Classroom Structures
Group Work & Culture Building
Use this folder to find resources and activities that our team, The Action Faction, uses to build community, revisit group norms and hold eachother accountable for achieving our goals. These could be used for an entire team or small project groups. |
Book Club
This is usually how I integrate literature into our projects. The folder includes an overview of reading requirements, protocols for book club discussions and product ideas for visual "artifacts" than let students express thoughts on what they're reading. |
Socratic Seminars
I use this structure for formalized class discussions, usually towards the end of a unit. We create "tickets" that students annotate beforehand, then have them fill out a prep sheet to organize their thoughts. You'll also find norms and post-seminar reflections in the folder. |
Gallery Walks
Rather than a lecture or reading, I usually launch projects using this structure. It doesn't provide students ALL the information about our project, but hopefully enough to hook them in. These also help set up future seminars and lets me incorporate multiple mediums (quotes, images, opinions, etc.) |
Project Planning
Faces of Change (2015 - 2018)
This is my favorite, and our team's largest, project every year. We ask students organize themselves into self-directed "community cohorts" that act as miniature nonprofits. Here they dissect, analyze, predict and suggest specific ways to improve the lives and livelihood of several underserved San Diego communities, based on ethnographic research and interviews with local stakeholders. |
Into the Wild (2017)
After students have spent the majority of the year learning about other people and cultures, I like them finish the year by turning the lens inward. We read Into the Wild and examine Chris McCandless's journey as a case study for our essential question: what does it mean to lead a "meaningful life"? The project culminates with a camping trip to Kings Canyon National Park where they perform their written answer to that very question. |
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Interfaith: Harmony vs. Persecution (2017)
This project saw students investigating the commonalities of world religions through the expertise of guest speakers, by volunteering for the San Diego Interfaith Alliance, and hosting HTHCV's first ever Harmony Breakfast event for dozens of faith representatives from across San Diego. In small groups, students researched at-risk communities currently suffering from persecution around the world, and created art pieces that call attention to their plight. The pieces were auctioned off at exhibition with the proceeds going towards a nonprofit aimed at improving the livelihood of those affected. |
Model United Nations (2015 - 2017)
Every year the entire sophomore class of 150 students step into the role of a United Nations country delegate, in an effort to better understand issues currently affecting the international community. The past three years have focused on refugee crises in the Middle East, Central America and Africa. Students research their country's stance, write opening statements, then negotiate with other world leaders to form binding resolutions. |
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Voices of Refuge (2016)
During this project, students dove deeply into the causes and effects of various refugee crises around the world, modern and throughout history. In small groups they chose to research specific conflicts of interest, using that information to create a script and storyboard for an informative RSA video (whiteboard animation) that would help teach younger students about the issue. They later partnered with individual refugees from our community of San Diego, interviewing them to try and understand what their journey was like. Using these transcripts, each group made a final RSA video describing their subject's story. These were given as resource materials to our local branch of the International Rescue Committee. |