APUSH+FINAL+DAYS+2009

Each class will choose from the following ideas on our course for the rest of the semester. This will be a "majority rules" choice. I am also open to strong, creative counter-proposals.

Koreans in America
So we’ve heard about the Irish in America, Italians in America, and Hispanics in America, but what about Koreans in America? Several of you have asked what the mainstream perception of Koreans is in the U.S. The L.A. Riots of the 1990s and the recent Virginia Tech shooting often come to mind as far as national incidents where Koreans featured heavily in the news. Stereotypically, Koreans get lumped into other East Asian groups and labeled incorrectly as Chinese or Japanese. People from larger cities may associate Koreans with “Koreatowns” and owners of local convenience stores, neighborhood groceries, and dry cleaning businesses. However, these generalizations do nothing to tell the story of the Korean experience in America. Over the final weeks of school, I challenge you to research individual topics that address this larger issue and to cooperate on a medium through which we can collectively gather and tell this story to the world.

College Research Foray
Most of you remaining in AP U.S. History class after the seniors depart are going to follow them to the United States for university studies yourselves. Hopefully, you have already begun considering universities that you plan to apply to in the fall in conjunction with the meetings you’ve had with Mrs. McAdams Brightman. If not, this is a perfect opportunity to do so. Over the final weeks of school, I challenge each of you to choose three universities in which you are interested as follows: 1) your top reach school; 2) your top target school; 3) your top safety school. Through help from and consultation with Mrs. McAdams Brightman, I challenge you to research these schools scrupulously from many different angles and present them to your peers both in class and through some type of technology resource that will be available to the rest of your class and the College Counseling office as a resource when making their application decisions in the fall.

Current Event Debate Smackdown
Using the Choices Series and Library Resources, we will prepare for and stage debates on your choice of the following topics that will culminate in a Final Debate Smackdown during the last day of school:


 * Immigration policies
 * Affirmative Action, now and then
 * U.S. role in Iraq (did not offer)
 * US. response to N. Korea (option NOT in Choices)
 * U.S. response to nuclear proliferation (NOT in Choices)
 * U.S. response to China
 * U.S. role in preventing genocides
 * U.S. role in a changing world
 * Balancing U.S. interests in the Middle East
 * Dilemmas of foreign aid
 * Responding to terrorism: challenges for democracy

APUSH: The Next Chapter
Although your current AP U.S. History text concludes with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the myriad social, economic, and political issues facing the country, the coverage is open-ended and incomplete. If you were given the challenge to write the last AP Topic for consideration for the AP Exam moving forward, what would it be? What subtopics would you include? Once you decide those, what would you write and how would you present it in a textbook format? Using our wiki as the platform for presenting this last topic, your class will collaborate to write the final APUSH chapter for students moving forward. We will polish these for final publication by year’s end and submit it to AP College Board for consideration.

What Did You Miss?
Many of you took AP U.S. History class to become more familiar with America’s story. However, I am uncertain whether you really learned what you wanted and in the coverage and depth you would have preferred. Unfortunately, this is the nature of a test-centered course. There is no time to linger on or address areas that may not factor that heavily on the exam. Now that we have romped through 400+ years of U.S. History, I welcome you to go back to any era we explored that interested you and choose a topic from that era that you wanted to explore but did not have the opportunity to in the course. During the final week of classes, you will share your research with us in a seminar session and submit a final article sharing your findings formally with me. I will work closely with you along the way to help you develop strong research habits, reach analytical conclusions, and improve your overall writing ability.

Trump the Teacher
One of the great things that teachers love about wikis is that it serves as a historical record of everything we completed or attempted to complete as a class. Our wiki is no different. Now that you have experienced the entire year of AP U.S. History, help me make this course better by choosing a unit that you felt could have been enhanced and writing a unit plan that I could implement in its place. When doing so, please remember to focus on the AP Topics for that unit, primary sources, document-based questions, free-response questions, and critical analysis in whatever activities you choose to create. This is an opportunity for you to show other teachers and me how you think students like to learn today. Finally, create some type of AP-style assessment students should complete to reinforce the material taught in the unit and help prepare students better for the AP exam.