Here's a poem by Sherman Alexie, the author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It was emailed to me from the poets.org site as part of National Poetry Month.

Dangerous Astronomy
by Sherman Alexie

I wanted to walk outside and praise the stars,
But David, my baby son, coughed and coughed.
His comfort was more important than the stars

So I comforted and kissed him in his dark
Bedroom, but my comfort was not enough.
His mother was more important than the stars

So he cried for her breast and milk. It's hard
For fathers to compete with mothers' love.
In the dark, mothers illuminate like the stars!

Dull and jealous, I was the smallest part
Of the whole. I know this is stupid stuff
But I felt less important than the farthest star

As my wife fed my son in the hungry dark.
How can a father resent his son and his son's love?
Was my comfort more important than the stars?

A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart
My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough
God, because I walked outside and praised the stars,
And thought I was more important than the stars.

The We Shall Remain series will be a great resource for the course we're teaching next year. It's awesome that PBS has posted the complete series in full on their website. This will be an easy-to-use resource for us when we want to show clips or entire segments from this series.

Collaboration w/ Colleague

Last week, my colleague and I met to discuss the course we're teaching next year. We discussed our unit as well, but we're really trying to nail down the structure of the combined course we're teaching. What's making this process difficult is that my colleague is struggling with the process of trying to convert a more linear approach to into a thematic one. We're trying to find some resources that talk specifically about creating a thematic approach to teaching history.

I've inserted a photo of a sort of brainstorm we had about how to best integrate all of the essential parts of what she needs to do with what I need to do. We're lucky that my curriculum is pretty process-oriented while hers is much more specific about content. We should be able to integrate our absolute must-haves in a pretty cohesive manner.

We're pretty excited about this process, though it's a bit daunting at this moment in time. Hopefully we'll have some time to meet soon and process this information even further. We did not talk about my stage three, but I feel like we made some headway into creating a sort of big picture vision that we have not yet had the chance to create.