New Series - Countries of the World (an intro to - hopefully - a VERY long series)

I want to keep this introduction relatively short, but I think it's important to explain why I am proposing to start what could be a 3-4 year series on this blog. One of the things I loved about the school I taught at much of my career was the lack of "department silos" - as a social studies teacher, I taught a little bit of everything! And because of that, I was very deliberate about integrating subjects into other subjects.

One of my favorite ways to do that was studying world geography (which we covered as completely as possible in 6th through 8th grades). While the same students had been introduced to general areas of the world (continents, major rivers, historic empires) in elementary school, they had not looked at much about how people lived in those areas in the modern world. As far as they were concerned, Egyptians (as an example) were assumed to still be building pyramids, burying mummies, and writing hieroglyphics in the modern world. That's nothing against the elementary teachers, who did a fantastic job of having their students experience ancient cultures like the Egyptians, Chinese dynasties, Greeks, Romans, and Renaissance people. Their job, though, was to focus on history and not connect it to our lives in the 21st century.

So I/we tried to make middle school social studies more of an eclectic smorgasbord, where instead of one theme for the entire year we bounced around between history, geography, civics, economics, and financial literacy (yes, I was teaching all 5 "back in the day"). For geography, that looked something like this:

• 6th Grade - a unit on South American countries (taught in conjunction with history on the end of the Spanish New World empire and revolutionary movements like Bolivar and San Martin)

• 7th Grade, Part I - a fall unit on North America and the Caribbean (taught immediately after explorers, so we could follow up on what happened to those "colonies" claimed by Europeans and cultural/language influences on those countries today)

• 7th Grade, Part II - a spring unit on Europe and the Middle East (no real connection - instead it served as a "break" between the Revolutionary War/Constitution history and civics units of Nov-Jan, and the early American history and Civil War units of Mar-May).

• 8th Grade, Part I - a fall unit on Africa (connections were more back to their 5th grade lessons on African cultures and 7th grade history of slavery in the U.S. and the Triangular Trade - then contrasting that with a short overview of early 20th century colonialism and independence movements. Then we put all the history aside and focused on as much as we could about those 54 countries today)

• 8th Grade, Part II - a spring unit on Asia and Oceania (with connections to our studies of 20th century history - World War II, the Cold War and alliances, Korean and Vietnam Wars, and a little back to our 6th grade overview of world religions).

This is NOT intended to be some kind of "how-to" on middle school curriculum - I'm not sure I would be allowed to develop something like that today (even when I retired we were starting to get push-back from parents saying the academic expectations were infringing on their "child's" hopes of making it in professional sports!) I'm just trying to explain why the posts in this series will include more than basic geography - I want teachers to be able to see resources making connections to all areas of the social studies possible (and then YOU choose what is useful for YOU).

So What Does That Look Like For This Blog Series . . . ?

I've already posted some of the best general geography resources in that section of the website, and I am sure I will re-use specific articles from many of those. Here, though, the goal is to give you specific websites and other resources to learn more on particular countries, so you have them readily available. I hope you find them engaging and informative, but I am also not writing 200 country reports - my students did those projects for years, and I'm not planning to reinvent the wheel here! So while I may "tweak" the format as I go, the basics I want to include will be: pictures from the country, basic geographic information, resources for history and current events, and some cultural connections either to the country or region.

As far as the order, I know I am setting myself a steep demand (especially for someone who already has series he needs to finish!). But right now the way I plan to divide this up is as follows:

• Week #1 - An African country (54, including island countries)

• Week #2 - A country from the Western Hemisphere (35 total - 12 in South America, 23 in North America)

• Week #3 - A European country (47 countries - I am including Cyprus here)

• Week #4 - An Asian country (48 countries - I am including Russia and Turkey here)

• Alternating Week #5s - An Oceanic country (14 countries) plus a few featured non-countries and organizations)

We will see how this goes - if I find it to be too much, it may be a sign that this website project is also too much. You will also notice I did not set a specific day of the week for updates - I haven't decided yet how these posts will work (and schedule) around the other topics I normally post about. My hope will be mid-week, but unlike some topics (like my holiday resources or PD announcements) there is not a time-intensive aspect to these.

I also know I have other obligations (home, family, gig work for a couple of companies) to mix in there as well. But the good news is, this is a subject I love AND I think I can put together a format that works well without making each post from scratch. Then I will count on YOU (the audience) to let me know if it is working for you or not.