California. Tell us about your school and your students. I am fortunate to be able to teach a population that is almost entirely firstgeneration american. Bilingual coming into their english language skills. Teach students who want to learn. Immigrant children love learning. Their parents are super invested. I get to be the guide to teach them about those connections to American History and World History and the government and help them see their place within this country that sometimes does not always treat them as part of it. You said you were moving in the coming fall. Taught in the past . I was the only history teacher so i ran the whole gamut of World History, u. S. History, and government and this year entirely on government. When you say focused on government, one of the topics that class covers . I am fortunate to get the whole year of government. We get to go over the branches, the functions of government, all the Different Levels but i get to have the time to talk about media. And their place in it. We take time to learn about journalism and media studies. Those are all a part of government. We get to write things about how to vote and they get to research and so we get to see not just how government functions but how we participate in the functioning of that government. You talk about one of the llenges that exist, your you are teaching mainly firstgeneration american kids, what are the other challenges in getting concepts of the constitution, government, and washington across to High School Students . In general, history is hard to convince people that it is not just a thing that happened before but is a thing that is happening now. History feels like something in the distant past that we do not get a say in. I hope to make those connections for my students that these are issues we are still reckoning with. Seven cares that john adams tried to limit free speech . It is important to our conversation today about what is hate speech and what should be allowed and part of the discussion online and so it takes making those connections for them that they may not make themselves. What political issues are figures are the most talked about among your students . Donald trump is the person number one, they will always come in, miss, did you hear, did you see, can you believe . And we get to talk about the historical significance and those relationships and we get to put things into context. , we could016 debate go back and we watched the 1960 president ial debate, how cordial they were to each other. Kennedy and and were so nice to each other. We can trace were those shift about not talks holding his opponents and experience against him. We can trace were those happened, where they become more partisan. It is not just about saying here is something that is crazy that happened but how did we get here . How can we figure out and navigate our way back . Whether it is President Trump or issues and political history, how hard is it for you as a teacher to keep your views in check a little bit and listen to what they have to say . Most important thing that i see my role as is teaching them how to think independently. That starts with research. How can you conduct research to verify things you find online . We like to think as adults that young people are geniuses with technology. These digital natives, they know exactly what they are doing. They know the shortcuts and the lingo but they dont actually have any reasoning skills about what they see online. , the adults,rs parents dont think we can teach our Kids Technology skills but we have to they dont know in daily how to verify if something is true or not they see online. They see conspiracy theories on youtube and they take it as gospel truth. Them howre of teaching to identify what is true and what is not, we can apply those to politics as well. It is the same thing when a politician says something, is it true, what is proven, lets go back to the tape. Cspan has an important place in that. It is not just a soundbite. Were students and i obsessed with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. I did not anticipate that. I flipped around my lesson plan and they got to do these mock congressional hearings, they pretended to be people on the Senate Judiciary committee and we watched cspan, we watched the full coverage, we watched the committee hearings, we watched our senators engaging and going back and forth and they could see what it was like. The politicsut behind everybodys choices and what they were saying. If you could bring those students to washington and take them to one place to teach a lesson, where do you think that would be in the nations capital, whether it is on capitol hill or elsewhere. I would like to take them off of capitol hill. We would spend a lot of time at the mall but the real history is in there other places. A lot of student groups do not get into southeast d. C. So getting to go somewhere like the isderick douglass house, it somewhere that people might not think of but it has this rich multicultural history that our students need to learn, especially my students. They see history as something that old white people did. And to show them that they have a place in that history as well. That is why i would like to take them to see the Frederick Douglass house and teach them about what he did. You are one of our teacher fellows, why did you apply in the first place . Uniquelt like i had a but becoming less unique perspective teaching english learners, teaching students who are immigrants. The face of america is changing and i have been on the front lines with those students and so i wanted to bring my perspective kid whoing a type of has been left behind and also developing my and practice as well and i have gotten to do that and i feel like after this month i am going to be a much better teacher for my students. You are here with your other teacher fellows and the other teachers coming in for that conference developing curricula for middle and High School Students. What are some of the interesting ideas or practices that you have heard from your colleagues . Zach and maureen have been prolific. They have been taking on the task of doing state history which is something a lot of medical middle School Teachers need. It is easy to find the National Stuff online but something specific about north dakota, that is harder. They have been digging through cspans library, finding the citys tours and getting those fun stories that you would not expect. That the Mormon Church and salt lake city, they built that and were able to build that because the and it polygamy. They were not able to get federal funding to help them until the ended polygamy. These little stories that you well, it is really small to a place but also has these big political ramifications. Getting to see how we can find ourselves within a more local context and make those larger connections. You have a better understanding of a policy or process of the government that you did not before that you can relate to your kids a little easier now . I think that it has been a real delight to have going on in the background the gavel to gavel coverage. All day i have that on the screen right next to me. You get to see those little moments that get missed, you get to see those Little Things that are congresspeople due to connect back home that they dont get covered but they are always out there sharing a picture of someone who is important and local. We think of them as national figures, maybe because our needy media is so nationalized but making those connections to all aree Little Things that congresspeople do that connect us to them, are local to the national our local to the national, i have been able to see and experience. You wrench and the Frederick Douglass house, what other fun things did you do . Part indo jazz in the the National Sculpture garden, i have gotten together a couple of and dollar tickets to games it has been taking the time to be in a place for so long. We have been here for a month. It is not a two day whirlwind around d. C. But taking the time to start spreading out to different places, start spreading out beyond that core boundary that most of us think of when we picture d. C. It has been a real delight to get to live in a place and feel like i know where i am going and i am not just hanging around. As you head back to california, a new high school, is there a followup process to what you have learned here . I will be moving to a much bigger high school this coming year and i will have a full History Department to get to work with, not just me and a few other colleagues. I am excited to get to share this process, how we make resources, how to dive into that cspan library, 250 thousand hours of it. I would love to bring that practice to my fellow teachers might not just history teachers, there is content for english andrs teachers environmental studies teachers, there is lot we can pull from that resource. 29 2019 cspan teacher , thank you very much. For more information about Education Resources including lesson plans and our teacher fellowship program, go to classroom. Our coverage involves includes wrist Bader Ginsburg on her book, my own words. And david trier, the heartbeat of wounded knee. Sharon robinson talks about her book child of the dream. Rick atkinson author of the british are coming and thomas super discusses his book mines. The National Book festival live saturday, august 31 at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. Tomorrow the ceo of the Millennium Challenge Corporation discusses the future of that agency and how they distribute u. S. Foreign aid to economic annulment grants. The coverage begins at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. On q a, doug mills talks about photos covering President Trump. He enjoys having us around, i his constantte comments about fake news and the media and so forth, i feel he enjoys having us around because it helps drive his message, it helps strive the news of the day andh he can do every day does every day. He is constantly driving the message and therefore having us really allows him to do that. Sunday nights at it hot ham eastern on cspans q a. At a News Conference today House Democrats urged Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell to allow a vote on a gun background check build that passed the house earlier this year. The house was joined by some of his democratic colleagues and victims of gun violence. This is about 40 minutes