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 |  Subject: More leftist nonsense: Equity in F.C. Schools Brings Nuanced Approach to U.S. History  Sat Nov 14, 2020 1:23 am | |
| Curriculum adjustments that account for the minority experience in America has been a focus of history courses in Falls Church City schools, especially after a summer where students protested against racial injustice and questioned how they should remember the founding fathers. The school system’s mission to include those aspects alongside, rather than at the expense of, others already in its studies is how it tries to avoid the conflict felt in other areas of the country.
The goal laid out last September, according to Falls Church City schools Chief Academic Officer William Bates, was to develop a process for curriculum reframing in City schools as a component of the school system’s equity work. In other words, Bates said, Falls Church schools began asking how it could consider diverse perspectives when planning lessons and activities for students, with less emphasis on making dramatic changes to the core materials they must teach as prescribed by the Virginia Department of Education.
This directive took on new importance during a summer of nationwide protests that the City of Falls Church joined in. George Mason High School students organized one of the first marches to take place in City limits following George Floyd’s killing by a police officer in Minneapolis. A simmering call to change the name of George Mason High, and then later Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, had turned to a boil as well, prodding the schools to contextualize these figures outside of their major accomplishments at the very least.
Exposing students to an array of historical perspectives is something that Mason history teachers approached as their duty to their students. Eric Duchaj and Josh Singer, who also work with the school system on its equity initiatives, said that having conversations with other teachers about how they teach world, government and U.S. history courses are a regular feature of their team meetings.
“Part of being a really good teacher in an area of history is constantly reimagining and revisiting what you do in the classroom to meet the moment and meet the interest of the students,” Singer said. “Absolutely what’s coming out of the community from our students and things like the social justice committee and what we see in the news influences that.”
One example of Mason’s teachers modifying how they address a topic is the Columbian Exchange — the triangular trade routes that brought sugar, tobacco and cotton to Europe; rum, textile and often guns to Africa and newly captured slaves to the Americas that started after Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the New World.
Singer explained how positives, such as the development of the New World wouldn’t have been possible without bartering between these four continents. At the same time, he added, it fostered negatives, such as explosion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the destruction of the indigenous peoples in the Americas. It’s neither about trying to paint Columbus as a hero or villain, Singer continued, but providing students with all kinds of information so they can understand historical events from all angles.
The International Baccalaureate program, which Falls Church schools has integrated in K – 12, will also be featuring more equity in its lessons once it updates its curriculum in 2024.
“We are working to ensure that the revised course will continue to reflect developments in the wider teaching and research of history,” said Dr. David Weiss, the head of IB World Schools, “Particularly in respect to the experiences of people who…have been marginalised or discriminated against because of their ethnicity, gender, political beliefs, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and because of the actions of colonizing or enslaving powers, institutions or individuals.”
https://fcnp.com/2020/11/13/equity-in-f-c-schools-brings-nuanced-approach-to-u-s-history/
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