Biography

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress” Frederick Douglass, 1857.

This yearlong honors course is for 10th graders who have a passion for American history and are ready to enlist their time, effort, and talents in advancing their critical reading and writing skills, and are looking to challenge and elevate their historical thinking. In choosing this course, students are signing up for high expectations for class participation and engagement with course materials, activities, and assignments. This course is for those who are curious about how our past shapes our present world and care deeply about political, economic, social and cultural change and continuity over time. This class will require students to analyze the causes and long-term effects of important historical events, including the formation of our institutions and ongoing struggles to achieve “a more perfect union” and to connect these events to the systems that affect Americans’ lives today. Students will be encouraged to think critically about how America functions as a nation, and how it relates to and influences other nations on the global stage.

Prerequisite: Recommendation from 9th grade Modern World History teacher.