Civil War and Reconstruction helpful sights

Company Aytch -Pretty close to the full text. Recollections of CSA troop from Tennessee and good read if you haven't read it. Could be used as a primary source for students as well.

Historical music- provides large amount of music from different time periods. Only includes 1 song in the civil war/reconstruction website, but still valuable website.

Data and Facts w/questions- Provides a lot of useful numbers, including: troops available for duty by year and side, deaths by wound and disease etc

Civil War Primary Sources - Variety of documents, emancipation proclamation

Reconstruction Virtual history- gives good introduction and information. Discusses politics of reconstruction and the transition from slave labor to free labor.

97th Regimental String Band- Civil War era musical band. Some good songs.

Regimental quartermaster- Website to buy reenactment gear, maybe useful if discussing uniforms or camp life? Just an idea. Also has modern day things (books, cds etc) for purchase as
well.

Matthew Brady- Interactive page on Matthew Brady, useful if discussing photography in the time period and techniques.

Grant's Overland Campaign- Animation that depicts the overland campaign. Good visualization tool. Has good introductory text. Kind of long though.

www.civilwaranimated.com- Provides animations and contexts for the battles of Fredricksburg, First Mananas, Overland Campaign, Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville etc Really useful website. Each major event within the battle is a separate slide and user has the ability to pause it if necessary.

Reflect on what you know about the school community.

I know a lot about Fairmont. I dated a girl for awhile who went to Fairmont State and she showed me around, and I had several friends who also went here. I enjoy the historical part of Fairmont (things like Monagah and the oil and gas in the area) and I think that the city has done a decent job keeping some of that alive. I can get around town pretty well, at least to the major parts of town and I know most of the major landmarks. Most of the kids that I know from Fairmont went to westside though.

Reflect on your school’s or mentor teacher’s classroom management system.

My host teacher's classroom management style is really student oriented which is awesome because that's not been one of my strong points. He encourages students who are behind or do not usually do work to complete assignments and is very patient with all of the students regarding missed or late assignments. He said something the other day that I think really accurately describes how he teaches, "I've never seen a kid that doesn't want to pass." Sometimes it takes a little bit of encouragement but it is amazing that the kids who are problems for everyone else work so well for us. One of the students actually got suspended for cursing out one of the other interns but he is a great student in history, and I accredit that to Mr. Morgan's classroom management style. One of the things that he does that is really effective is always has paper and pencils for everyone and it's incredibly intuitive. At first students abuse the privilege. In the first two weeks we must've burned through 50 pencils. We'd always ask for them back but would seldom be returned. After a few weeks though kids actually started returning pencils the next day and would remind their friends they had borrowed them. It was actually kind of rewarding to see the kids start to, for lack of a better term, care about borrowing our supplies and returning them. (I should mention that he hasn't bought any pencils to my knowledge, we acquire them throughout the day and he has kids bring in packs of pencils for extra credit every 9 weeks) And I think all of this is because the students realize he cares and are caring back. Now whether or not this is done consciously or subconsciously I don't know, but regardless it is inspiring to see from my point of view.

Reflect on any after-school activity you attended.

I went to the east/west game a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. East lost and that was depressing, but the band was great (as always). It was so much different from participant year when I went to the east/west game. Almost no one recognized me last year but this year all of my students were talking to me, other teachers were talking to me. I didn't have any parents talk to me thankfully, usually parents only talk when they need to complain it seems. One depressing thing about the game was the some parents in the stands who are setting bad examples for their kids. The fact that every parent is a coach comes with the territory but some of the parents were yelling obscenities towards the coaches and the refs. Cursing is whatever, who am I to tell them what words they can or cannot say. The fact that they were choosing to do so where there were children though was a little uncalled for though.

Reflect on your rapport with the students.

To put it mildly, my students love me. I think this comes from a combination of things. First off, I am a naturally sarcastic and witty person which is not something that usually describes teachers so I think they enjoy that. When I was in high school I had a young biology teacher who utilized humor to make bio and anatomy more interesting and when I was trying to figure out what type of teacher I wanted to be I knew that with my personality I could do the same thing, and it's worked beautifully. Because kids never know what I'm going to say they pay attention more, because I can tell stories that may not seem entertaining in everyday context or to anyone who may read this, which I doubt anyone will (a quick, generalized example, Ben Franklin called up his brother on his cell phone and said "Yo I invented electricity) but when that's coming from a teacher kids find it funny and it keeps them interested. Also they know I care about them and want to succeed and understand the material. Whether they sense this consciously or subconsciously I don't know. And probably most influential on my students is that I am a young teacher. They can identify with me more, half the girls in my classes have crushes on me and they are in general more interested to spend time with someone they identify more as a peer and less as one of their parents.

Reflect on any team teaching you have participated in.

I try to keep my host teacher as involved as possible. Often we will co-teach in some manner almost every period. I try to always let him take role so that he can match names with faces. I also will ask him questions while I am lecturing to hopefully reinforce students recognize him as an instructor as well. Sometimes he will instruct for an extended period of time especially if we are discussing something that he was alive for (for example JFK assassination). I think this helps students realize these events from a historical perspective and a personal perspective.

Reflect on a lesson that you wish had gone in a different direction. What would you change and why?

I wish my students' presentations had gone better. I expected the students to look up the material and become experts on their subject ( the goal of any assignment where each student has a single, unique topic) and then educate their classmates. This was not the case for most of the students. For the most part, they just copy and pasted off the first three Google results and handed it in regardless of its content. The material they handed in was sometimes copy and pasted. It was mildly depressing but next time I will be sure to discuss plagiarism and its repercussions more in depth beforehand. Also, it is difficult to revert from case studies and intensely focusing and covering as much material as possible on one subject (i.e. college) to a brief overview of a topic (high school)