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Making medieval life relatable to adolescents in 21st century is a challenge.  But in imperial China people studied long and hard for civil service exams and then waited anxiously for the results hoping they would earn a high enough score to enable them to work in a coveted career.  Similarly many jobs in law enforcement, medicine, law, and education depend on scoring well on licensure and civil service examinations today, I am quite familiar with spending hours and hours studying for my MTEL and for my Massachusetts Bar Exam and waiting on pins and needles praying that my time and effort had paid off.  I was one of the lucky ones in both instances. So a great response to students who ask why they have to learn about medieval world history is that it tells us the roots of our modern system.  Indeed, the modern examination system will likely be a part of many of my students' lives as they journey toward their own career choices.  In fact, as I type this, they...

Common Core has re-calibrated many teachers to consider their content alongside important reading, writing, and communication skills.   One of the standards for 8th graders covers persuasive writing .  I could ask the students to write persuasive essays, but a real world application of those persuasive communication skills would be more useful and more exciting for them.  Advertising is the best example of persuasive communication in action.  Students are exposed to it every day and are unconsciously familiar with advertisers' techniques. My social studies classes were in the midst of a unit on technological and scientific advances in imperial China.  They were studying the impact of inventions like steel, the compass, movable type, and mechanical clocks.  When asked to imagine how life might be different without these inventions they realized their importance.  A great way to assess their understanding of the...

Problem : Slightly less than half of our 8th grade middle school team students are out of the country on a French trip to Quebec.  What do 3 teachers and 2 paraeducators do for two WHOLE school days with 66 adolescents who resent being in school while their friends are on an adventure in another country? Solution : Time Travel... Yup. One of my missions as I spend one year teaching 8th grade, with the opportunity to work with a team of teachers who specialize in different subject areas, is creating as much interdisciplinary work as possible.  So, since the two subject area teachers remaining at school during the 2 day experiment were the science teacher and me, I saw an opening. I teach medieval world history , including imperial China . She teaches earth science , including the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes . Hold on to your hats, people, I have an idea! You see, in imperial China people believed the the emperor had the right to rule because of the ...