June 24

In Class - Continue topic discussion of education. Begin watching video clips concerning SB 1070 and California Budget Crisis (Review). Write down in one or two sentences the main arguments from these clips. Discuss as a class the rating of your public education on a scale from 1-10 (1 being low, 10 being the highest). Discuss the implication of the factors that may have contributed to your rating. Watch the back to school speech from President Obama from September of 2009. Take notes during this speech indicating pieces of the speech that caught your attention, was interesting, or personally related to you in some way. Write a brief summary of your feelings, thoughts, emotions after listening to his speech. Group work: Discuss the following in your groups - 1) share your responses 2) discuss statements from the speech you agree or disagree with 3) what was the overall tone of the speech? 4) were there any statements from the speech that may have been politically motivated? Discuss these in your groups and then as a class, discuss your answers. Hand out article "Conservatives enraged over Obama school speech." Read the article and discuss how people may have viewed this speech as political propaganda. Group Work - Hand out examples of quality Question of the Day responses, edit, and grade these responses based on the rubric from your syllabus. Hand out a series of articles concerning education reform in the United States. Use these articles to help you answer the Question of the Day. Also, read these articles for Monday for our class discussion concerning education.

Question of the Day - Nothing for today.

Homework - Question of the Day from June 23 is due by 11:59 tonight. Begin preparing arguments for Monday's class discussion on education.

NOTE - I will try to email everyone this weekend an updated grade, so you know where you sit before entering the home stretch of summer school. Have a good weekend!