Site Purpose

This site is entirely of my own creation, even if I have stolen ideas from a million different sources. I hope that it helps parents and students. I also hopes that it serves as a model for how technology can be successfully integrated into the classroom.

This site has continuously evolved since I first started it in January of 1999. It has been taken down and abandoned twice due to the level of work it requires. However, each time I decided it was too useful to leave dead. So it lives again. As I have watched it work, I have changed things regularly. At present, it is intended to do the following things:

• First of all, the site provides as much information I can provide to support each and every day in my classroom. I post lecture notes, reading questions, vocabulary lists, readings that aren't covered by copyright, links to related web sites, and the occasional extra credit assignment. Used properly, the site should act as a mix of textbook, study guide, and planner for students. Since I don't have enough books to send home, or even enough paper to make sufficient photocopies, I am to some extent making a virtue of necessity.
• In order to provide the opportunity for enrichment on the limited material I can cover in class, I post links to interesting sites related to each unit.
• When the class does research papers, I usually post a slate of links to trustworthy and handy sites to get students started on their work.
• Since we don't seem to do a very good job of teaching formal writing anymore, I provide a growing set of hints pages to show both how I grade writing and how I think good writing is done. It has been handy to provide some clear instructions to my students so that they will actually be prepared to do the sort of work I expect them to do.
• Most importantly, the site allows parents to see what content and assignments students cover in class. Ideally, parents will use the site to prepare themselves to talk with their children about what is going on in class and to help them on their homework.
• Parents and students can also use the site to check the student's grade and attendance. Hopefully, this will keep students from falling behind and parents from feeling powerless when their student says, "I'm doing fine," after weeks of no observable effort. Making it easy for parents to check for attendance and tardy problems is also an obvious benefit.
• Because I am a public employee tiptoeing along the sometimes-controversial lines of history, I post everything I do in class so that parents, administrators, and my peers can keep an eye on what I am doing.
• And that eye is not blind. By accident, I also have begun apparently to serve as something of a model for teaching the classes I teach. Since the site has been open on the web, I've gotten questions, complaints, suggestions, and thanks from people I've never met. My spelling has been corrected and various over-simplifications or omissions in my notes have been pointed out by all manner of unsolicited critics, helpful and nasty. This is honestly the most frightening part of having the site up. The thought that some new teacher somewhere is poaching my lesson plans is nerve wracking, but it has kept me more scrupulous.
• Finally, I have posted my academic and teaching credentials so that students and parents can see whether or not I am qualified to stand up in that little room and teach.