Teacher Jamie Wilson’s maps and board at the front of her room.
At the beginning of this year there was a change in how the social studies credits were organized at the state level. This has changed the way teachers are teaching the material, along with how and what students must learn during a shortened period of time.
American history teachers Brittany Wood and Jamie Wilson have had to make some changes to the way they are teaching their curriculum this year.
“Typically in the past, the US history class has been two courses so, American History 1 covered exploration and colonization through reconstruction in 1877, and then American History 2 has picked up where that class left off and covered the rest of it,'' said Wilson.
Now that there is only a requirement for one American history course, Wilson and Wood have tried to change the way they teach the course to better fit the new time constraint they are facing.
“It's actually causing me and Ms. Wilson and the PLT to get really intentional about what we're teaching and how fast we teach it, but we also are creating new things to maybe teach more efficiently,” said Wood.
While American history courses are typically made up of lectures and notes, the new constraint has allowed Wood and Wilson to use new teaching methods and activities.
“Instead of doing lectures and notes because we had more time for that, we are condensing it and doing things like filling out this chart, making more interactive notes. Students are doing activities while they are building their own notes,” said Wood.
The time constraint is not the only thing that is different from previous years. The new course requirements now do not include anything before the French and Indian War.
“For American History 1 we no longer have to teach anything before the Revolutionary War, like the land bridge, North American civilizations, and the 13 Colonies. We start with the end of the French and Indian War and then go over causes for the Revolution and then we’re in the Revolution,” said Wood. “We did cut one unit in American 1, American 2 had no units cut out.”
The state cutting out these units from the curriculum could be due to the assumption that students had previously been taught the history of early America in middle school.
“I think the state's goal was to cut from the higher-level courses information that was supposed to be taught in middle school,” said Wood.
The reasoning behind these changes came with the addition of a new course in the required social studies curriculum in high school. Now all high school students must take a Personal Finance and Economics course.
“Students were required to take World History, Civics, American History 1 and American History 2,” said Wilson. “A few years ago the legislature passed a law saying that Economics and Personal Finance would be a required course, and it had to be a social studies course.”
Now that this course has been added, there is no longer room for two American History credits, resulting in the current requirement of only one American History credit.
“That changed our sequence so that World History is still basically the same, Civics is still basically the same, US History is condensed into 1 course, and then Economics and Personal Finance became the 4th social studies credit,” said Wilson.
All of these changes have resulted in a new course set-up that has required a lot of adaptation from teachers and students. The new teaching styles will offer a new and refreshing way to teach the course.
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