. The unit starts with learning about basic budgeting in a watershed, comparable to financial budgeting, and expands to creating linear regressions based on the relationship between precipitation, discharge, and evapotranspiration in a watershed system. Students will be able to synthesize the information they learn about the watershed to learn about topics such as graphing points, lines, creating scatterplots, and creating linear regressions for the line of best fit. By teaching statistics through the lens of the watershed, the primary objective is to facilitate active, engaged learners who understand how math can be usefully applied to various contexts in the world around us while gaining a deeper appreciation for the water resources on Earth.

This was designed for a Geometry classroom, but could be modified for Pre-Algebra- Statistics based on student needs and interest level.

This unit is designed to help second grade level students develop an understanding of the effects of weathering and erosion caused by water, specifically the creation of identifiable landforms. Students will explore and test the creation of a variety of landforms using both a community stream table and personal stream tables. Students will be able to conduct a series of investigations related to water erosion. This unit focuses on these specific landforms: braided channel, canyon, cliff, delta, meandering stream, oxbow lake, and valley. Students will also use Google Earth to explore the location of these types of landforms both locally and globally.

The quotation in the title of this unit is from the speech where Hamlet concludes that the only way for him to reveal something unspeakable is through the art of theater. This unit proposes that students, too, can discover the ineffable life lessons in Shakespeare by taking on the role of director: the one who sees things from above, who incarnates the setting and the actors, and the one who needs to understand the complex human problems Shakespeare’s characters face. In this unit, students will provide stage directions that Shakespeare never wrote. The words are guidelines for what characters experience, but “the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report” what exactly it is that motivates characters to love, to hate, to commit suicide or indeed, to forgive each other. But the director will. Students will analyze characters, describe how particular lines should be delivered, and justify how staging, props and costumes might portray what words scripted by themselves do not. By doing so, students will understand the human motive and heartbeat beneath the iambic pentameter rhythms of Shakespeare.