Term: 2
Grade: 11
This course examines the origins of the country’s contradictions and surveys the complex landscape of American life. In the fall, students engage with the America of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We focus on the country’s revolutionary founding as well as the various competing economic systems, including the slavocracy of the American South. The term culminates in the examination of the nation’s collapse in the Civil War, and both the successes and failures of the Reconstruction Era. In winter, students examine race, ethnicity, and immigration at the turn of the century onward, building to the modern Civil Rights Movement and its impact on activism for future generations. For their spring term, students choose from a variety of twentieth-century U.S. history electives, including art and culture of the era, political history, and topics in domestic and foreign policy. Throughout the school year, students engage with a vast array of primary and secondary sources, examining the complexity of the American narrative, discussing the human impact of systems and policies, and connecting the past to the present.
Note: Fall & Winter terms. Required for all 11th Grade students not taking AP United States History.