Academics

This class focuses on the essential question,” How do we solve the current crises in the world as positively as possible based on historical examples?” The current generation of students faces staggering challenges in the future. In order to cope with these challenges, they need more than the ability to fill in the right bubble on a standardized test. They need the ability to creatively analyze and solve problems. This course uses historical examples to teach the skills necessary to tackle the future. We look at how people have dealt with crises in the past as individuals and in societies. Then we look at the lessons we can apply from those past reactions. Finally, we examine the guidelines for living a worthwhile and morally defensible life so students have a target for crisis solutions. Content includes the Maya Collapse, school segregation in the U.S., Athenian, Stoic, and Enlightenment philosophy, the Haitian Revolution, literal and metaphorical blindness, and Gross National Happiness.

This is an option for exceptionally dedicated students who want more challenges and the chance to stretch themselves. In choosing this course, students commit to a more rigorous class. The demands will be greater and so will the rewards. This is a great choice for students who like to ponder big questions, tackle tough reading, and push themselves. This course will follow the basic outline of the regular 10th-grade curriculum at a deeper and more intense level. Honors students will have more difficult reading, more challenging assessments, and have higher standards for completed work.

United States History is a thematic, deep-dive study of historical events and issues that promote engagement with current events, trends, and movements. Who and what informs our historical past and why? What does our historical inheritance look like today? How has history been used, changed, re-interpreted, and redeemed by subsequent generations? The goal is to empower each student to match their opinion with historical scholarship and insight. The assessments are variable and include student choice. The class emphasizes genuine yet informed expression in a variety of modalities, such as essays, oral presentations, interviews, and digital expression. The overall aims of the course are as follows: to create profound and compelling writers and researchers, to evaluate historical bias and relevance, to speak with care and courage, and to listen with intention and awareness.

This course is designed to provide students with the analytical skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in U.S. History. Students will learn to assess historical materials – their relevance to a given interpretive problem, their reliability, and their importance – and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship. AP U.S. History will thus develop in students the skills necessary to arrive at conclusions based on an informed judgment and to present reasons and evidence clearly and persuasively in essay format. The teacher will contact you regarding the required summer reading. Students enrolled in AP U.S. History are required to take the AP exam in May. Summer and Winter Break work required.

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This course will examine through a series of case studies the extent to which the world has lived up to defending the agreed-upon human rights.  What are the pillars of democracy, authoritarianism, communism, fascism, socialism, and liberalism and how do they protect or trample human rights?  How do countries balance the rights of the nation with those of the individual?  How should the world community address human rights violations in other nation-states? What role does the United Nations play in defending human rights? Tensions between democracy and oligarchies, fascism and liberalism, individual and community, communism and capitalism, conflict and collaboration, will be discussed and analyzed in the course. Case studies will center on Modern Genocide, Europe since 1989, social justice based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender in the Americas, Africa since 1960, the current worldwide refugee crisis, and student input.

Read our New Course Spotlight on the CRMS blog to learn more about this class.