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Scholars World History Welcome Note
Hello Parents!
Welcome to the Scholar’s World History course. As I have stated several times to the students, this course may well be the most challenging course your child takes this year. There will be less daily homework than the average course, but there will be more projects (4 per semester). This often means most units will start with homework for a week or two, then a project is assigned which is due in 3 weeks. Thereafter, they should be devoting 3-5 hours per week on the projects. Most projects will require less than 20 hours of work. End of semester projects will require up to 40 hours of work.
Why project-based learning? First, it is how IB is taught the world over. Second, it allows students to begin thinking of themselves as researchers. If they want to learn something. . . anything . . . after this course they will have the tools to do so on their own.
With project based learning comes a whole process of learning how to break opinions up into arguments, and then finding credible sources to back up those arguments. And all of this hinges on a writing process that is clear, concise and written in an academic manner. Therefore, this class becomes more of a writing course as the year progresses. This means that by the end of this course, your child will be prepared to take a college level course with a research paper requirement and pass easily.
In order to more readily understand arguments and opinions, we will start off the course looking at where people get their ideas of right and wrong. I argue that understanding the idea of right and wrong from the perspective of multiple cultures allows us to guess at why people made certain choices in history. It also helps students start to form their own opinions for voting (which is just 3 short years away). More importantly for this course and the IB requirements, students will be able to argue for what they believe and defend (as well as they are able) from other people’s arguments (which means they need to guess at other people’s beliefs and respond to that in writing – an argumentative essay). Therefore, we will have a daily “Issue” in which I ask students to come up with their own opinion and list the morals related to that opinion. The students are Sophomores, and this is not yet Senior Government class, so I will purposefully avoid the more controversial issues like abortion. My goal is always to raise student’s awareness of their own morals and then defend them. While I am required to insist on tolerance, I do not want to change your student’s morals. I am certain you will hear about these discussions.
Talking about the current issues of the day on a very regular basis, should allow students to see how these issues come up again and again in history. (Example: California Marijuana legislation connected to Prohibition also connected to Adam Smith and his ideas of economic freedom - the "Invisible Hand"). So while the question at hand is about a current issue the hope is that the kids are connecting it to the larger historical context - and thinking things like "would I have voted for prohibition?" "are there things that always should be illegal?" "how does a society decide on how to regulate and create its own laws?" and "are their situations where economic arguments are favored over moral arguments as laws are created?" And if they can start to write in this historical manner where they connect historical events to the present and historical themes across time that is awesome.
The more important part of the daily issue however, is the attempted arguments being created in class. The students are supposed to make their basic argument as quickly as possible (under 2 minutes). Students often state their claim (moral) verbally and then are asked, "how does that connect to the issue?" This is the verbal daily example of taking their body paragraph and connecting it back to their thesis in an essay. This combined with the bucketing activities we do is hopefully leading students to the ability to make better and quicker argument choices. This will directly apply to the AP, ACT, SAT, and IB tests where each test is starting to highly favor document based questions and making an argument in support of a position. . . but more often than not, someone else's position. A student might have a quick simple argument idea, but by sharing the ideas in class, hopefully we see the complexity of the situation, and see some of the strongest arguments being made on each side. If a student can do this quickly (bucketing of argument choices) then perhaps students learn how to write the strongest argument that they can possibly write in 55 minutes (even if it isn't actually their opinion).
Daily Issue
Opinion = Thesis = Argument
Moral = Claim = Argument Support or Example = Body Paragraph
Contrasting Moral = Counterargument = "Many people believe _________, however . . . "
Lastly, we would like the students to start thinking in this rigorous manner as they write for their longer projects. There are so many possibilities of arguments that can be made, what type of regular practice do they have with choosing the best argument to make in a larger assignment? It probably shouldn't be their first idea. They might want to think about other perspectives and do the research first, then bucket, then make their choice. For example, "How are the French and American Revolutions so unique in world history?" And hopefully, there isn't a correct answer, but quite a few really good arguments.
Every student needs different types of support to be successful. You know best how to support your child. The biggest challenge to student success in the past has been procrastination. Do with that information what you will. If you would like to follow along, our class is outlined on my class website. Additionally, you can follow along in a program called Schoology as a parent observer AND you can get all of the class assignments sent to you by using Remind 101. The instructions for Remind are on the class website and your student can show you how to set that up. For access to Schoology, please email me, or come to Back to School Night and I will lead parents through signing up.
I am proud of this course and you will be proud of the skills your child acquires this year. They will work hard and often bring great conversations home. Please contact me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Michael Olavarri
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