Real Life Decision Making and an Argument Essay

A lot of what we learn in class does not directly impact the students or someone they know. There were two instances when current events had a direct impact on someone they knew. One was the civil unrest in Syria as we had a Syrian family with relatives there. The mom came to talk to me about the horrors going on, and asked me to make sure we discussed the positive things about the people in that country as well as the negativity in the news - which we did.

A second situation involved our former Superintendent. He had been doing mission work in South Sudan for a few years, and was debating returning for another visit. However, the political climate there was uncertain as well. Since all the students knew him well being that it was a very small school district, we spent two weeks learning about South Sudan and the civil unrest going on, learning about his mission work and how it benefited the people there, reading his blog and inviting him in for a visit.

Throughout all of this, students took notes with the essential question in mind: should he return for another trip.

All year we had been learning how to write argument essays, and this was another perfect opportunity for them to practice their writing with a real-life situation on the balance. While we had done meaty outlines of argument writing, we hadn't fully fleshed one out and this gave us a good chance to do so.

We moved through the steps of research, writing an introduction, using text evidence, deciding on a thesis and organizing information, transition sentences, body paragraphs, counter arguments, and conclusions. We did peer editing and sent them on to the superintendent to help him make a choice.

He did ultimately return to his mission work in South Sudan, though I believe it was a year later after things had settled down. In the end, the students took part in real-life decision making.