Rationale-Why this content? Why these skills? Why now?
Distance Decay
My unit will examine the consumer history and geography of the Englewood neighborhood where our school is located (much more on this in the section labeled "background"). My hope is to build on my students' prior knowledge about their own consumer identity and understanding of the city's history in order to help to extend this knowledge to examine the narrative of Englewood through the lens of consumer culture and using the tools and vocabulary of geography. There is great value in generating local- inquiry projects that increase student engagement through relevancy. The further we extend beyond the local, the more we have to work to find thematic connections to fight the decay of engagement due to distance. I have chosen to start with the local for that purpose.
Relative Location
This unit is situated at the beginning of our yearlong Human Geography laboratory course. It is meant to tap into the prior knowledge that students bring with them about their own consumer selves, the history of Chicago, and the lenses through which they see the neighborhood of Englewood. The students entering the lab course are a mixture of freshmen or seniors who all bring various experiences to our discussions. A science laboratory is guided by the inquiry process and driven by hypotheses, experiment, and conclusion. While not widely used in the humanities, there are many examples within the discipline that show how to model the laboratory format. 3
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