Columbia Spotlight

We are so fortunate to be part of a community that is so inclusive. We still need to support our students and commemorate this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. You can read more about the Transgender Day of Remembrance below, and find out how you can show support for the community on this day. Tolerance.Org :  This week, as you celebrate the diverse experiences of the transgender community, use these resources to advocate for trans students and fellow educators, whether you’re teaching in person or remotely Gay-Straight Alliance Resources American Psychological Association From GLAAD : Additionally, the week before TDOR, people and organizations around the country participate in  Transgender Awareness Week  to help raise visibility for transgender people and address issues the community faces. What is Transgen...

A great resource for today's hybrid world is PBS Learning Media , an online platform that provides teachers with FREE standards-based lessons and interactives that feature curated PBS videos. You can access the materials by subject, grade-level, or by specific topic.  My daughter is a 9th grader and I was speaking with her English teacher the other day about the Crucible , the next reading they have. When we were talking about Arthur Miller’s classic play, I mentioned how much I loved a PBS American Masters episode called " None Without Sin ," an incredible documentary that illustrated how the Crucible was just one masterwork in a decade-long artistic tug-of-war between two former friends -- Miller and Elia Kazan. The (in)famous director, Kazan used On the Waterfront to rebut the Crucible, so Miller then countered that film with his next play, A View from the Bridge . (As you can imagine, it is a great film!) Anyway, if you wanted to access some of the footage from t...

The New Jersey State Bar Foundation has great, FREE educational resources including my favorite, Respect , a free seasonal newsletter that examines inclusion in constitutional law. (Their last issue focused on the 19th Amendment.) One of our teachers attended the workshop below and she shared this:  This is an  updated link  to the NJSBF workbook and they also helped with this product,  Slavery in New Jersey . The NJSBF is now releasing its new program, Breaking Bias: Lessons from the Amistad ! Read more about their first virtual curriculum below from this press release: New Jersey’s Amistad law was passed in 2002 and requires African American history to be taught as an integral part of American history throughout the school year, not just during Black History Month. The law takes its title from  La Amistad , a ship where 53 enslaved people revolted against the ship’s captain and crew in 1839. The new  Breaking Bias: Lessons from the Amistad  curricul...

Who wasn't a bit upset this past weekend when news broke that Jeopardy host Alex Trebek passed away?   That's why I wanted to share these Jeopardy-style games that you can use in your physical or online classroom. They come from Ricard Byrne, the technology expert whose blog,  FreeTech4Teachers.com , is a must! Thanks, Mr. Byrne for the tip and, most of all, THANK YOU, Mr. Trebek for all of those entertaining years of service! Flippity Quiz Show Flippity.net  is my go-to resource whenever I want to make something interesting with Google Sheets. One of the oldest templates on the site is Quiz Show template that generates a Jeopardy board. You can use the template to create games to for individual or team play. You can see a  demo of Flippity's quiz show template here  and  watch a video of how to use it here . Factile Factile  is a site that has been around for a while. I started using it years ago when it was still called Jeopardy Rocks (it turns out t...

Thank you Edsurge for this great blog post . Basically, it explores a wonderful idea: What if high school and college students learned how to understand and critique public policy in their math classes? According to Pamela Burdman, executive director of the nonprofit Just Equations, t hat’s one of the benefits of incorporating more lessons about statistics and data science into curricula. That shift, she argues, would make math education more relevant to students’ lives. Over a decade ago, I learned about a pioneering course at Cabrillo College in California. In it, students collected survey data in their neighborhoods on issues such as youth gangs or discrimination against immigrants, learned statistical methods to analyze that data, and presented their findings to their local community. This social justice approach struck me as an effective and relevant way to teach mathematical concepts. The only problem? The community college’s math department didn’t consider it a math course. ...

Earlier this year Epic Games , the company behind Fortnite, invited secondary school teachers to submit lesson plans that utilize interactive 3D technology to engage their students for a chance to win cash prizes up to $25,000.  The goal is to have educators around the world to use their interactive, real-time tools to teach core subjects like history, science, math, art, social studies, and game design in secondary education classrooms. According to Epic, "Interactive 3D is reshaping visual communication by helping us solve problems and tell stories in an entirely new way. Bring this real-time technology to your core classroom subjects with free lesson plans for Unreal Engine, Twinmotion, and Fortnite Creative." Here are some of the ones that some teachers designed . More will be added later in the year as well! Again click HERE for all of the lessons!