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Sarah Cooper

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Category: Research

“My Must-Listen Podcast: ‘Teaching Hard History,'” MiddleWeb

October 8, 2018June 17, 2020 Sarah Cooper

I was way late to the podcast party. For a long time I had what I thought were good reasons: I don’t commute far. I like to listen to music, not words, while I exercise. I had a wonky old phone without enough memory… Continue reading

Posted in Civics, Research, Social Justice

“We Won’t Be Having Class Debates This Year,” MiddleWeb

August 21, 2018June 6, 2019 Sarah Cooper

As we start the school year, I’m just not feeling the debating spirit. Last November, I wrote about an electoral college debate gone awry in my eighth-grade history classes. The topic felt too stale and too political… Continue reading

Posted in Civics, Research

“An Op-Ed Project Based on Personal Choice,” MiddleWeb

July 29, 2018June 6, 2019 Sarah Cooper

Assigning opinion pieces on current issues gives our students voice and lets us hear their strong and sometimes fiery perspectives. When I’ve assigned op-eds in both world and U.S. history, students have responded best when… Continue reading

Posted in Civics, Research, Writing

“7 Ways to Help Students Do Research in the Stacks,” MiddleWeb

April 10, 2018June 6, 2019 Sarah Cooper

Asking students to use books for research sometimes feels old-fashioned even to me, an inveterate reader. So much exists online, in subscription databases and on the free web, and students instinctively reach for their phones or a keyboard to discover information. Yet doing research for my own master’s degree in history over the past few years… Continue reading

Posted in Research

“On the Best Days, Our Students Teach Us,” MiddleWeb

February 27, 2018June 8, 2019 Sarah Cooper

This week it has been even more of a pleasure than usual to spend time with eighth graders. They’ve been creating social reform concept maps, an oldie-but-goodie project that I… Continue reading

Posted in Research, Storytelling

“Can I Have a Do-Over? A Debate Gone Awry,” MiddleWeb

January 15, 2018June 8, 2019 Sarah Cooper

Most days, I feel reasonably positive about how my classes have gone, in this my 19th year of teaching. I usually have in mind tweaks or even overhauls for next year’s version of that topic, but rarely do I feel that an entire project has fallen short of my expectations. But last month… Continue reading

Posted in Civics, Research

“Meaningful Discussions with Nonfiction Texts,” CommonLit

September 6, 2017June 17, 2020 Sarah Cooper

Participation has always been one of the most difficult things to assess and encourage for my 8th grade history students. Sometimes the quietest students in discussion are the most devoted in their writing, and sometimes the most vocal students are not aware… Continue reading

Posted in Research

“How Three 1970s Musicals Probed Disillusionment with the American Dream,” Master’s Thesis, 2017

April 15, 2017June 5, 2019 Sarah Cooper

Three Broadway musicals from throughout the 1970s – Follies, A Chorus Line, and Annie – in the intentions of their creators and actors, in the reception by critics and audiences, and in the messages of the book and music themselves – reflected larger social issues of the time… Continue reading

Posted in Research

“Total War: Wrestling with a Scholarly Article,” MiddleWeb

July 27, 2016June 8, 2019 Sarah Cooper

In a never-ending search to infuse garlic and oregano into the plain marinara sauce of textbook history, sometimes I ask students to read a scholarly journal article or a chapter of a popular history book… Continue reading

Posted in Research

“Can’t I Just Choose My Own Topic?” Edutopia

October 6, 2014June 5, 2019 Sarah Cooper

So many times as an English and history teacher, I’ve rushed students through the first step of the research process: choosing a topic. Then we can move on to the real work — or so I’ve always thought. Recently, however… Continue reading

Posted in Research

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