Page 31 - Menlo Magazine Summer 2019

Carmen adds, ” The Upper School’s student life theme for this year is ‘presence, purpose, perspective.’ With the recent changes that we’ve made to Upper School programs, we’re enabling our students to experience this theme first hand.”
While changes to Middle School history have been less extensive, teachers have been
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Agnes adds, “Student choice is an important part of the Middle School program. For example, we’ll have a topic and then students will take on a project of their own choosing, and as part of that project, they will go out and make a real-world connection to the topic...Students need to be able to connect to their own personal vision and their own
collaborating to ensure the program emphasizes critical writing, reading, and speaking, as well as study skills, to help familiarize students with historical thinking and a historical understanding of the individual and collective experiences of people across the world.
Eighth grade history teacher
Agnes Cho says, “We’re revamping textbooks and the curriculum to make it a bit more global so that sixth graders are already thinking about geography, religion, and politics and making connections
to where they are in the world and who they want to be. We’re also encouraging them to have agency.”
“I think that you have to incorporate the current world into the history classroom. It makes it more interesting for the students because they’ve maybe heard about things in the news, as opposed to what they’re reading in their history textbook. It’s our responsibility to connect the past to the present.”
mission...We hope they really feel that passion and connectedness.”
“The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect,” observes
Jill Lepore, American historian, author, and professor of history at Harvard. As Menlo strives to prepare students for the world, these ideals, coupled with the ability to think critically and be open to multiple perspectives, are essential pieces
of a 21st-century education. And, now, more than ever, they are core components of the study of history at Menlo. As Carmen concludes, “We can think of no better way to prepare our students to step out into the world.”
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