Period 1: World War I, Day 1 - Class Recap

We talked a bit about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, since we had the day off from school on Monday to honor and remember him. I took this picture of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC on October 1, 2011.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for a great first class with me as your teacher! It was really fun for me to be back doing my dream job. I hope you didn't mind all the talking at the start. It was necessary to be clear about what class will look like with me as your teacher. Read on, for the recap!

Essential Question: "Why does war happen?" - Essential questions are very broad (they do not have yes or no answers) ways of looking at content. I might eventually have you write an essay, do a speech, make a presentation, or something along those lines, with the essential question for a unit. It will always be highlighted during my opening remarks.

Soundtrack: "Changes" by 2Pac. I will always have some sort of relevant music playing before class starts - for many reasons. I always start new classes with this song, because my classroom should be a little different than what you've had in the past, but some things never change. Lyrics here.

Agenda 1/23/13:
Introduction/Attendance
Create Ground Rules
The Blog/News Brief
Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint
Murder of the Archduke
Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Homework: Check the blog and post a comment! If you have not done this, go to the bottom of this post and click on "comments" to post yours. Please remember to use your name, so I can give you credit!
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Introduction/Attendance: As it sounds, I introduced how I like to start my classes - with the essential question, soundtrack, agenda, and homework all up on the board. Again, it might take me a bit to learn all of your names - hopefully I am able to by the end of finals next week! Thank you for sitting where you were supposed to be and allowing attendance to go smoothly. The faster I learn your names, the faster we get rid of the seating chart!

Create Ground Rules: I'm glad we were able to eventually figure this out. Here's what your class agreed on as ground rules. I will hold you to these, both in class and on the blog! You will see them on the upper right hand corner of the blog at all times.

Your Period 1 Ground Rules:

- Be Respectful

- Be Prepared
- Have an Open Mind

- Have a Positive Attitude
- 110% Effort (Try!)

The Blog: After making the ground rules, I introduced everyone to this website! Possibly the one time I will allow everyone to have your cell phones/iPods out. Thank you for bookmarking this page - I hope it will be useful for you in the future!

News Brief: I talked about how I like to start each class, with a "current event" section. No worries, though - this involves no writing on your part. Simply find a news article about something that has recently happened outside of the United States, read it, bring it in, and talk about it for maybe 30 seconds. Then I will try and add to it and we will all find the location of the country in the article on the world map. My example from today was this article: CNN.com - For Israeli voters, missile fire, money main issues in Tuesday election. So, I talked a little bit about the election in Israel, the ongoing conflict there, and I had you find the country on your map and highlight it. Not so bad, right? We will begin each class with a current events type focus. Because Global Studies is not just ancient history - it is what is happening right now, especially as the present has been influenced by the past.

After nobody volunteered, Rachael Colwell was randomly assigned to start us off next class with a news brief. Please remember to print out (or send me a link, if you don't have a printer) a news article about something outside the United States for next class. :-)

Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint: I went over the definition of "ominous" and used the example of music in a scary movie: you know something bad is about to happen. The rest of the PowerPoint was about the M.A.I.N. causes of World War I. The class took notes on each slide - which will come in handy at the end of this unit. Please review the presentation if you missed class, or did not have enough time to finish up your notes:

Google Docs - World War I: Ominous Beginnings PowerPoint

Thank you so much for your focus during this part of class! You all seemed to really be getting what I was talking about, which is great to see.

Murder of the Archduke: I passed this document around, and read it aloud to the class - Borijove Jevtic: The Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, 28 June 1914. This is the story of how World War I started. I had the class predict in writing what would happen next (especially with all the various different alliances). It is such an important event in history - all set up by the MAIN causes of World War I.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Since we had Monday off for a social studies reason, I felt like it was very important for us to talk about why that was. We discussed who Martin Luther King Jr. was and what he was fighting for. Many of you asked if we were going to watch the famous "I Have A Dream" speech. We did not, but you can find it here: YouTube - Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech - August 28th, 1965.

The speech (or at least, part of the speech) that we watched in class was this one - his last speech before being assassinated. His words here make it sound like he knew exactly what was happening:

Martin Luther King Jr. was once called "the most dangerous man in America" by the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover - who thought he was a communist for being against the war in Vietnam. There is much more to MLK than what most people commonly think of - you could spend an entire unit on him in American Studies or AP US History next year.

Thank you again for a great first day! I'm looking forward to Friday. Please leave a comment so I know that you came and did your homework!

Period 1: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 5 - Class Recap

An Air India 747-400 at Newark on Sunday. If not for Gandhi, it is possible that Air India would not even exist today!
Good afternoon colleagues,

We are really getting down there to the end of the year! I think today went fairly well, though I must say that I am probably going to have to rethink what we are doing with the paper because many of you were not prepared with sources or notes. Next class, please come prepared with your homework, and we will talk one on one about how everything is going.

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? How did the concept of nonviolence develop and become implemented?

Soundtrack: "Bomb the World" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. The lyrics, which I showed on the projector and read aloud in class because I thought that they were really interesting, can be found here. This song was suggested to me by Ms. V'Marie. I played it today because of the nuclear bomb test in North Korea, which we talked about in the News Brief section.

AGENDA 5/27/09:
News Brief - Exploding Nuclear Bomb (and Possible War) Edition
MLK and Gandhi
Paragraphs and Citing Sources
Rubric and Work

Homework: Notes #4 due (all other sources as well) and completed bibliography to be checked off. Read the blog and ask questions if needed!

Seriously, if you are having any questions or problems with this paper and the research, or how to do the bibliography, please ask away! I will be available on here in the comments, by e-mail, or in person!

News Brief: At the start of class, I went over the essential questions, soundtrack, agenda, and homework, then asked the class about what they did for the long Memorial Day weekend! Andrew talked about playing soccer in Florida, Jazmyne mentioned the packing up process for her, and I talked about how I was super sick over the weekend in Princeton. Still, good to have the rest!

After some good conversation here, we went on to talk about the enormous news of the weekend. I found it absolutely incredible that in both of my Global Studies classes yesterday, nobody had heard that North Korea had detonated a nuclear bomb as a test over the weekend. North Korea has also said that it will not continue to agree to the peace deal "armistice" that it signed with South Korea in 1953. Bad times. You can read all about that on really any news site. CNN.com has a special section dedicated to it, which you can find here: CNN.com - News & Videos about North Korea.

Finally, I mentioned that President Obama had selected Sonia Sotomayor to be on the Supreme Court. She has to be confirmed by the Senate now, but seems likely to be the first Hispanic (her parents were born in Puerto Rico) on the court, as well as the third woman. This is another HUGE deal, that is all over the news. Her biography can be found here: CNN.com - Who is Sonia Sotomayor?.

Brandon mentioned that there was a cyclone in Bangladesh. You can read all about that here: WashingtonPost.com - Millions displaced by cyclone in India, Bangladesh.

For the news brief section, Russel brought in these two articles: CNN.com - Pakistan: Trio held after deadly blast kills 24 and CNN.com - From Madoff to Sully, news events inspire video games. Two interesting stories (the first one being the obvious Global Studies connection)! There certainly is a lot of conflict in the world! How have various peoples responded? :-)

Zack T. volunteered to bring in a news article for Friday. Thanks!

MLK and Gandhi: I actually think this went well, though I was a little worried before class about how it would all work out. First, I had you get out your Civil Rights notes and think again about Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy. Then, we watched this video:


We talked about how there were aspects of his philosophy in that short video. I then handed out this article to read together: SFGate.com - Gandhi's Influence on King.

Finally, to complete the media section here, I played this video of MLK talking about Gandhi:


After all of that, we came back together and tried to identify aspects of philosophy that Martin Luther King Jr. said that he borrowed from Gandhi, while I had everyone write on the board one thing they knew about Gandhi.

This was a really productive and interesting conversation, thanks!

Paragraphs and Citing Sources: For this part of class, I had you get into base groups to talk about how things are going with the historical investigation, while Mrs. DeFrance and I went around to check off the sources that you brought in. After that, we talked about how to write a body paragraph in Social Studies, with an Introductory Statement, a Concrete Detail, another Concrete Detail, a Commentary, and a Concluding Statement. Mrs. DeFrance talked about her own investigation and body paragraph, which she did as an example on global warming.

We also talked about citing sources inside the text (for about 2 minutes, before having to do the lock down drill). Basically, my point here was that if you have the author of the article (or book) that you are working with, when you are writing your paper you need to cite them inside your paper to give them credit when you quote them or use facts from their work. For instance.

"Westview is the coolest school ever." (Fritz, 3) - In this case, I am citing myself! Remember that it goes (Author, page number). If you do not have the author of the article, it needs to be ("Title of Article"). If you do not have the page number, do not put anything in. I will try to explain this more next class.

Rubric and Work: I was able to hand out the rubric as you left the class after the drill, but we will come back to this. Read it, please!
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I am excited for the Lakers-Nuggets game tonight (6:00, ESPN)! Other than that, I have about a million things to get done, so I will be hard at work trying to accomplish them all. I hope that you are doing the same! See you on Friday!

Period 1: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 3 - Class Recap

One of the photos that we talked about today in class. The African-American girl in the photo is Elizabeth Eckford, of the so called "Little Rock Nine." You can read a really fascinating account of her life here: Vanity Fair - Through a Lens, Darkly.
Hello and welcome to another class recap!

Generally, I liked how today went. I enjoy the fact that I can trust you guys with a completely random (for the most part) seating chart! I really liked what we did with the pictures of the civil rights movement. I am not sure how clear the talk about the bibliography and your research question for your final paper was, so I am thinking that we will devote most of the class on Thursday to writing notes about your sources and continuing to write the paper.

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?

Soundtrack: "Amazing" by Kanye West. Lyrics here. Selected because I keep hearing it for the NBA playoffs commercials, and because you guys are amazing. :-)

AGENDA 5/19/09:
News Brief
Recap and Gallery Walk
Final Paper Bibliography
Research Questions

Homework: Have research question formulated for next class, begin work on writing paper! Read blog recap!

If anyone would like help with formulating a good question, please post a message in the comments with your topic (something that you are interested in studying), and I will try to make it work! Your fellow classmates can help with this too!

News Brief: I don't know about you, but the start of class seemed to drag on for me. This was partially because I had to pass back about 40 papers, and partially because it seemed like we did not have too much to talk about. Sure, there was the Los Angeles earthquake, President Obama speaking at Notre Dame University, and the swine flu cases nearing 10,000. There is definitely so much more going on though! Remember to keep paying attention to everything!

For the news brief, because nobody stepped up to the plate in the comments on the last blog, I brought in this article to talk about: CNN.com - Obama, Netanyahu discuss U.S.-Israeli disagreements.

We used this same article to talk about how to write a bibliography for a website later in class. Mainly, I wanted to point out that President Obama met yesterday with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to talk about exactly what we have covered in class! What should Israel do about the threat of Iran? Should there be a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Again, I try to make everything that we learn about relate to what is currently going on in the world!

So, if anyone would like to step up to do the news brief for next class, on Thursday, in the comments, I would much appreciate it. Thanks!

Recap and Gallery Walk: For this part of class, I asked everyone to get out your note sheets on civil rights and what Martin Luther King Jr. had to say about how to get them. I wrote a few ideas on the board that we talked about last class, using excerpts from MLK's speeches. Then, I had everyone go around the room and look at the pictures from the African-American fight for civil rights in the United States. I asked you to choose four, and write down how they were (or were not) visual representations of MLK's philosophy.

I thought the class discussion on these, using the ELMO to look at a few with everybody, was really fantastic. Look, those were pictures that were supposed to be pretty controversial and get a response out of you! It is no wonder that there was some great thoughts about how the pictures were possible representations of non-violent philosophy. Thanks for this!

Final Paper Bibliography: For this section of the class, I talked about how to create an easy bibliography, using the "cheat sheets" that were stapled in your folders. I used the aforementioned CNN article as an example. Remember, for your final paper, you need to have at least four different sources, and three of them have to be a newspaper article, magazine article, and a book. Wikipedia is NOT a source, but it does frequently link to sources at the bottom of each page!

Research Questions: Abe and I handed out a bright yellow sheet to help you with formulating a good research question. We brainstormed on the board the aspects of a great question, like: being specific, testable, interesting, and easy to follow. For the last 10 minutes or so, we worked in class on developing your questions. Again, please see me if you want any help with it! Begin researching and answering your question! This should be a fairly lengthy paper - about 3-4 pages by the time you are all done. We will continue to talk about great ways to take notes and accomplish all the other objectives for the paper, next class.
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Whew. That is a lot. I am guessing that a lot of it still does not make much sense, or is really stressful if it does. Let's continue working on this all together! Have a great rest of the day, and please make sure to stay in touch!

Period 1: Nonviolence and Gandhi, Day 2 - Class Recap

The Wordle for what everyone likes about the class. I was really glad to see that most everyone had a positive view of what we do! Thanks again for your thoughts here!
Welcome to your weekend!

First off, thank you for reading the blog. I guess it kind of hit me last night how much effort and time I really do have to devote to it. That was the first time I had really thought about calculating how many pages each recap must be. For the last one to be four pages, that means I have typed around 200 pages for your class alone! I know that is a TON of reading for you to do, but I truly believe that by reading, you will do better in class, and even more importantly, succeed in knowing more about the world. So thanks for checking it out, and thanks for the great class today! I was really happy with how everything went. :-)

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What are civil rights?

Soundtrack: "Get Up, Stand Up" by Bob Marley. Lyrics here. A fantastic song for thinking about civil rights! I am sad that Robert wasn't in class to hear it today - he has been wanting some Bob Marley for the soundtrack all year!

AGENDA 5/15/09:
News Brief
Debrief Class Reflections
Martin Luther King Jr.
Final Paper Note Taking

Homework: Bring sources (at least one more) for next class. Continue to work on research! Read blog recap!

I was really disappointed that we only had about 7 people actually bring in an article for the class today. It ended up being okay, because we did not have time to use them in class (that would have been the next step after Mrs. DeFrance's talk), but seriously, that was one of the easiest homework assignments ever: find something that you are interested in about the world, search Google News, print off an article. You didn't even really have to read it! Next class, I want everyone on the ball please.

News Brief: At the beginning of class, I went over the essential questions, soundtrack, agenda, and homework, then talked a little bit about my friend Ryan, who came in to visit the class, and his trip to Rwanda coming up! We are hoping that we can do some sort of webchat or something, to really tie everything together for the year! Super cool. Here is his post on Biking for Obama about it. Again, exactly what we are talking about in class, with connecting cultures through sports and other similarities!

I also pointed out that The Office season finale was amazing, that Mr. Hardin's Lakers lost (Game 7 on Sunday at 12:30 on ABC), and that the weather is amazing. After that, I started handing back your grades for the Israeli-Palestinian projects. Again, if you did not get something from me today, that means something is wrong and I need you to give me something else. Way too many "somethings" in that sentence. Anyway, please come see me!

A couple really interesting points from the class discussion during the news brief. Again, this section is only as good as you make it! It is your turn to bring up interesting things to talk about!

I have a couple of notes from this. One, was Aaron asked why the United States continues to fund other countries, even though our economy (like everyone else's) is terrible right now. I pointed out that our national debt (click on that link if you are at all interested in this - it is fascinating) is on the upswing again, as we have to borrow more and more money to pay for things. Further, I noted that China holds most of the debt that we owe to foreign governments. A really interesting article about the recent consequences of that in today's economy can be found here: Forbes.com - China's U.S. Debt Quandary.

I'm not sure who asked (it might have been Zack), but there was a question about which country in the world has the most debt. That's sort of a complicated question to answer, because it depends how you look at answering the question. Is the debt as a percentage of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product, which basically means ALL of goods and services within a country in a year)? If so, Zimbabwe is not looking too hot. Source: CIA World FactBook - Country Comparisons - Public Debt.

Along the same lines, this made me interested in how to calculate the richest countries in the world. Basically, don't start knocking on the United States, yet. Sources: Wikipedia - List of countries by GDP (PPP) and Wikipedia - List of countries by GDP (nominal).

A lot of mumbo jumbo that you almost certainly do not care about, but the basic gist of it all is this: The United States economy is over three times bigger/richer than the next biggest economy, which is Japan. You can see why when the U.S. has economic problems, the world does too, to a large extent.

Anyway, I know I am a huge nerd for getting into that stuff. Here's something that Abe was excited about bringing in to talk about: CNN.com - Myanmar democracy leader facing trial after American's swim. Honestly, this is a really amazing story. I'm not sure if you guys got all of what I was saying in class about it, so it is really worth a read! Wow, to think I would have had no clue at all about this if I had not been listening to OPB's "The World" on the way home from school yesterday, on 91.5 FM, from 3:00-4:00! Man, I love learning. :-)

I did not assign anyone for next class to do a news brief, so if you would like to bring something in for next Tuesday, please let me know in the comments. Otherwise, I guess I will just do it myself!

Debrief Class Reflections: As I think I said in class, I was up until about 12:30 AM doing this last night (and that wasn't even including the MLK stuff, which kept me up until 1:00). I was really glad to be able to do this, though, as it is always incredibly interesting!

If you missed what I said, or want to see all the answers again, here they are:

1) What do you like about this class? (What about the structure gets you excited to come in the morning?)

Easy, not strict, fun x 3, debates x 2, discussions x 4, news brief x 6, soundtrack x 8, something different, topics x 4, people x 10, community x 2, nothing (too freaking tired), Mr. Fritz (smile) x 5, no homework due (usually) x 2, atmosphere x 3, "wakes me up in the morning," energy x 3, learning x 2, relevance, understandable, "not going to Hardin’s class" and "Hardin is funnier, but overall I’d much rather be in this class," everything, essays, relaxed x 2, the Blazers, work, projects x 2, never boring, activities

2) What could the class improve on?

Being more involved (participation), nothing x 2, too cold, music too loud, turning in homework x 6, quietness x 6, tardiness x 2, "stop shouting random comments," respect x 3, attitude, explanation, community x 2, participate more on blog, nicer to Mr. Fritz, annoyingness, listening, "people starting side conversations" x 3, staying on topic x 2, less essays and papers, more group work

3) What do you like about Mr. Fritz as a teacher?

Not strict/lenient x 4, enthusiastic x 13, energy x 4, approachable x 3, potential, positive attitude x 2, optimistic x 2, lets us revise, effort, reaches out, different topics x 3, fun x 2, interesting, nice x 2, no tests, learn a lot, taste in music, effort on blog x 2, understanding x 2, relatable, manliness, cool x 2, plays basketball x 2 "like Michael Jordan," dedication, love, passionate x 2, awesome, "get us to care," motivated, "wants people to do good," ideas, creativity, minimal homework, "not a harsh grader," "makes learning better," activities, "always has something as a visual to explain what you're doing" movies x 2, "relaxed unless you need to get mad," calm, relaxed, helpful

4) What can Mr. Fritz improve on?

Too much time on one topic (news brief, Blazers), explanation x 8, student engagement, nothing x 10, strictness x 2, "not so many projects that make us get up in front of class," "get a job here," "punishing for late work, so people will do it," class outside x 2, quieting down the class x 2, enthusiasm, handwriting x 2, less strict, give more time on projects, not talk about uncomfortable topics (like rape), more movies, "I think you need to make the class respect you more. At times, it’s a little too 'buddy buddy' and we forget that you are our teacher. Which is good, but we still need to know you are our teacher." "talking maybe a little quieter," hands on activities, make homework worth more, keep on topic
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Thanks again for participating in this activity! I really think it is a great way to see how class is going.

Martin Luther King Jr.: For this section, I asked you to get out your notes on civil rights from last class. I then proceeded to hand out a sheet of excerpts from three different speeches, which can be found (along with many others) at MLK Online - Speeches.

The speeches that I quoted from were "Letter from Birmingham Jail," "Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech," and "I See the Promised Land." All incredibly powerful speeches, with some amazing context for when they were given! For instance, check out this excerpt from the end of the last speech he ever gave, "I See the Promised Land":



If that does not give you chills, I do not know what to tell you.

After reading through these excerpts, I asked the class (using volunteers and playing cards) to tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind what MLK was saying. How was he trying to get civil rights? I thought that this was an incredibly productive conversation to have (I took notes on the board and asked you to copy them down). It was a little shorter than I wanted, but that is the nature of things for the rest of the year, since we also have the following section to work on!

Final Paper Note Taking: Mrs. DeFrance had you write down your research topics on the board, and most of them looked absolutely great! I am excited to see what you guys come up with for them! Mrs. DeFrance and I explained the strategy that she really likes for taking notes, using her folder system. She asked me after class if this made sense when she was writing on the overhead, and I told her with 100% confidence that it did. It really is a great system and easy to use! We talked about using the three colored sheets in the folder. One is for a sentence/short thought, the second is for paragraphs and chunks, and the third is for the entire article.

Thanks for listening and being great note takers, during the note taking part of the lesson! Let me know if you were at all confused about this. Again, next class I want you to bring in sources to take notes on!
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Have a stupendous weekend! Enjoy the great weather! I know that I am ready for a rest. This week has been totaly exhausting. Only 4 days of school next week, and then I am flying off for the long weekend to New Jersey to see my brother at Princeton and help him pack up! Super excited for that. By the way, speaking of airplanes, I will be at the airport tonight working at UPS, seeing some friends (for possibly the last time, as the company I work for out there is losing the contract at the end of May - sad times!). Thus, I will not be able to post or respond to comments from about 4:00 to 10:00 tonight (Friday).

Thank you for being such amazing students. I was not lying when I said that you guys make all of the work worthwhile when I see you in the morning. Please work hard for me too! :-)

EDIT: Just checked, and without the picture and video, in Times New Roman size 12 font, this blog post is exactly four pages long. Whew!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School

Once again, I urge everyone to reflect upon this day: Do some community work or simply help out in whatever ways you can. Watch any number of the documentaries that will be airing on MLK (1 PM on the History Channel or anytime from 6 AM to 1 PM on CNN are just a couple). Think about the progress we have made, and where we should progress to as a society in the future. Even watch the Blazer game (7 PM CSN), as they usually do some interesting things with the day. The Blazers website has a cool little video with Coach Nate McMillan and Brandon Roy on the main page that is worthy of being checked out too. Most of all, just pay attention to and learn about what is going on around you. That is really what I want more than anything else for you.

Dr. King was much more than just a single speech, or with a single cause. Agree or disagree with his positions, he certainly sought to change lives for the better. If you feel so inclined, please post any thoughts you may have of the day or the man in the comments below - I would love to hear them!

Enjoy the day off, and continue to send me questions or concerns about the visual metaphor project (or anything else) to either my e-mail address or by posting in the comments. Keep studying hard for finals - it will pay off!

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." - Martin Luther King Jr.