Rationale
East Side Union High School District is large district of 11 comprehensive high schools. Mt. Pleasant High School serves 1,271 students of which 811 receive free-and-reduced lunch assistance. Our school graduation rate is 91%, but, although those students meet our graduation requirements less than 50% are prepared for entrance into a University of California and California State University college path. The data do not show the disconnect that exists. Though our students graduate from our high school, many of them are not ready for college level work. Based on surveys given to students, anecdotal evidence from students, students at times find the work in their classroom as “not relating to me” and thus so many students become disengaged and disinterested in the class lesson.
Among the goals of being college ready, our district would like to have our students engage in their lessons at a Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) of 3 “Strategic thinking and reasoning”, but this often is not achieved.3 In writing and researching a unit of interest to my students, I hope to inspire my students to critically think and reason through the flood of information they are exposed to via the muck of fake news, politically driven discourse, and profiteering agendas in the social media they consume with fervor.
The inspiration for this unit was two-fold. One, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke, I received many questions from my students that were DOK 3 questions, “Why did it happen? What was the reason behind…, and What would happen if…?” These types of questions led me to read and begin my research into this curriculum unit. I believe I can reach all of my students because of the timeliness of COVID-19, and I can capitalize on their curiosity to understand and make meaning of our current situation while relating it to the ongoing issue of loss of biodiversity and the exploitation of earth’s natural resources by humans. Second, our district is beginning to learn a tool called Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI).4 With training, it will assist our students with the process of supporting an argument with data and evidence. ADI helps teachers make the shift as facilitators of thinking.
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