Course+Evaluation

Feel free to include your evaluations of the course below: Karin Drowne Election Discussion Group

As a teacher of World History and Psychology, I don’t get a whole lot of opportunities to delve head-first into an upcoming election. This was one of the main motivations: to become more informed on the campaigning of the republican candidates. As a democrat, I normally don’t get invested at all in elections where the democrat is an incumbent – I voted for Obama and I will again – who cares who the republican candidates are. This election is pretty contentious and in a difficult time in our nation’s history – economic recession, international instability, etc. My expectations were certainly met – I enjoyed hearing about the issues and my colleagues stance on them, looking at all the different candidates and their strengths and weaknesses. I felt much more informed on the nominations, more so than every other years. We all have varying perspectives, and I find the older I get, the more my leanings change as my life changes. In a lot of ways, I am becoming more conservative, leaning more to the right on some issues, and others I become more left. It’s an interesting perspective.

If we have a chance to do this for another election, I do think the circumstances could be different. I think we do have to be careful about keeping the conversations about stimulating dialogue, not about trying to convince people of the righteousness of our own opinions. Once and awhile, the discussions get a little heated and contentious, and it becomes an uncomfortable situation. I hope that we can lay better ground rules about how the discussions will go and keeping the talks about creating dialogue, sharing knowledge, and looking at all different perspectives. Particularly as Social Studies teacher, we need to hold ourselves to a high standard and learn how to listen and be respectful.

Maura Champigny Social Studies Election Study Group – 2012

I was excited and intrigued at the concept of a professional development opportunity within the school day and utilizing the expertise and knowledge of our own department members. For me, this has been a terrific experience. Probably the greatest single factor is the fact that we met in small groups during our lunch periods and I was lucky and fortunate enough to have lunch with not only super people, but some really insightful political minds that helped me to see issues in a variety of ways. We benefited from the fact that not everyone in the lunch group “leans the same way” in terms of values and beliefs and that provided for rich, diverse, and even heated discussion at times! We were exposed to new and effective technology (the Social Studies “wiki” page) which many of us are now interested in using in the future. I can’t even list the number of times I went from our lunch discussion to my next class and continued the conversation with my students, bringing the questions and issues I had previously discussed with my colleagues and getting the perspective of my sophomores and juniors. Students were actually impressed to hear that the teachers really discussed these issues during our “free” time.

I am looking forward to the chance to do this again in the fall. It was fruitful in terms of content and curriculum, and it also contributed to even deeper collegiality between department members. I would like to see us pursue the technology aspect in terms of expanding or adding to the wiki resourse, and it would be great if somehow we could find a way to meet as a full group at least once to come together and share things that the smaller groups have discussed. Overall I think the format is fantastic and I am very appreciative to Patrick and Pam for taking the lead with this first group and doing so much behind the scenes work to make it so successful.

Bruce Oetinger

Social Studies Election Study Group 2012

In both the courses that I teach – US History II and Sociology, having a clear understanding of the political issues is critical. In US II, is allows for the students to have an ongoing understanding of what is happening in area that few pay a great deal attention to. Yet, when material from the study group was presented to them in class discussions- their interest was there and I think it helped for some to become more enthusiastic about the present election cycle. By having the group made up of so many of us – with varied views and access to materials, it gave an opportunity to use materials that I might not have has access to and it helped to give a more balanced overview based on the discussions from the study group..

For my Sociology class it played an active role in several of the assignments. The students write weekly papers on the important social issues of the day and the ideas provided from the group as well as articles, quizzes and maps provided the prompt for the assignments. The following discussions showed that these students understood the relevance and necessity of participating in the electoral process and are more likely on the path to active citizenship. As I usually use a standard prompt, the study group energized me to add from the richness of the material provided.

I would very much like to continue to participate in a future program like this. It was time well spent. I enjoyed hearing the viewpoints of my colleagues and the different perspectives that they took on the issues and personalities involved. The complexity of the process often leads to questions that need a fresh look and this offered an opportunity to be exposed to this as well as the varied backgrounds of the participants of the group.