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About BaltimoreTeacher.com

BaltimoreTeacher.com is a teaching and learning portal by David Hildebrand.

This site is an outgrowth of six years of teaching Social Studies in Baltimore, Maryland. During the first year, I had become a "late career-changer" and had joined a School Immersion Master of Arts in Teaching program at the Johns Hopkins University.

The SIMAT program prepares teachers by combining full-time classroom immersion under a mentor teacher while completing the required credits for the Master of Arts at night and during the summer over a thirteen month period. I did my immersion at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and taught both American Government and World History.

Over the past seven years I've taught World History to 9th grade girls at Western High School in Baltimore. Recently I've also been teaching Government and US History. In 2009-2010, I am teaching only U.S. History— Regular, Honors and APUS.

The school is pretty unique— one of only a handful of single-sex all girls public schools in the United States, Western traces its history back to 1844— the oldest one in the United States. While it has moved from building to building over the years, since 1963 it has been the eastern part of the "Poly-Western Campus" [overhead photo] at the corner of Falls Road and Cold Spring Lane.

What is the Purpose of this Website?

The growth of both knowledge, the changes in the Social Studies, and the exponential expansion of information in digital formats and the presentation of it on the internet make for some big challenges: for students, teachers, and parents.

This site is not so much an attempt to catalog what we know or should be exploring, but to clarify, give perspective, and serve as a portal for departure on a journey to make sense of our world. I'm trying to integrate standards based learning with content, primary and secondary sources, and links to other places.

Because it is a resource for students and parents, I also index most of my course content for their use. Indeed, one perspective that strongly influenced me as I began the process of entering education was the parent viewpoint: most parents want to know what their kids are learning. Contact David Hildebrand

New with this Version

This is the sixth version of BaltimoreTeacher.com. The challenge throughout growing this site has been to find a way to "change it on the fly"—to keep it clean, indexed, updated, and the architecture extensible both with the growth of my own understanding and pedagogy, as well as the changes made in my classroom (and that I've been reteaching course content over again, and adding new courses such as AP US History and Government). Additionally, I've kept trying to give students unique content— something they can interact with and change. Also, there is a backend administrative module that allows changes as well as a "Lesson Planning" section that will allow me to integrate planning for the course with what the site actually does. This version (hopefully) will allow for all of this, including the capacity for every student to have their own page, submit work directly through their page, and present "webquests" to their own community. This module will be released with the 2009-2010 school year.

More...

Had this Childhood goal: to be BATMAN!
Before teaching, he spent eleven years working as a merchant in Chicago, Memphis and Washington DC.
Is married with three grown children.
Holds BA degrees in Bible and Sociology from Wheaton College, and a Master's Degree in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University.
Currently working on all things US History.
If he had time (and money), he would most like to pursue a PhD in history...
Maintains a Facebook page, and has Twitter, but is not very fond of it!
Has a link page at SIMPY and DIIGO...not sure which one he likes, or whether or not to invest more time in constructing his own
Has been experimenting with book publishing...working on "The Instrument"
Project: Middle School at Western
BLOGS at davidhildebrand.info

September 09, 2010