Well today is October 2nd and I feel like we are really getting into the groove of the school year. The students have done an amazing job of getting my classroom routines down which allows us to get to business right away.  Those 47 minutes fly by!  In all of my classes, we are now studying Imperialism in the late 19th century and we were able to draw some parallels between the Filipino War and our most recent Iraqi War. We also made some time this week to discuss the government shut down and the Affordable Care Act. We even took a few minutes to watch a clip from Jimmy Kimmel's show about that topic. It was funny, if not a bit sad.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE
I did lecture all of the classes some about their responsibility to be informed citizens and encouraged them to read the news--even if it is on their phone.  I encouraged downloading Zite or Flipboard to help in that endeavor.  I will continue to discuss relevant current events in class while using websites like Factcheck.org to encourage discussions that are fact based. Parents, please bring up current events with them at home--it is so important for them to go to college with basic knowledge of important people and recent events. Plus many of them will be voting in one short year! Also if someday they get asked basic information on the street by a camera crew, they'll be able to say something intelligent, which probably won't get them on TV but won't embarrass them either.  :)