There is now so much more to understand and then to explain to my students. To achieve my goal of bringing students to the concept of themselves as important members of a global community I will have to create a desire in the students to learn more about their own country and how it is affected by and how it can affect other parts of the world. Implied in this goal is the task of giving students some knowledge of the other countries of the world. Analyzing other countries' effects upon the United States will lead to achieving the California State Framework's stated goals of democratic understanding and some sense of cultural understanding. Skills goals are an integral component of any social studies course.
Global understanding is impossible to achieve without critical thinking.
Students will be required to analyze articles, documents, cartoons, and editorials espousing different viewpoints on a given issue. The school year will begin with a global focus. Students will number their papers with the same amount of numbers as those on the portraits. The teacher will then ask if there are any people in the world that may see these from a different perspective. The homework assignment will be to select one of the people written about and then to write about that person from a different perspective.