LISD Academic Advocates

1. Call to Order and Pledge. President Erika Mittag called the meeting to order at 7:05 pm and the pledge of allegiance was recited.

2. Minutes & Correspondence. Minutes from the September 26 meeting were accepted as read. Chris Cavalli made the motion, Ray Cowperthwaite seconded.

3. Treasurer's report. There was no report from the treasurer. Mittag reported two additional memberships and a donation had been received. Scholarship payments were still pending.

4. Committee reports: (membership, scholarship, nominating, special events) - None.

5. Speaker: Betsy Gonzales, CPMS, Texas Middle School Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Ms. Gonzales involved the audience in several of the many hands-on activities she uses to engage students in learning history. A Tug-of-War rope game simulated the various forces at play in the U.S. Civil War. Copies of the Declaration of Indpendence are cut into sections and students are asked to re-assemble the document in the correct order, to write one or two of the grievance in the language of today and to justify one of the actions from the point of view of King George III. Contemporary paintings of scenes such as the inaugurations of George Washington and Andrew Jackson are springboards to social analysis and roleplaying. Students dress in costume and recreate the tableau in the painting. Other students act as journalists from the future to ask questions of the characters.
Ms Gonzales also shared examples from the history journals of previous students such as 'sensory figures' (a drawing of a historical figure including cartoon balloons with sentences beginning "I feel..", "I hear..", "I smell…", etc.), dialogs between charcters of opposing points of view such as Federalist/anti-Federalist, and current events analysis summarizing a current event and tying it to an event in history.
Social studies teachers have a variety of resources for supporting their classroom activities. History Alive! is a national program in US History incorporating interactive notebooks, writing for understanding, interative slide lectures, social studies skill builders, experiential exercises and problem solving group work. The State Bar of Texas also provides a wealth of information on their law-related website, TexasLRE.org. The activities are based on the TEKS/TAKS goals and involve interactive online lessons, multiple intelligences and critical reading and thinking skills. Many of their lessons are based on the founding documents - forming the basis for DBQ (document based questions) activities.

6. Old Business : Discussion on future meeting speakers. Discussion of elementary math using Everyday Math and the transition to middle school. Mittag will get speakers to address this issue.

7. Announcements.
Next meeting: November 28. Speaker TBD

8. The meeting adjourned at 8:25 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Erika Mittag,
in the absence of the Secretary