Humanities
My Vision for Humanities Class
Humanities class is all about understanding ourselves and the people around us. In my class, I hope to explore humanities through a variety of projects that will equip students with educational tools they can use long into their future. My main focus is to inspire students to ask questions about their world, and develop a passion for knowledge seeking. There are infinite ways to go about learning more about the world we live in. In Humanities, we will dive into literature, conversation, historical examples, research, and critical thinking, so students can explore the question of: What does it mean to be human? ​
My role as the teacher is to help guide them on their learning path. When it comes to my "teaching style" I always use the metaphor of a car. The student will always be in the driver seat. They are the one that gets to navigate through the emotional and educational experience. They will choose which road of interest they drive down, and ultimately are in charge of their choices and actions. My job isn't to tell them exactly where to go, but rather be someone who helps guide them through their journey. I might be the wheels that help push them over obstacles, the fuel that gives them encouragement to keep going, the windshield wipers to clear their sight when times get tough, the GPS to give them some direction when they feel lost, or the passenger who will be there to support them along the way.
Humanities Skills
Reading - Reading is a skill that is useful in all aspects of life. We will read a variety of text, where students will analyze, discuss, and reflect on the text. We will consume text not only for information, but to better our understanding of the world around us. Knowing how to break apart text helps our minds locate vital information that we can then use in our own lives. The practice of actively reading a text will not only help them in comprehension, but studies show it also improves writing and grammar skills as well.
Writing - Writing will be used to respond, reflect, and organize our thoughts. We will take a look at different writing styles and how you can use them to connect to the world. Here we will explore things like expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative. These will come in the form of reflections, responses, free writes, summary, poetry, and paragraphs.
History - We will dive into our past, and see how we an use history to make our current and future world better. History can teach us a lot about how our world functions, and by understanding the systems in place we can then go about improving those systems. We will also take a look at current events. Current events are extremely important for they have immediate relativity to the class. Here we can study them to help understand what obstacles we are facing.
Research - This is an important skill that radiates through most of the previous skills. Knowing ways to seek and find information is very important. Knowing how to check if a source is credible will help students be accurately informed, and know how to spot when things are attempting to mislead them.