Welcome Back?!

Greetings and welcome back!

We hope this message finds you and your family well. Not only does it feel like forever since we’ve seen each other, but also it seems like those days were from another world. Thinking of the changes we’ve experienced since then is mind-boggling and upsetting and frustrating and challenging in many ways.

We want this day to be about coming back together, about having ways to process what you have been thinking and feeling, and also about pushing the ways you are writing and thinking about it all. Some of what we are going to ask you to do today echoes questions we asked nearly two weeks ago during the “Acts of God” days, but much has changed since then.

To begin with, please spend some time writing in your journal about these prompts: 

1. Reflect on the range of emotions you have been experiencing during this time. Start by making a list of them and then choose one to explore further.
2. What have you been doing with your time? Are there things you wish you did more / less of? What are those, and what plans do you have to address this in the future? 
3. Of the things you’ve read and seen and heard, write about a particularly compelling story. It might be a video you watched, people you read about, or even things you’ve experienced in your own neighborhoods (real or virtual). 

Next, watch this video, starting at 2:28 and just up to 4:30. When you are done, respond to these two prompts: 

1. What do you think about the connections he is making between what is happening now and what happened during World War II, based on what we’ve learned about it?
2. We had you pause the video before he fully names “what matters most” - based on what he has been saying, what is the rest of that sentence? Do you agree with what he is saying? Why / why not? 

Next, it’s Flipgrid time! For those of you who joined us last week, thanks for helping us test out that technology. Your videos were powerful and also wonderful to see! For those of you who did not try it yet, here’s what you will do:

• Go to the Flipgrid for your class:
• 5th/6th: flipgrid.com/amstd56 - code is amstd56 
• 7th/8th: flipgrid.com/amstd78 - code is amstd78
• You’ll see the new topic for today, appropriately titled “Welcome Back?!” 
• Record and post a short video (more than 30 seconds, less than 90) with your responses to some or all of the questions from above
• Check back later and watch a bunch of videos from your classmates - you can respond either with a short video or just audio. Please respond to at least 3.

Lastly for today, we want to return to short talks. As you may recall, these are short pieces of writing that can exist in a wide variety of formats. If you want a reminder of some of the different formats, here is a link to a document we previously shared with you. Please write at least three short talks about life during the coronavirus, using these or other perspectives: 

• Yourself
• A family member 
• A Politician 
• A doctor / nurse / medical professional 
• A person whose business was either closed or is not able to work (for example, a musician or actor) 
• The USA 

Keep track of everything you write - we’ll return to it tomorrow!

If you have any questions, please email us: kkramer@dist113.org or nrigler@dist113.org
We will be actively monitoring our email during the school day and a little less frequently during the afternoon and evening.

Wednesday, March 18 - "Acts of God" Day 1

Greetings American Studies!

So these next few days aren't about formal education in many ways, but as you've seen in our class all year, there are other parts to being in school. For us, it's about our community and your voices.

While the assignments we post for these next three days aren't graded, we hope you'll spend some time with them in the spirit of keeping our community going strong, of taking the time to reflect on what you are experiencing, and of pushing your thinking to consider a variety of perspectives.

We'll start by asking you to write in your journal and/or to post something to our class Flipgrid. If you've never used Flipgrid before, you'll quickly see how easy it is to post video comments, view videos from each other, and even to share comments and feedback.

Here are the questions for you to explore:

1. How is the current COVID-19 situation (everything from school closing to plans canceled to sports and theater ceasing operations to restaurants stopping service to grocery shopping and beyond) impacting you personally? What are your feelings right now? What strategies are you using to cope with them?
2. What is the current situation telling you about what it means to be an American? This is a question we've been exploring all year, and certainly is taking on new levels of meaning in these challenging days.

When you are ready to post a video, here's how. Go the Flipgrid for your class period and use the code to get in:

• 5th/6th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd56 code "amstd56"
• 7th/8th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd78 code "amstd78"

There, you'll see a space to post your response to these questions. You can even look back at some of the previous responses from other questions (a few people tried it out over the weekend). This will be a tool we use once we get back to school, so trying it now will be helpful.

Tomorrow, we will be posting some suggestions of things you can do with your time - some directly linked to the class and plenty of others! Take care of yourself - keep your social distance - wash your hands! We miss you!

Special Monday post - Flipgrid!

Happy Monday!
We hope you had a great weekend and have been preparing for staying home for the next several weeks (months?). We set up Flipgrid to use for our class - check it out using the links below. Post a video! It is great to see everyone and keep our community going!

• 5th/6th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd56 code "amstd56"
• 7th/8th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd78 code "amstd78"

Special Saturday Post - E-Learning and Flipgrid

Greetings all! Happy Saturday!

We hope all is great with you and that you and your family are staying healthy and safe.

Once we get going with e-learning next week, we're gonna try a few different things so this is an informal way to get that going. We set up Flipgrid for our class. If you haven't used it before, it's super easy - a way for us to share videos and have a conversation. For now, we thought it would be a good way just to stay in touch.

It's easy to work - just go to the link for your class and type in the code:

• 5th / 6th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd56 with this code: amstd56
• 7th / 8th: https://flipgrid.com/amstd78 with this code: amstd78

Go check it out and post a response! Thanks!

All My Sons - Act I

Today you will work with a partner to read and discuss Act I of All My Sons. This handout is the guide to your work. Although you will be with a partner, you will each be submitting your own completed handout.

• All My Sons - Act 1 work

Please check the calendar for tonight's work, which will lead into our discussion of the use of the atomic bomb. The reading is short, so if you want to go ahead with your reading of the next part of the play, feel free to do that.

War in the Pacific

As we continue to use the format of "short talks" in this unit, we want to expand the different types of writing they might include. Please use this handout both today and for the remainder of the unit as a guide.

• Short talk suggestions

Today, we'll start by watching three clips from Ken Burns' The War: "Firestorm", "The Old Man" and "It's Hell Up There (just first 5 minutes)" (unfortunately, not available online although the whole series is available on Netflix, Youtube and Amazon Prime) that will provide information about the end of the war in Europe. We'll work to list details that we notice in our notebooks and then do two short talks (one after "Firestorm", the other after the next two).

Next, we'll complete a map activity that gives an overview of the geography and strategy of the Pacific War.

We'll continue to examine the War in the Pacific by watching two additional film segments.

Here are the segments to watch.
Anatomy of the Pacific War
Ken Burns' The War: "Death March" (not available online-see above).

During the last part of class, we'll begin our look at All My Sons.

Why We Fight

Today, we'll continue to follow the exploits of the 101st Airborne Division as we see their movement into Germany and what they find there. We'll watch the episode Why We Fight from Band of Brothers  (this is not the full clip that we watched in class. If you have access to HBO or can rent the episode, we watched about the last 30 minutes of it).
After writing our reactions as well as listing any objects, images or symbols that were memorable, we'll watch the scene It Happened from Ken Burns' The War (*NOTE the linked clip is not the full clip we watched in class).
After writing our reactions as well as listing any object, images or symbols that were memorable, we also responded to these questions:  What do dramatic recreations of true stories do that documentaries can't? What do documentaries do that dramatic recreations can't? Which clip is more effective to tell this story and why?

We closed by using the information that we wrote to write a short talk.


A NOTE ABOUT YOUR HW FOR TONIGHT: The reading is actually the first part of preparation for Friday's class. Some of it is review, feel free to skim those parts.  You need to have both part one and part two read for Friday.

D-Day

We started today by taking a look at the first 3:21 of this video in order to remind ourselves of the human cost of war: The Fallen of WW2

Next, we recapped the war in Europe from December, 1941-June, 1944 by using the following animated map (with key).

• Animated Map
• Map Key

Finally, we focused on the invasion of Normandy on D-Day by using the following sources.

• D-Day Images
• D-Day Notes
• Eisenhower Letters
• Band of Brothers Planning
• Band of Brothers Parachute Drop
• Saving Private Ryan

For each, students kept track of important details, images, objects, etc. in their notebooks. 

Internment

Today we'll start in our groups and begin by discussing the work that we did in the first 3 sections of the "More Perfect Union" activity.

Then, with your group, you'll divide up the subsections in the remaining categories and share your work when you are finished. Each person should describe the information that they learned from their assigned subsection and other members of the group should fill out their chart based on what they hear. In the interest of time, you may share your charts with each other to be able to fill out the charts more efficiently. The person who completed each row should still work to explain what they learned to the other members of the group.

During the second part of class, we'll create a series of Haiku that will be our "short talk" response to this information.
Here are your instructions: Haiku Instructions 2020


*NOTE: Please purchase All My Sons by Arthur Miller at the bookstore ($13). You must have it in class by next Tuesday (56) or Wednesday (78). 

If you are buying it from Amazon or another source, please be sure to buy this version and not this version

THIS ONE

NOT THIS ONE!

Road to War - Pearl Harbor - The Homefront

Happy Monday Tuesday / Wednesday!

Here is the plan for today:

1. Review the charts from Friday
1. Submit them to Schoology
2. Review Charles Lindbergh / America First
3. Pearl Harbor
1. Video
2. FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech
4. Short talk response
5. The homefront
1. Citizen Soldiers
2. Unexpressed Patriotism
3. The War Effort
4. Collective Sacrifice
6. Video - The Century (first 19 minutes)
7. WWII Posters
8. Donald Duck cartoon (see below)
9. Short talk response
10. Review homework (see calendar)