Scholars World History Welcome Note

Hello and welcome to the Scholar’s World History course. This course will have less daily homework than the average course, but there will be more projects (4 per semester). Most units start with homework for a week or two, then a project is assigned which is due in 3 weeks. Thereafter, they should be devoting 3-5 hours per week to the projects. Most projects require less than 20 hours of work. End of semester projects may require up to 40 hours of work.

Why project-based learning? First, it is how IB is taught the world over. Second, it allows students to begin thinking of themselves as researchers. If they want to learn something. . . anything . . . after this course they will have the tools to do so on their own.



With project based learning comes a whole process of researching, learning how to break opinions up into arguments, and then finding credible sources to back up those arguments. These projects hinge on a writing process that is clear, concise and written in an academic manner. Therefore, this class becomes more of a writing course as the year progresses. This means that by the end of this course, your child will be prepared to take a college level course with a research paper requirement and pass easily.



In order to more readily understand arguments and opinions, we start off the course looking at where people get their ideas of right and wrong. I argue that understanding the idea of right and wrong from the perspective of multiple cultures allows us to guess at why people made certain choices in history. Therefore, we have a “Daily Issue” in which I ask students to come up with their own opinion and list the morals related to that opinion. (The students are Sophomores, and this is not yet Senior Government class, so I will purposefully avoid the more controversial issues like abortion.) My goal is to raise students’ awareness of how their beliefs directly connect to their opinions and can then be used to defend the opinion. While I am required to insist on tolerance, I do not want to change your student’s morals. I am hopeful that you will hear about these discussions on a regular basis. (In order to score well on several types of standardized tests, students need practice coming to a quick opinion and then defending their decision – which is why we will do this most every day of the year.) “In this subject group, students can engage with exciting, stimulating and personally relevant topics and issues. Many sensitive and personally challenging topics require careful consideration in the context of a safe and responsible learning environment characterized by respect and open-mindedness. The study of individuals and societies helps students to appreciate critically the diversity of human culture, attitudes and beliefs. Courses in this subject group are important for helping students to recognize that content and methodology can be debatable and controversial, and for practising the tolerance of uncertainty.” – IB MYP Individuals and Societies Guide 2014

Every student needs different types of support to be successful. You know best how to support your child. The biggest challenge to student success in the past has been procrastination on projects. Do with that information what you will. If you would like to follow along, our class is outlined on my class website. Additionally, you can follow along in a program called Schoology as a parent observer AND you can get all of the class assignments sent to you by using Remind 101. The instructions for Remind are on the class website and your student can show you how to set that up. For access to Schoology, please email me and I will sign you up.

I truly love teaching this course and you will be proud of the skills your child acquires this year. They will work hard and often bring great conversations home. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Michael Olavarri [email protected]