Schools
New Textbooks, New Research
Vernon Board of Education approves textbook purchases and a request for civics research.
The Vernon Board of Education has approved a textbook adoption plan and the school system will be spending $28,834 on books as a result.
That will leave a balance of $22,377 in this year’s new textbook account, school officials said.
The school board reviews textbook options every year at this point in the calendar. This year, eight proposals were submitted and eight were approved.
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Technology education made up three of the eight, while two were world language. The others were language arts (writing and grammar), social studies, and family consumer sciences. The purchases will apply to the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Also the school board endorsed a request by John Zack, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Connecticut, to conduct research at Rockville High School civics classes.
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The study will focus on Civil Rights in America. Zack was approved for a three-day study with a sophomore class at Rockville High School, in three of Sarah Dagon’s college-level civics courses.
The 24 civics students will be engaged in a three-day unit that centers on California’s Proposition 8 and the California District Court trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Written parental consent will be obtained before any students participate in the study.
During the week of the project, each of the three classes will be taped, and each class will be observed by Zack and Dagon while students participate in a mock trial. Each student would have a different role within the court system, and the theme of the experiment is teaching social justice. The project would focus primarily on the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
