Joshua Block

Humanities Teacher at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. Passionately believes that education is a tool to help people understand and transform their individual and collective realities.

Busy, Busy, Busy

This is a nice time of year for my classes. We have quite a bit going on in both Globalization and World History. Here is a snapshot of some of what went on today: Student playwrights are leading rehearsals of their plays that investigate issues of hope and struggle in preparation for performances next week. Here […]Read Post ›

What Kids Can Do Writes About Modern Day de Tocquevilles

I am thankful to Barbara Cervone of What Kids Can Do for writing this wonderful article about our Modern Day de Tocqueville projects. I was particularly touched by the poignant and insightful student quotes.

The Nobodies –> Somebodies

This past week my World History students studied modern day Haiti. The students made timelines, analyzed political cartoons, read an article by Jean Paul Aristide, read an excerpt from Paul Farmer about charity, development, and social justice, and watched the wonderful film The Agronomist made by Jonathan Demme about Haitian Jean Dominique. (A couple of […]Read Post ›

Global Fiction Character Sketches

My Globalization students are currently reading several different works of Global Fiction with the goal of immersing themselves in other cultures. Below are some pictures of a recent character sketch assignment.

(Re)Creating Poets

[Cross-posted on Edutopia] The wonderful poet Naomi Shihab Nye first introduced me to William Stafford’s idea that no one becomes a poet. She says that we are all born poets, and it’s just that some of us choose to keep up the habit. At times, all of us inevitably get stuck viewing ourselves in static and limiting ways. When […]Read Post ›