Teaching Social Studies is hard. Teaching it and Language Arts together is ridiculous. I keep having to push stuff back because the kids ask questions and I don't want to narrow down exploration--but we need to narrow it down! Every avenue of historic investigation opens up many others: immigrant groups lead to push and pull factors and cultural and ethnic and religious and political differences, all of which are rich and interesting. Ireland alone (we're about to get heavy with Ireland because of the Irish immigrants in Pigtown) leads on and on forever if you let it. Push factors include religious persecution and oppression and dare I say genocide--where do I tell the kids "we don't have time to answer these questions. Just accept my little blurd explanation." Ugh.
I'm tired. Last week I clocked more than 80 hours of work, then this past weekend I blasted sidewalk tree wells with a jackhammer for 5 hours on Saturday, and I am wiped. Election Day will be a nice reprieve next Tuesday, though I'll of course have to spend it grading and planning (and voting briefly).
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