Day 109: Impossible Expectations, Government Style

To continue my series on my freshmen world history class, I’d like to take moment to vent at the sheer lunacy of teaching “World History” as a year-long class at all.  I was laying out the remainder of the student objectives for the year, and reviewed the YAG (Year at a Glance) document provided by the state detailing what to cover when, with the corresponding standards.  Since we are currently on a 6-week grading period, here is supposedly what my year is supposed to look like:

1st Six Weeks Unit 01: Early Civilizations, 8000 BC – 500 BC (8 days for the entire unit) Unit 02: Celebrate Freedom Week (5 days for the entire unit) Unit 03: Classical Civilizations, 500 BC – 600 AD (14 days for the entire unit)	2nd Six Weeks Unit 04A: Diffusion of Ideas and Systems: The Middle Ages in Europe, 600 – 1450 (10 days for the entire unit) Unit 04B: Diffusion of Ideas and Systems: The Middle Ages in Africa and Asia, 600 – 1450 (12 days for the entire unit)	3rd Six Weeks Unit 05: Global Commerce, Renaissance and Reformation, 1450 – 1750 (20 for the entire unit)
4th Six Weeks Unit 06: Scientific and Economic Revolutions, 1750 – 1914 (13 days for the entire unit) Unit 07: Political Revolutions, 1750 – 1914 (10 days for the entire unit)	5th Six Weeks Unit 08A: Global Conflicts, 1914 – World War II (12 days for the entire unit) Unit 08B: Global Issues, Post World War II (1945) – Present (12 days for the entire unit)	6th Six Weeks Unit 09: Tying It All Together (20 days for the entire unit)

Source: TEKS Resource System

As next week is the end of our 4th six weeks, I should be wrapping up the French Revolution and the American Revolution and their effects on the entire world. But yesterday we studied Joan of Arc and the Spanish Inquisition.  Haven’t touched the Renaissance yet, or anything that has occurred in the Americas or European exploration.  We are literally two or three hundred years behind.  I was super proud that yesterday, 80% of my class could define “heretic.”  They’re 14, for goodness’ sake, and yesterday someone asked me if Muslims were considered Christian.  I write this not to make fun of the kid - it’s a very important question to know the answer to, and as he has grown up in a largely agnostic home and has never met a Muslim, or has ever read a Bible, he doesn’t know.  Totally clueless.  My little batch of 20 kiddos are so eager, and if I tried to cram everything the state wants them to learn into 48 minutes a day over 178 days, which includes absences, athletic events, and state standardized testing, they’d drown.  

What’s very sad is that our sophomore class this year will never take World History at all. Prior to this year, the social studies graduation plan looked like this:

Freshmen - geography

Sophomores - world history

Juniors - US history

Seniors - government and economics

With the change in a testing law, the only social studies test graduates must pass now is one in US history.  A decision was made to move US history to a sophomore year class, so that students can take all five required tests - algebra 1, English 1, English 2, biology, and US history - by the end of their sophomore year, giving the school more time to remediate if they didn’t pass.  It also allows juniors to take government and economics and be able to graduate a year early more easily.  In order to make this curriculum shift, sophomores and juniors are ALL taking US history at the same time this year, and all taking the end of course exam in May for the state, so next year, we will be on the new plan. We are basically eliminating geography as a class for the time being.  But this means this years sophomores took geography as freshmen and US history as sophomores - no world history at all, ever. Sad, sad.

I could go on and on about why history is important, but many people smarter than me have already written on this.  I am relieved my World History class is not a tested subject, because it gives me more freedom to draw connections and encourage critical thinking, which I couldn’t do if I had to make sure they memorized all those bolded words the state wants them to know for a multiple choice test.  Since my kids have to pass the US history test to graduate, I’ve been encourage to focus more on the parts of history that play a role in the history of the United States, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing, as at least they’ll be able to see their own role within history a little more clearly than a detailed analysis of the Ming Dynasty’s political reforms (I am just awful at Asian history.  I am a terrible history teacher).

I guess what saddens me the most, as I spend my brief 48 minute conference period, during which I also have to enter grades, make copies, and pump milk for baby Spartacus, is that, looking at the standards I am supposed to cover, I will never meet them.  I will never adequately teach my students what they say I need to. As a lifelong honors student who has always striven for As, it is unendingly irritating that I could never earn an “A” in teaching history, according to the standards the government has set out for me.  As a teacher, I will always look at these standards and feel sub-par, even though I can go in my classroom and see the value in the knowledge I am giving my students, see the excitement when they Google things outside of class to share, how hyped they are to stab each other with cardboard swords to mimic great global conflicts, and rip apart Mardi Gras beads to illustrate breakdown in trade due to conflict.  Of course, this doesn’t begin to touch on the devastating effects on standardized testing on the kiddos - my Year at a Glance document existed well before those tests were in place - and funny thing about history, there’s more of it every year….

I don’t really have a solution.  Just a small carved-out niche on the internet to vent.

To read more encouraging history posts in the last week, read about their response to Luther and King John I, coloring projects, or acting out the War of the Roses.