In the State of New Hampshire, all students - regardless of whether they are in kindergarten, 8th grade, graduate school or auto mechanic school - are required to study the Constitution in some way on Constitution Day, September  17th. Because the 17th falls on a weekend this year, the New Hampshire Department of Education announced that we teachers could teach Constitutional material on the Friday or Monday closest to the 17th at our discretion. 

While being told what to teach on a particular day is a little annoying to me on a philosophical level, it's really not that big a deal in practical terms. My 8th graders are in the middle of our Constitution Unit at the moment, so they are covered.

After some thought, I decided to address the Constitutional lesson with my 7th graders by showing them the video below, a rap about the life of Alexander Hamilton. Both classes I showed it to begged me to show it again immediately and asked me to post a link to it on our class blog.

It's that good.



Two Other Videos Which, While Not Being QUITE So Awesome, Are Still Pretty Awesome:

This one about the Declaration of Independence:



And this one about William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States. (History has not been kind to Taft, who had a truly remarkable career and was, by all accounts a decent and kind man with a razor-sharp intellect. Unfortunately, he was our fattest president and is best remembered today for having once gotten stuck in a bathtub.)



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