Rationale
This four-week unit plan is designed for high school twelfth-grade Social Science classes at William W. Bodine High School for International Affairs. Bodine is a magnet high school in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). Bodine is located in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood and serves roughly 550 students. Middle school grades, attendance, disciplinary records, state test scores, and other criteria determine student admission. The SDP operates as a Title I school district; under this policy, all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Over ninety-five percent of students at Bodine live below the poverty line. Students attend daily class periods of fifty-three minutes each. Bodine offers Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses to its upperclassmen. This unit can be used in AP and IB courses as well as for ninth, tenth, and eleventh-grade students.
At Bodine High School, twelfth-grade students must enroll in Social Science, a civics course that focuses on government, politics, and economics. Keeping the classroom's curriculum as relevant as possible is of the utmost importance. The course’s curriculum is modified to teach topics such as lead and health, gerrymandering, school funding, redlining, the presidential campaigning process, mass incarceration, affirmative action, and globalization in the order listed. Respectively, these topics relate to the role of the media, legislative representation, how budgets become law, the federal bureaucracy, political parties, trial courts, appellate courts, and outsourcing. Students are genuinely interested in these topics; therefore, the relevance of these lessons better equips them to understand how the three branches and levels of government work in action. Students are quick to register to vote and become civically engaged, which is one of the goals of this course and unit plan.
To prepare students to become engaged in their local, regional, and global communities, they must be aware of the history of their community and nation. These topics can be used within the classroom to promote active, civic participation, therefore encouraging students to study the past to understand the present. This practice will result in students' ability to apply concepts and practices throughout history to understand the origin and workings of modern-day societies, cultures, and institutions. Understanding the past is crucial when understanding how the history of philosophy, geography, and culture impacts how our government and politics work in today's economic world, both nationally and globally.
I believe there are two glaring gaps in my Social Science curriculum: the government's role in the economy and the importance of personal finance. This unit aims to remedy this issue by having students study the Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed it. This unit plan will be taught at the end of the year and will take the entirety of the fourth marking period. Ideally, this curriculum unit will help students transition into their first year of adulthood, as many students will take on debt from student loans and will begin to work more hours as young professionals. I hope this unit will both encourage them to remain informed about the country's economic state while also assisting them in learning to become responsible with their money.
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