Looking Behind to Look Ahead

Looking to the past to understand today is an important part of studying history. Mrs. Mary Conroy, the Academy’s Middle School History teacher, continues to develop new ways to inspire a love of history and create a connection to the past for her students. Recently, her students have embarked on new areas of history to study.

The sixth graders have started their study of ancient China and will be focusing on the philosophical beliefs of Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. After learning about each, they will take a quote from Confucius, interpret it and explain its meaning, and create a plaque with the quote on it. The students in seventh grade have been studying the Constitution, most notably, the Bill of Rights. They will complete a project by creating a poster depicting one the first ten Amendments and its meaning. Our eighth grade students have begun learning about World War I, currently about how the government drummed up support for the war through propaganda posters, and promoting Victory Gardens, War Bonds, and the Red Cross. At the end of the unit each student will create their own propaganda poster.

The students balance their studies of the past with a look at the present by completing current event assignments. Over the course of each trimester, each student must complete at least five assignments in which they research a current event from a reliable news source, summarize it, and explain why the event is newsworthy. The goal of these assignments is to provide opportunities for the students to make connections between the past and the present.

Our middle school students have spent the month of February by celebrating Black History Month. The sixth graders competed in a trivia contest where they worked in groups to answer various clues about famous African-Americans. The seventh and eighth grade students answered similar clues, but took their studies a step further by picking a person of interest and writing a news article about that person’s accomplishments.