On September 8 the President will be talking directly to the nation’s children. Unprecedented: Obama to Address All Public School Students via Video Stream into Nation’s Classrooms
On September 8, the Department of Education plans to run streaming video of President Barack Obama into the nation’s public school classrooms. Teachers and students are carving time out their learning schedule to hear the President speak. The the exact subject of his speech is unclear at this point, but it’s likely to revolve around his signed resolution marking September 11th as a “National Day of Service.”
From the pre-kindergarten–6th grade Menu of Classroom Activities:
Before the Speech:
• Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?
During the Speech:
• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:
What is the President trying to tell me?
What is the President asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?
• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?
• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.
After the Speech:
• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:
What do you think the President wants us to do?
Does the speech make you want to do anything?
Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?
H/T Michelle Malkin
I wish my grandchildren didn’t go to public schools! “PERIOD”!!
My 9 year old daughter will get a the full story repeated to hear the evening of September 7th. That way it will be fresh in her mind before she gets this onslaught of information attempting to take the focus off of what happend in 2001 and put it on something else. There are plenty of other days he could have chosen for his “National Day of Service”–it is wrong for him take that day and attempt to “change” it into something other that the 9/11 we have remembered, prayed about and will continue to pray about..
I have already told my facebook freinds about this ,and to give the president the “correct” answers so we wont be targeted for further propoganda. I suggest we all do the same.
This is totally inappropriate for the President of the United States to inflict His will on our children. It is one thing to speak publicly on the prime time television, which every America has the RIGHT to either listen or to change the channel, if they wish not to listen. That is our right. The last time I checked our children that were born to the United States, and are American citizens, do not have to endure this type of enforcement, and us the parents should not have to endure such powerful Will of the President of the United States. He is abusing the power of the office.
They are innocent bystanders, and should not have to endure the politics, the history, or the opinion of the President, if we choose our children to hear or not. All historians view history in his or her own way, such as we view politics, and historic events to our own opinion, and this should not be happening in our childrens classrooms.
If we do not have the option to pray and praise God in schools, then we should have the same option of having to watch the President. It is wrong on every level.
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Thank god W Bush never wanted to address our kids. That intellectual nincompoop would have set back our education system back about 5 years.
I highly doubt the President is going to address anything politcal. (duh) There is nothing wrong with the leader of our country wanting to offer positive reinforcement to our children.