It is Super Bowl Sunday and the game has not yet been played, thus I don’t know the outcome. Regardless, the city of New Orleans is a treasure for America, and has “done good” by Pebble Creek as well. New Orleans is a unit in our ninth grade curriculum, and it’s been a student fav and game changer for hundreds of high school classrooms. It is typically taught as the second unit of the year. The first unit has changed over the years, and regardless of its topic, is always a difficult task. Students come to high school fighting school and literacy work. Yet, when the New Orleans unit comes around, inevitably things turn. Routines and procedures are kicking in, teachers are finding their stride with strategies and curriculum design, and kids are starting to become students. It is a great thing, and has been a savior unit for many a classroom.

Curiously, it has also been a community builder. The stories I could recount of unit ending celebrations are long and legandary… door decorating contests (with Mardi Gras themes and masks), Mardi Gras parades, King Cake parties, lunches and after school dances with local bands and Gumbo feeds. Scores of teachers have told me how this unit turned the corner for their class, bringing it together, and kicking the learning into a new gear.

The story of New Orleans keeps growing. The city gets under your skin. As I write in the introduction of the unit, there are few places as rich, with such an intoxicating mix of mystery and history, lure and lore, dandies and randies.

Who knew it’d also be a source for changing the learning trajectory of thousands of high schoolers? Who dat indeed!