Goal for the day: To understand how First Amendment protections work in schools
Today, I posted 20 terms or principles that we have studied in the last three weeks. I challenged the class to see if they could connect the terms to today's discussion. My interest is in having the class retain and apply this information in the context of a discussion such as the one we had today. I told the class if they can connect our discussion to 18 out of our of 20 terms by the end of class, everyone would get ten points on their formative assessment.
We started with a video and short discussion of the situation in Jefferson County where students are protesting their school board's review of the U.S. history curriculum. The school board feels that the A.P. U.S. history curriculum does not stress "American exceptionalism" and doesn't represent our country in a positive light.
We moved from here to a gallery walk with seven hypothetical situations in which school staff restrict free speech or expression. These situations were on the walls. Students marked whether school officials were violating students' First Amendment rights. This led to showing a student-made video about the landmark cases on student free speech, Tinker v. Des Moines from 1969. The video discusses not only Tinker but other important court decisions on student free speech such as Fraser (1986) and Hazelwood (1988). I provided a quick summary of those case.
We then divided into four groups and read about recent situations that have come up. These included the infamous "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, the controversy over homophobic slogans on t-shirts, controversial breast cancer awareness bracelets, and some information from the Student Press Law Center about prior review and prior restraints. Reading these articles took us to break.
After break I showed a final clip from our free speech video "Shouting Fire" about the controversy over a student wearing an anti-gay t-shirt to school. Each group then summarized the cases they had read about and we tied them back to terms on our list. Armed with these nuances we revisited the hypotheticals posted around the room. Would the students have a First Amendment claim in these situations? In some yes, in others no.
We ended by writing a post on which school 1st amendment claim or restriction students felt most strongly about. I then checked in with each group about their issue group presentations on Wednesday. Most of tomorrow's class will be spent doing final preparation for these presentations.
Homework for Tuesday, October 7th
Learning Journal #2 - What First Amendment freedom do you value most? What degree of restriction on this freedom would you tolerate and why? What restriction or suppression on this freedom would cause you to go to court?
Explain your reasoning and provide an example. Full-credit answers will likely be around 300 words or one page double-spaced.
Test corrections are due tomorrow.
Continue to work on your group presentations
Today, I posted 20 terms or principles that we have studied in the last three weeks. I challenged the class to see if they could connect the terms to today's discussion. My interest is in having the class retain and apply this information in the context of a discussion such as the one we had today. I told the class if they can connect our discussion to 18 out of our of 20 terms by the end of class, everyone would get ten points on their formative assessment.
We started with a video and short discussion of the situation in Jefferson County where students are protesting their school board's review of the U.S. history curriculum. The school board feels that the A.P. U.S. history curriculum does not stress "American exceptionalism" and doesn't represent our country in a positive light.
We moved from here to a gallery walk with seven hypothetical situations in which school staff restrict free speech or expression. These situations were on the walls. Students marked whether school officials were violating students' First Amendment rights. This led to showing a student-made video about the landmark cases on student free speech, Tinker v. Des Moines from 1969. The video discusses not only Tinker but other important court decisions on student free speech such as Fraser (1986) and Hazelwood (1988). I provided a quick summary of those case.
We then divided into four groups and read about recent situations that have come up. These included the infamous "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, the controversy over homophobic slogans on t-shirts, controversial breast cancer awareness bracelets, and some information from the Student Press Law Center about prior review and prior restraints. Reading these articles took us to break.
After break I showed a final clip from our free speech video "Shouting Fire" about the controversy over a student wearing an anti-gay t-shirt to school. Each group then summarized the cases they had read about and we tied them back to terms on our list. Armed with these nuances we revisited the hypotheticals posted around the room. Would the students have a First Amendment claim in these situations? In some yes, in others no.
We ended by writing a post on which school 1st amendment claim or restriction students felt most strongly about. I then checked in with each group about their issue group presentations on Wednesday. Most of tomorrow's class will be spent doing final preparation for these presentations.
Homework for Tuesday, October 7th
Learning Journal #2 - What First Amendment freedom do you value most? What degree of restriction on this freedom would you tolerate and why? What restriction or suppression on this freedom would cause you to go to court?
Explain your reasoning and provide an example. Full-credit answers will likely be around 300 words or one page double-spaced.
Test corrections are due tomorrow.
Continue to work on your group presentations