good evening i'm little scene and welcome to another edition of this week in education my guest tonight is mark shelley who's the supervisor of humanities in the princeton public schools and mark thank you very much for coming on i know you're busy guy thank you and i know you just took over the the role of a supervisor humanities that used to be two separate departments used to be social studies and english and got merged into humanities and so i know your running got a lot of things to do in the departments and we'll be talking a lot about what's going on in the humanities department a lot of great things happening in markedly feeling a sense before we get started though i talk you about mark marcus taught in the district and been a supervisor for the last eight years he's had he's been educated for over twenty years total going back to his days in in two thousand and nine and it's been a wonderful experience i know that you have bought the academic quiz bowl team and while you went and i know you did a lot of great things back and south carolina too and i know you have family back there and i know you make frequent trips so it's all good but for today i want to get focused on what we're doing at p h s and talk a little bit about your role since taking over and maybe you can talk a little bit what you do on an everyday basis as the human the supervisor well thank you for having me in for this opportunity in terms of my role i'm in charge of curriculum and personnel i guess for english and social studies i guess there's no typical day you know it's sort of a combination sometimes of meetings with various professionals in the building talking with teachers observing teachers meeting with students about everything from schedule changes to concerns they might have prefer doing things like this where i come to television studio meeting with various committees of the board of education so it's a rich job in the sense that there's lots of different opportunities and activities on a daily basis it's one that doesn't conform easily to a set schedule so in that way as exciting i guess ok let's talk about the course of our friends and though there are two new elective courses course or friends and social those at the high school maybe we can talk a little about those and inform our audience about what they are and you know how the curriculum ok so one of the things that we did last school year during the two thousand and fifteen sixteen school year was we engaged in a year long process called the social studies program review and this was a committee of teachers from princeton in cranbury were included along with them and then a strangers to look at the totality of our social studies program great grades k through twelve and one of the things that came out of that was the desire to have some new electives to add to what we we think is already a strong program at the high school and one of the particular concerns with our program review was looking at more issues of diversity in the world different ways to tap into  maybe students curiosity about different ways of living in different types of belief systems and another thing was a lot of students mention the lack of current events in other words so many history classes will be rushing at the end and you won't get to what happened post bill clinton and so in light of that the social studies department last spring did a survey of the entire student body of a list of several possible electives in the two that were overwhelmingly chosen by the students were world religions belief in conflict for and can current issues in contemporary crises and so those will be proposed to the board this november to be electives to be put in the program of studies for the next calendar year  or the next academic year and so those would in essence be offered next starting next fall the vision is that both of them would be electives offered to at least juniors and seniors we might offer the contemporary crises and current events c sophomores and both of them will be semester electives we envision the religions class focusing on everything from major tenants of the world's major faiths to the difference in religion in cult to some of the subdivisions of the major faiths you know how is a protestant christian different than orthodox christian or sunni muslim different than a shiite muslim looking at issues historically and today that have been driven by religious conflict  because that's obviously such a prominent part of our world today the current issues class would look at it would sort of be two components one would be literally tracking the daily and weekly news events and doing readings discussions watching video clips about that and the other would be sort of focusing on certain areas of the world so in other words we might have a week where we focus on the middle east in a week where we focus on north korea's nuclear program to give oh a well rounded view of some of the current hot spots and issues in the world well you are it sounds like to be very exciting and i know you bring me bring in those in the student achievement committee and right you know for approval hopefully you will see those you know on the agenda basically sit down and especially in which case at the top with everybody and say you know what we're now basically you know one department and we're going to pull together i think it's difficult i mean you know i think systemic change is always a challenge especially when for decades literally you know social studies has been one part of the big building in english has been another right so i think it starts with smaller steps steps like doing more joint department meetings than we had done before you know so we've had several this year where both departments are included lots of the issues are brought up related to maybe literacy may have been linked to both departments i think it's also helpful for if i'm reminding social studies about something or talking about our michael lection next week that english here's what's going on and so so i think you start with smaller steps i think also i've already had some conversations with a couple teachers in each department lessons i noticed that they had been doing about maybe offering those to the whole group so for instance i saw an english lesson the other day it was a wonderful lesson about sort of crystallizing the format of your thesis and i asked that teacher if she would then offer that to the social studies teachers in terms of building on knowledge trying to create more consistent understanding of approaches to writing expectations for students i think mr joni plays a large part in that with the media center or the learning commons and i've actually ask all of our teachers to try to do at least one project this year that involves a trip to the learning commons to make sure that our students are getting multiple reinforcements of the types of research skills and expectations that we should have for college bound kids so you know so i think of intially hopefully will do more collaborative work and you know maybe english is reading all quiet on the western front while social studies is teaching world war one  those kinds of things take a little longer to bridge in terms of adjusting your curriculum on either side well i think you know i think you talk about the concept of and the disciplinary learn absolutely and how they work in tandem you know and i think as you said it takes time because  modeled really moles to so that they work compound than they do in south carolina for nine years i actually taught in a school which had a humanities program where we coach english and social studies and in my  interviews for this position i talked about that model itself and would love to have a situation eventually where we can code teach classes so in other words if i teach social studies and you teach english we were coronating our writing assignments were cordoning projects our curriculum overlaps and certainly that's several years down the road but that's i guess the vision of intially once we you know take these baby steps at the beginning ok so let's talk about advanced topics you know how would the advanced topics mo fit into the future you know of history classes at the high school ok so a couple of years ago just a little background john and dog bo who was my predecessor proposed that we take a trip to scarsdale high school in new york which is  nationally renowned school like princeton to view their advanced topics curriculum and basically scarsdale some years ago decided to move away from advanced placement classes the idea being that an a p class sort of creates artificial constraints about the amount of details you have to learn it has the sort of artificial time frame of finishing all may first and the idea was does this really address our desire for deeper learning for students and their ability to essentially be more constructivist learners themselves you know on doing research and i'm generating mode understanding of the world and so scarsdale sort of created this advanced topics model district wide so all all a p courses the high school were replaced by advanced topics so a group of our teachers took a trip there a couple years ago were very impressed with what they saw and this was something we discussed several times in our department and then continued through the social studies program review asked year and so right now we're at a stage where we're going to be having a flex p d flex professional help for some of our teachers to look at this model and so i think the vision is that a an advanced topics class will involve much more student directed research driven work in it might it might take the form of if we're studying the renaissance of in depth projects of different people and events and books from the renaissance in artwork but then they'll be presentations to the class more symon are type activities but there's less pressure to cover every single little detail that might be in the textbook you know necessarily with scarsdale and our view is students would still be welcome in encouraged to take the a p exam this is not precluding that in any sense i know the teachers i've talked with said they would still be happy to provide the kind of review materials and after school review sessions for students who are interested in doing that but the advanced topics model would sort of remove what we believe are artificial constraints of the a p curriculum and allow us to do a more student center research directed deeper type of learning and so that's our that's our goal and it's it's going to we're making another trip to scarsdale in late october with some administrators and teachers both to look at what the courses would look like and also sort of how do you roll that out you know is it a school wide change like scarsdale did or you know maybe in our view maybe it's something more like starting with one course or two courses and then you know tweaking research you know in the northwest us right now to social studies classes and i was wondering if you could you know shed some light on that and we can talk a little about that about why we've you know increased that and then in talks about literacy why that important right i think it's i think i think overall there's sort of this growing understanding of how important literacy is to simple citizenship and success in the world right and you know that that takes the form of kids being able to reunite only a novel or poetry but to read a nonfiction text and certainly that is a consensus among employers among colleges that we want this for our kids you know we're also in an age of technological growth where students have tended to move away from reading for extended periods of time you know their their inner tain by short bursts of sound then right in visuals  so i think schools have seen sort of a parallel decline in the number of kids to read and the amount that they read and so one of the big concerns sort of in terms of literacy education is how do we get kids to read to enjoy reading and to become effective lifelong readers and i think that's the central question i think the district has done a wonderful job with introducing what we call the reader and writer workshop model from grades k through seven now i think it'll be out in grade eight next year and that's based on the work of lucy caulkins in the teacher's college columbia university and it basically creates a classroom environment in which at least which some of the reading is student chosen and self directed and the ideas i know my son is in the fifth grade johnson park he's not the most avid reader and his teachers have work with him on choosing realistic fiction based on athletics because that's what he enjoys and then you use those student choices to still teach theme or whatever the particular skill is that you're looking at doing you know at the high school  level it's a little more difficult because there is sort of a canon of great books that you know are sort of expected i guess students will read should every kid read a shakespearean play for instance and most people probably say yes that should be part of the high school experience  so i think in that in the high school context it's looking at what we've always done and how can we improve it with some of these new pedagogical approaches could we maybe reduce the canon that we've always taught in find some opportunities for more student choice in the curriculum so it's not a wholesale change but it is saying we need to look at best practices we need to look at the trend that kids are not reading and what can we do to address that and what one of things we're going to be doing this fall is surveying the entire student body with the google survey it's being drafted about everything from their reading habits how much they read outside of school to their feelings about summer reading to issues about plagiarism how many times have they cheated on an assignment not reading assignment and what are their motivations for that and so we're hoping to sort of gather this sort of macro data that will th help inform our decisions going forward there are fifty thousand books that come out every year and you know it's like overwhelming after a while and so you've touched on a couple points i was going to ask you in fact the chronicle i have here a chronicle of higher education just came out literally just came out with the recent edition and on the front page it's called the i'm not reading so basically what they're saying is that i just said with social media and everything you know students are choosing not to read but also those who are in academia or have decided not to read everything that they want to read because there's just too much and so the question then becomes exactly now that we're you know in twenty twenty sixty moving at the twenty  seventeen you know how do you how do you choose the important readings you know out of the classics how do you choose what's important for the future you know what should students know and how do we decide which which books are important which aren't and then gotten students  to be to be versed and how do we get students to put the to put the rope on the side you know and say you know what if you don't read them basically it's almost like the saying a student who doesn't read has no imagine that was student who cannot read absolutely you know i think there are a number of points to make there i think that the first acknowledgement is that discussions like you're describing take a lot collegial collaboration among teachers this kind of urban phrase that in other words the teachers have to sit down and have those real conversations about if we have these eight books we're teaching which fo five are the most important and why for us and then how does that interface with what the grade does above me you know if i'm doing shakespeare here or do they have to do a shakespeare there so it's looking at the vertical stratification of the curriculum as well and then you know in terms of your question about how do we choose what's new i think that takes effective teachers who can look at different texts share ideas with people about this was a good book for this reason this was a good book if i'm looking at realistic fiction or whatever it might be i think it takes the willingness is a teacher to let go a little bit and let the students have the choice and i think it's done effectively by learning what the student lexile levels are and things like that teachers can point them in the right direction to what books might generate their interest i know a lot of teachers will do that interests ervay at the beginning of the year to help guide their decisions in the ways they're able to encourage students about choice i was in a classroom just this morning and they were doing a wonderful lesson about designing argument with an essay and the teacher had pulled in they were going to be working eventually on an essay on the crucible  what the teacher was doing is using rick reilly from sports illustrated and several political cartoons to sort of generate the same type of argument she's going to be looking for in this sort of essay on a more classical text would say and so that's a great way to use more contemporary text you can bring in a whole diversity of things to teach a skill that's then going to be used with the classical approach you know so i think that's just creative teaching and that's what we want from our teachers to get them so we talk a lot about character education so how does character education fit into the role of english and social studies courses i think it's very important and i think it's a delicate balance to walk sometimes you know i think what comes to mind immediately is the current election in america and so as a social studies teacher for instance if i'm up at the front of the room it could be a plan lesson on the election like in government politics class or it could be a question from a student or it could be that every friday i do current events with my kids and the question comes up but you know what is my role i've certainly want to be respectful of all opinions i want for students to feel safe in expressing opinions in my classroom even if they're in the minority but at the same time what happens if a student says something inflammatory or offensive or you know and we've had some discussions in our departments about where do you draw that line you know where is it my place to step in and say that's not appropriate or that's not true you know and i think that's a tough line to walk because we do have i think of a moral s of obligation to our kids to teach tolerance and acceptance and you know these types of values that we think are important and i think in literature you know so many of those values are  imbedded in the what they read you know and i think those kind of discussions are important because you know what we're not just sending students to college or to the to the world of work when they graduate we're sending out citizens who we want to be able to watch the news and make informed decisions you know and to be compassionate people in pathetic and understand the world around them and so i think it's very important that if someone is a scientist or a doctor and they're on that side of the building that they still are grounded in the sort of moral universal human truce that we encounter so often in social studies and english have there been a lot of good conversations about world events recently there have been  in the department and i know when i was in the classroom last year i mean the students seem very engaged now you know some time you ask a question in the kids for instance this question i was in this morning the teacher asked a question about what was happening what happened in north carolina the last two nights or and only two kids raised their hands and that then raises a question not about the teacher but about are the kids really in tune with the news because that's been wall to wall coverage on c n n the last few nights  and so so it's interesting i think we do want even time teaching ancient history i want to take advantage of a social studies class to draw a relevance for my students you know and what the teacher ended up doing which was so effective was drawing some parallels between what had been written and said about the north carolina riots with what was going on with the salem witch trials that are used in the crucible you know and to me that's a wonderful way to  that takes good teachers it takes teachers who are well informed and who are creative to then take those links with the modern world and help the students see relevance whether whether it's in an event from the past or at least in something i most focused on one particular competition there's a mock trial and mercer county and other students work from the fall through the spring and they're in the roles of either attorney or witness and they essentially will then compete against other schools and they're given certain background on the trial in the various characters and they practice how would you answer this difficult cross examination question you know except for like this and so it's a wonderful opportunity for them to engage in the legal system in america but also in terms of things like argument and defending yourself with evidence and you know those types of public speaking skills that are so important for their success you know in life  terms of speech in debate there are a number of different classifications that the lincoln douglas style their different styles of debate and so we have a very active club several dozen that travels to events around the region one in princeton  alle the one in the bronx in new york city and they will centrally be paired up with opponents from other schools and engage in debates that are then scored on the merits of how well they present a coaching argument what types of facts are able to use how well they're able to parry the opposing side you know except for a so it gets in again it gets into the a lot of the same skills the trial works on model un is another very active club we have a very successful these students will attend the conferences and they will ahead of time be given a committee assignment and a country assignment so in other words i might be representing north korea on the security council and so my job is  research the specific topics that are given in advance to write a position paper about what north korea has approach would be to this particular issue usually is two issues and then when we get to the conference we engage in a simulation so in other words the security council meets and these students are then interacting with each other from the personality and point of view of their country so it's a wonderful program in terms of not only teaching students about some of the issues facing the world but about empathy you know putting them in other people's perspective which is very difficult whether it is it's a lot of them realize how difficult it is to play the united states because some of the apocryphal you see with us foreign policy  some of them see how very difficult it is to play a country like north korea who just seems irrational from our point of view and to try to get inside their head so it's a wonderful activity for kids to sort of expand their minds in that way is a professor of ethics and religion and from university and you know two things that struck me there one was his he just his love of teaching and love of working with students was certainly inspirational for me and then through his field of work with ethics he's written a book on forgiveness and a lot of what you know he taught i think i think about it is what really matters in life you know just being a good person you know looking out for the other looking out for the marginalised the people that can't help themselves and that's something i hope i do in my daily life but also something i hope i convey to my students you know is that sense of a passion for justice you know and i think my grandfather his father's much the same way i mean someone who family's story uprooted moved his family of five children to massachusetts from south central south carolina and he discovered that the poultry packing company he was working for was selling sick chickens knowingly to businesses it was fraud and when he raised the issue he was told he had to keep his mouth shut or he'd be fired and he chose to be fired here you have someone in the one nine hundred fifty s with five children and no job and he takes a moral stand like that you know and to me that kind of courage is is something i'd want to live up to care absolutely great mark was great having him show tonight thank you for stopping by was a great conversation absolutely we enjoyed it and look forward to seeing a lot more good things coming out of humanities and if anybody has not had an opportunity to visit mark please drop by i'm sure he'd be want to talk to you about the course studies that are going on at the high school for exciting as well some of the extra took after years that he's mentioned and you know in his new role he's been here a while  so he'll be willing to take you through and give me the inside his viewpoint and tour and and meet with some of the faculty members and hopefully it'll be a beneficial thing for everybody but anyway i'm lugosi i want to thank you very much for watching tonight next time we'll have a new guest brenda sewell who is our coordinator of communications and website operations should be on the show and until that time stay healthy stay informed stay active and don't forget to vote and i'll see you next week another edition of this week in education have a good night