Period 2 - Angel Rodriguez

[CALIS]

Thank you for participating in TIRP service-learning outreach!

Your reports are the basis for academic credit.  Whether or not you are seeking a credit option, reports are required as a university record of service-learning efforts and impact in local schools.

Required Format:
Session 1 materials: [The first line of your report is the session number and full title of the database item(s).]
Focus Q: [On a new line, list your focus question from your TAP form. If you changed the question then add the new version after the TAP version.]
*** For the minimum of 3 student specifics, do not refer to students by name; instead call them Student A, B or C.
*** For the minimum of 500 words, guiding questions are here: https://www.forums.usc-calis.net/showthread.php?tid=297

Use clear paragraph structure. If you include too much focus on the step-by-step process of the lesson rather than substance, you may be asked to revise your report.
*** The webboard is public. If you include names, commentary or observations, you will need to revise your post.

To Post:
1. For each report, select Post Reply.  (Do not select New Topic)
2. Copy/paste from your Word file and save a copy until after the semester is over.
3. Before pasting, confirm that you have met the minimum of at least 500 words.
4. Each report must be submitted by midnight within 3 calendar days after each session.

A CALIS staff member will review your report each week and post a message below of the scoring for your performance evaluation.
We welcome any questions or concerns you have about scoring.
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Session #1 report
On time: 0/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student specifics: 6/6
Total: 12/15
Comments: Excellent report, Angel! I enjoyed reading your descriptions about how you carry out activities to make the students more engaged, as well as specific students’ answers and responses. Great job!

LY 11/2

Session #2 report
On time: 0/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student specifics: 6/6
Total: 12/15
Comments: I love reading your thoughts about why you chose specific materials to to cover the lesson. In addition to detailing students’ responses, I can also see the three of you all collaborating to make the lesson as engaging as possible. Lastly, making a connection to the materials you learn in classes is also a nice touch. Great job!

LY 11/2

Session #3 report
On time: 0/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student specifics: 6/6
Total: 12/15
Comments: This is an excellent report, Angel! I love how you took the teacher’s feedback and used them to improve your session. I also love how you mentioned each specific student in different way, including responding to questions, raising questions, and debating with each other. Good job!

LY 11/3

Session #4 report
On time: 3/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student specifics: 6/6
Total: 15/15
Comments: Excellent Job, Angel, I’m glad you enjoy the TIRP program, and welcome back for the upcoming semesters!

LY 11/3

[Angel Rodriguez]

TIRP Session 1- Johnson John Period 2

Session 1 Materials: “Name that Tune! Distinguish Levels of Analysis in US Foreign Policy Making,” Levels of Analysis Powerpoint, Prisoner's Dilemma Activity

Focus Question: How can we apply the 3 different levels of analysis to analyze a countries’ foreign policies? How can we apply the prisoner’s dilemma to explain countries behavior and what is its connection to International Relations?

The first session particularly focused on getting the students familiar with the study of International Relations and the ways in which we can analyze a war and behaviors from individuals, states, and the international system in its entirety. In our initial phone call with the teacher, Mr. Johnson John, he communicated to us that the students (protected class) engaged best with presentations (visuals) and engaging activities, so we started with a simple powerpoint that went over the general concepts and key terms. For the individual level, we introduced vocabulary such as actors, aggression, racism, hubris, etc. On the national level, topics included public opinion, domestic pressure groups, economic interests, imperialism, military capability, etc. Finally, on the international level, we introduced terms such as balance of power, allies, deterrence, and sovereignty. After I finished going over the system (international) level of analysis, student A raised their hand and stated they were confused over the difference between the national and international level of analysis and said they needed clarification about the concepts of sovereignty and anarchy. We responded to this by clarifying that at that national level states are individual actors and the international system can be seen as a “playing field” with alliances and structure. We found that we mostly needed to clarify the difference between sovereignty and anarchy for the students to understand the difference between the power a state has within its own territory and its relationship to other countries.

After going through key terms, we played a quick activity of the prisoner’s dilemma, in which students were split into groups of 2 and given a blank index card and instructed to write either “confess” or “keep silent” without talking to each other. The students then had to flip their index card and share with their partner. We shared the potential deals based on their responses. The prisoner's dilemma activity was used to highlight the concepts of cooperation and iteration in causes for conflict and relations between nations. We asked students to share their thoughts about their decisions to keep silent or confess, and student B raised his hand and shared that if he would have known his pattern’s response on the index card, that would have influenced his decision to reach a potential deal. This was a perfect opportunity for us to highlight the importance of cooperation and sometimes that lack of information between nations.

The last part of our first session focused on the “Name that Tune” activity using the War of Iraq to apply the different levels of analysis. To make it more engaging, we split the students into groups of 3 to answer the questions on their own as we walked around to facilitate conversation. As I approached different groups, student C asked me a specific question about the role of the UN on the international system because they didn’t understand the power the UN had. I was happy to hear that they had recognized the UN playing a role in the international system, and clarified the concept of anarchy and the limitations of the UN. We came together as a class to share responses, though we found it difficult to get students to speak to the entire class. We noticed that it was the same 3 students responding to our questions, and Mr. Johnson John suggested that we begin cold calling, which proved to be effective. It was still clear that because they were a sheltered class, cold calling was intimidating so we allowed the use of “phoning a friend.”

Overall, the session was very productive in introducing the concepts of LOA. Students enjoyed working with their peers, though we did notice it was important we walked around the room to facilitate conversation and prevent distractions.

[Angel Rodriguez]

TIRP Session 1- Johnson John Period 2

Session 1 Materials: “Name that Tune! Distinguish Levels of Analysis in US Foreign Policy Making,” Levels of Analysis Powerpoint, Prisoner's Dilemma Activity

Focus Question: How can we apply the 3 different levels of analysis to analyze a countries’ foreign policies? How can we apply the prisoner’s dilemma to explain countries behavior and what is its connection to International Relations?

The first session particularly focused on getting the students familiar with the study of International Relations and the ways in which we can analyze a war and behaviors from individuals, states, and the international system in its entirety. In our initial phone call with the teacher, Mr. Johnson John, he communicated to us that the students (protected class) engaged best with presentations (visuals) and engaging activities, so we started with a simple powerpoint that went over the general concepts and key terms. For the individual level, we introduced vocabulary such as actors, aggression, racism, hubris, etc. On the national level, topics included public opinion, domestic pressure groups, economic interests, imperialism, military capability, etc. Finally, on the international level, we introduced terms such as balance of power, allies, deterrence, and sovereignty. After I finished going over the system (international) level of analysis, student A raised their hand and stated they were confused over the difference between the national and international level of analysis and said they needed clarification about the concepts of sovereignty and anarchy. We responded to this by clarifying that at that national level states are individual actors and the international system can be seen as a “playing field” with alliances and structure. We found that we mostly needed to clarify the difference between sovereignty and anarchy for the students to understand the difference between the power a state has within its own territory and its relationship to other countries.

After going through key terms, we played a quick activity of the prisoner’s dilemma, in which students were split into groups of 2 and given a blank index card and instructed to write either “confess” or “keep silent” without talking to each other. The students then had to flip their index card and share with their partner. We shared the potential deals based on their responses. The prisoner's dilemma activity was used to highlight the concepts of cooperation and iteration in causes for conflict and relations between nations. We asked students to share their thoughts about their decisions to keep silent or confess, and student B raised his hand and shared that if he would have known his pattern’s response on the index card, that would have influenced his decision to reach a potential deal. This was a perfect opportunity for us to highlight the importance of cooperation and sometimes that lack of information between nations.

The last part of our first session focused on the “Name that Tune” activity using the War of Iraq to apply the different levels of analysis. To make it more engaging, we split the students into groups of 3 to answer the questions on their own as we walked around to facilitate conversation. As I approached different groups, student C asked me a specific question about the role of the UN on the international system because they didn’t understand the power the UN had. I was happy to hear that they had recognized the UN playing a role in the international system, and clarified the concept of anarchy and the limitations of the UN. We came together as a class to share responses, though we found it difficult to get students to speak to the entire class. We noticed that it was the same 3 students responding to our questions, and Mr. Johnson John suggested that we begin cold calling, which proved to be effective. It was still clear that because they were a sheltered class, cold calling was intimidating so we allowed the use of “phoning a friend.”

Overall, the session was very productive in introducing the concepts of LOA. Students enjoyed working with their peers, though we did notice it was important we walked around the room to facilitate conversation and prevent distractions.

[Angel Rodriguez]

TIRP Session 3- Johnson John Period 2
Session 3 Materials: World War I Textbook Passage Levels of Analysis + Response Questions
Focus question: How can the different levels of analysis be analyzed in considering the events of World War I? How can we identify the involvement of different actors?

The third session was the session in which we put all of the concepts we’d been covering into practice. We chose to use the World War I textbook passage because Mr. John told us that it is a war they had not covered in their regular class. We thought that for this reason, it was especially valuable to cover World War I, consider its complex components, and study it through the lens of International Relations. Because World War I had so many factors to it and actors involved, we figured this was the perfect example to put the different levels of analysis into play.

Prior to doing this session, my group got together, reviewed our first two teacher feedback forms, and brainstormed on the different ways in which we could improve our teaching style and become more engaged with the students. Some of the things we noted were that in our first two sessions, we heard responses from the same few students and there were some students who were losing focus. When we realized that the WWI textbook passage was a lot longer than the other ones we’d been covering in our first sessions, we found this the perfect opportunity to get everyone involved. When we started the session, we let everyone know that we would do popcorn reading, as opposed to individual or small groups in which we noticed some students would get distracted. The passage had enough material so that we could hear from the majority of the class. As students called on one another to read the material, we found the engagement from the students to skyrocket, and they became more comfortable with one another. One of the challenges when doing this, however, was that some of the students read very slowly and had trouble with pronunciation, which slowed down our pace by quite some time. To aid the students in getting through the passage and ensure understanding, we began trading off with them and reading some of the sections.

Student A started us off with the popcorn reading as the first reader. Student A had to cover the paragraph over nationalism and imperialism. When student A finished reading, we asked them to explain to the class the concept of nationalism and how they could relate it to causes of war. Student A was able to correctly define nationalism as the devotion to interests of one’s own nation and stated that nationalism could influence actors at the individual level in the three levels of analysis.

As we continued reading through the passage, we asked students who look out for and take note of the answers to the post-passage questions to check for understanding. Because the teacher asked the students to turn in the worksheet at the end of class for credit, all of the students were engaged in writing down the answers. As student B read the section covering “Americans Question Neutrality,” student B was able to answer the first question asking about neutrality of the U.S. Student B was able to correctly cite the text by answering that Americans didn’t see a reason to join a war so far away mainly due to the fact that their lives or property was not threatened. When student B made this comment, student C raised their hand and stated that they thought public opinion in the U.S. was divided which affected the national level of analysis. Student C, by extension, was able to answer the second question regarding why the U.S. decided to actually enter into the war.

By having students popcorn read and answer the questions as they came up, identifying key concepts and constantly relating them to the different levels of analysis, we found the class to be more engaged and have a better understanding of the material. This activity helped us to realize that having students present their thoughts to the class was a valuable way of making sure everyone was understanding the material, and took note of it for our last session.

[Angel Rodriguez]

TIRP Session 4- Johnson John Period 2
Session 4 Materials: Three U.S. 19th Century Wars Case Comparisons, War of 1812, Spanish-American War, Mexican-American War textbook passages
Session 4 Focus Question: Are there factors of war common across different wars? How do they compare? Do they contribute to war today?

The last session was the culmination of everything we had been teaching throughout the first three sessions. For the last session, we decided to do the three U.S. 19th century wars case comparisons. Prior to doing this session, we recognized that case comparisons required a deep understanding of the 3 different wars. Thus, we divided up the wars amongst the students to allow students to dive deeper into each one to make their case.

There were 27 students, so we had 9 students in each war and 3 subgroups within them. We also recognized from our prior sessions that to increase student engagement and participation, we had to figure out a way in which we could have more students speaking to the class. We did this by making students prepare “presentations” for the class. Each group was tasked with reading the assigned passage amongst themselves and filling out the levels of analysis chart identifying factors at each level, while also coming up with a general summary of the war and its causes. We allowed students 20 minutes to prepare their presentation. During the 20 minutes, each of us walked around the classroom to facilitate conversation and ensure students were understanding the war that they were assigned.

As I went around the classroom, student A raised their hand and called me over. Student A was assigned the war of 1812 and asked whether Congress leaders being called “war hawks” could be considered for the individual level. I answered the question by clarifying that leaders in Congress are individual actors with influence, and specifically Henry Clay and John C Calhoun in the war of 1812 were considered nationalists and eager to go to war with Britain. I think there was confusion amongst the students on the kinds of actors that could be considered under the individual level of analysis, so I found this to be a valuable question. Similarly, in discussing the Mexican-American war, student B mentioned they were confused on the influence of individual actors in the war because of the instability of who was in office. I directed the student to the section of the passage in which it discussed northerners referring to the war as “Polk’s war,” and clarified that Polk ultimately  had the largest influence in calling for the annexation of other territories. When the 20 minutes were up, a representative from each group went up in front of the class to present the different factors of war that they identified depending on the war that they were assigned. As students in the audience listened, they also jotted down the points the presenters were making on their chart so by the end of the activity, everyone’s chart would be filled out completely for all of the wars. When presenting the Spanish-American war, student C explained to the class that they had difficulty pinpointing factors at the international systemic level. The other groups that focused on the war responded by being helpful and explaining some of the things they were able to identify.

Once a representative from each group had presented, we ended the session with a quizzez activity in which we asked all of the students to pull out their laptops and join a fun competitive quiz on the big screen on the quizzez website. The questions on the quizzez website asked students about all of the terms we had taught them and general concepts on the levels of analysis. The students had a lot of fun with the activity, because there was a dashboard that showed how well the class was doing. I was surprised at the end because the winner of the quiz had answered most of the questions correctly and proved to have learned a lot.

Overall, I really enjoyed the TIRP program because it showed me how valuable it is for everyone to learn about concepts that concern the relationships between nations and causes of war. The TIRP program definitely aligns with my goals and studies at USC as an International Relations and Public Policy major. It was really fun to teach these concepts because I was learning them in class at the same time, and there’s no better way to learn than to teach it yourself! I realized how difficult it can be teaching a class and trying to gain everyone’s attention, but I definitely developed some valuable skills in this aspect.