Implementing District Standards
Specific California Content Standards
8.1.2 Analyze the philosophy of government expressed in the Declaration of Independence, with an emphasis on government as a means of securing individual rights (e.g., key phrases such as “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”). My students will look at the idea of all people being created equal as they learn about the race and class issues of both mass incarceration and immigration. They will also examine the government as a protector of rights when they analyze Supreme Court cases.
8.2.6 Enumerate the powers of government set forth in the Constitution and the fundamental liberties ensured by the Bill of Rights. Learning will connect to this standard by applying the 4th Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure) and the 14th Amendment (due process and equal protection) to treatment of immigrants in the United States by reviewing Court cases to determine what rights are extended or denied to people in the immigration process.
8.8.6 Describe the Texas War for Independence and the Mexican-American War, including territorial settlements, the aftermath of the wars, and the effects the wars had on the lives of Americans, including Mexican Americans today. This standard will come into play as students review the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the promise of citizenship for newly created Mexican-Americans. Students will learn that the war end of the Mexican American War and the broken promises of the subsequent treaty indeed had a lasting effect on the lives of Mexican Americans that continues into the present.
8.12.7 Identify the new sources of large-scale immigration and the contributions of immigrants to the building of cities and the economy…and discuss the new wave of nativism. In this unit students will uncover both the historical and ingoing need for cheap labor that continues to fuel cycles of both immigration and nativism.
California Historical Analysis Skills
Research, Evidence, and Point of View 4: Students assess the credibility of primary and secondary sources and draw sound conclusions from them. Students will be reviewing and analyzing a number of primary and secondary sources as they travel through this unit including transcripts of Supreme Court cases, newspaper articles and both written and visual texts. At all points students will be actively engaged with these sources, being asked to draw their own conclusions.
Historical Interpretation 1: Students explain the central issues and problems from the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place. My students will be asked to create several annotated and illustrated timelines and presentations that will generate practice opportunities for the skills in this standard.
Historical Interpretation 2: Students understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long- and short-term causal relations. Students will be given practice opportunities in making relevant connections between the two central ideas as they relate to individual rights and government protection of those rights which directly touches on the correlation theme in this specific standard.
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