What is this class about?
US History from 1877 is a fast-paced, state-tested class that will survey some of the most important events in the development of the United States beginning after the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Requirements
To take this class you will need to have passed Mississippi Studies, World Geography (both usually in 9th grade) and World History (usually in 10th grade). Most of you will also have taken US History until 1877 in 8th grade which covers everything from the the time period before this class begins. To graduate from any Mississippi High School you will have to pass this class and the US History since 1877 State Test.
Goals
There are two major goals for this class that we will be working on together throughout the semester.
The first goal is to prepare you for whatever may come next in your life. Whether it is collge, the military or the job force, you will need critical thinking and communication skills. This class will be especially effective at preparing you to meet those challenges. This is the answer to the "when am I ever going to use this?" question that many of you ask throughout the school year. Unless you intend to make your living as a game show contestant, you'll probably never need to know that Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States or that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. You'll probably never be asked to tell the story about the time that he was shot in the chest at short range just before giving a speech, inspected the wound, decided it wasn't life-threatening, and went on to give the one hour speech before going to the hospital (but it's a cool story). What could be very useful to you, however, is to know how Roosevelt chose to deal with weaker countries that had something that the US wanted and why these choices were controversial. History classes you've taken in the past may have asked you to memorize names, dates and places. This one will ask you to understand why people made the choices they made, how these choices impacted the events that followed and how to compare these choices to choices that we are facing today.
As the saying goes - "there is nothing new under the sun". No matter what the problem, someone has faced it before and you can learn from their choices. If you want to understand big problems that the US is facing today such as Iraq, it helps to study Roosevelt's involvement in Panama, McKinley's involvement in Cuba and the Philippines and Lyndon Johnson's choices in Vietnam. If you are concerned about gas prices you should probably know that gas prices were actually higher in the late 1970s. If you want solutions to today's problems you can look back into history and find out what worked and what didn't.
The second goal of this class is to prepare you for the State Test. The state test will be given around the end of the semester and can cover anything that we study in this class. No one (except the people who make the test) knows exactly what the questions will be so we'll have to do our best to anticipate them. Luckily, we have our first goal - problem solving. If all we were going to do was memorize facts then we would just have to cross our fingers and hope that they asked for the same facts on the state test. The only way any of us could feel good about that is if we memorized the name, date, place, and numbers related to every important event of the last 150 years. That is too much to ask. Instead, we are going to try to understand trends and choices that you can use to help you figure out likely answers to any question you might be asked.
The state test will be about 80 multiple choice questions. While multiple choice is probably a very familiar format, the depth of knowledge required for these questions may be greater that what you are used to. Most multiple choice questions that you have been asked have started with the word "Who", "What", "When" or "Where". The deeper questions, the better questions, the harder questions, and the ones that you are more likely to appear on the state test start with either "Why" or "How". Multiple choice questions that start with "Why" or "How" might be new for you now but you will get lots of practice in them over the next 18 weeks. My tests (and many of my in-class assignments) will be made to mirror the format of the State Test. If you haven't been exposed to this kind of questioning before it will freak you out at first. Don't worry, we'll take it slow. But, at the end of the semester, when you take the state test, you will be prepared.
These are our goals and they will take hard work. I will work hard to make sure that you have the opportunity to achieve these goals but the ultimate choice is yours. The rewards of graduation will be yours so most of the work will fall on you. Remember, as much as you don't want to do an assignment that I give you, I won't give you anything that isn't a step toward these goals. If at any point you need any kind of assistance, please ask. I will do anything I can to help you meet these goals.
