History and Social Studies

The history/social studies curriculum goals are to help students acquire the knowledge, judgment, and skills to participate intelligently and responsibly in civic life and to continue to learn for themselves. Essential skills of reading and writing expository materials, using library resources and technology, reading maps, interpreting documents and data, preparing research papers, and participating in discussions are taught and reinforced in all courses, grades 9-12.

All courses have a required summer reading component. Students are assigned one to three titles to be read by September and are responsible for obtaining reading lists when they select their courses. An assessment of the students‘ understanding of the books is done in the fall.

Kim Young Department Head

Kim Young is the new head of the 6-12 Social Studies Department. A long-time Weston High School educator, Young is passionate about cultivating students’ identities as global citizens. She draws inspiration for classroom activities from first-hand experiences in the field and researching innovative educational pedagogy always beat out other items on her to-do list. While her travel adventures have recently slowed, she has pivoted to experimenting with best practices related to virtual reality technology integration, organizing a week-long takeover by the Intel Learning Lab in 2018. As a 2019 National Geographic Explorer and 2020 National Geographic Education Fellow Young worked to scale curricular innovation around student activism through design thinking and technology. She currently lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband and two overly imaginative children.

Faculty

Note: There is always the possibility that courses listed in the Program of Studies may not run due to low enrollment or budget constraints.

The history/social studies curriculum goals are to help students acquire the knowledge, judgment, and skills to participate intelligently and responsibly in civic life, and to continue to learn for themselves. Essential skills of reading and writing expository materials, using library resources and technology, reading maps, interpreting documents and data, preparing research for presentation, and participating in discussions are taught and reinforced in all courses, grades 9-12.

Some courses have a required summer reading component. Students may be assigned one to three titles to be read by September and are responsible for obtaining reading lists. An assessment of the students’ understanding of the books is done in the fall.

Grades 9-12 Standards