Day 66 -Youtube is their language

The beginning of U.S. Imperialism Unit was altered a little this morning after I heard Pres. Obama's speech on NPR. I had already been dancing around the idea in my head on whether to use the freshly published NEWSELA article on Paris or not.  He had me at ISIL. ( Bad joke) Yes, I could not have better timing or luck to start a unit where I need students to care about foreign affairs and relations the U.S has with other countries.  Starting with the horror in Paris and getting clear with the students on the thus far known facts, while discussing what should the U.S. do or not do and how much responsibility does the U.S. have in all of this, I think really got the students sucked in. I did stoop down to the media's level and show footage from someone's cell phone on youtube, of  people running from the Bataclan and pulling bodies out.  It got their attention. Youtube is their language.
I have hopes that as we go through various early U.S. "interventions" and look at these actions and place them on a spectrum we can go back and forth with current events and the same spectrum.  I want them to have a strong curiousity and  healthy skepticism about what actions our government has taken in the past, takes now and into their future.