SEEKING: Teaching Tolerance Blog Responder

[Kim]

Hello,

My name is Kim Stansbury and I teach eighth grade Social Studies in Woodridge, Illinois, and this year my students will be participating in our second-annual blogging experience to showcase student knowledge on a Holocaust/teaching tolerance interdisciplinary unit with my English/Language Arts teaching partner, Tarah Tesmer. During the first year of the “Teaching Tolerance Project”, the students showcased incredible insight across many themes in relation to the Holocaust and human rights. Their blog posts were generated from ideas sparked by novels, short stories, media, art, current events, and personal stories. The experience was such a success due to the hard work of the students and the amazing support from the outside responders/participants that commented to the students’ posts. The results were so inspiring that we decided to go forth on the project again this year, and we hope that you please consider being a responder to the blog this year!

 

The 58 students have been divided into teams in relation to the novel they will be studying over the course of this Holocaust/teaching tolerance unit (a list of the team pages/novels can be seen here). As a “responder”, you do not need to have read any of the novels in order to participate. We ask that you look at any of the team pages and evaluate written work/provide feedback to the students as they make connections between their novel, the Holocaust, and many other themes. Much of the posting online is geared toward conversation across the following topics that are inspired from the readings and lessons (which goes well beyond a book club-type atmosphere... we aren’t talking only about the readings here!). The topics are:

 

*Race, Ethnicity, and Culture
*The Individual vs. Society
*Identity/Identity-loss and Labels
*Bullies, Bystanders, and Up-standers
*Following Others Based on Personal Fear
*The Holocaust/Man’s Inhumanity to Man
*Personal Challenges and Triumphs


*Feel free to spark up a conversation with a student blog by providing connections of your own as well! All that we ask is that you check in at least once a week (or more if you can) - or any time at your leisure. We will send out a reminder when student work has been posted.

*Blogs for students are always due before Fridays at 5:30 pm.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions. The students will begin blogging the first week in April and continue through roughly the beginning of May.

 

If you are interested, please comment here, or if you don't want to join the World History group send me a message answering the following questions:

__________________________

Your name and e-mail:

What you do:

Where you call home:

Why this project interests you:

Why you believe students should do a project like this:

__________________________

This is just a snapshot of the project. If you would like to learn more about it and are interested, the main page for the blog can be found at: http://theteachingtoleranceproject.blogspot.com/.

 

Thank you for your support!

 

Sincerely,

Kim Stansbury and Tarah Tesmer

[Kim]

Dear Contributors,

Thank you for your interest in commenting to the students’ blog posts for the Teaching Tolerance Project!  This will be the students’ first official week of blogging.  They are really looking forward to hearing from you, and if you’d like to get started now, they have already put on their individual pages a brief bio-post of themselves.  Feel free to comment back to them if you’d like to!

The "Participants" section of the website has been updated to include a detailed list of the contributors for this project.  You can view the list here: http://theteachingtoleranceproject.blogspot.com/p/commentators.html

On Monday (tomorrow), students will be given their prompts for the week to respond to for the submission deadline of Friday at 5:30 pm.  In total, they are responsible for three posts each week: one that is literature-based, one that is social-studies based, and a group post detailing how their overall progress is coming along/what they think so far of the project.  This will go on for roughly three weeks.  A great time to comment to the blogs is on the weekend, but feel free to check their individual team pages as needed.

This Friday, the students will be taking a field trip to the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois... so be on the lookout next week for their posts about the experience there!

Thank you again for your contribution!  I will be sending out weekly emails to you all just to update you on how things are going - and after awhile I’ll probably cue you in on teams that are doing a really great job and teams that could benefit from a “confidence boost”!  We all appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to be a part of this experience with us, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Tarah Tesmer & Kim Stansbury