We are now in the third week of the 2009-2010 school year. So far, things are going well.  It is a little different for me this year because I now have my very own classroom and I am no longer divided between two buildings, instead I am at the high school full-time. This year I am teaching three classes of the new International Relations class, two sections of U.S. History, and one section of World Geography.  I am happy to teach the World Geography as it is interesting and fun, I am okay with U.S. History although it is not my favorite subject to teach and I am still unsure about the International Relations or I.R.

The I.R. class is a semester long class that all graduating seniors have to take. Before this year. all seniors spent a year learning American Government, but this year they will have a semester of I.R. and a semester of American Government. While teaching I.R. content will be easy, since I know quite a lot about the subject, there are no classroom materials and no textbook. We did look at textbooks, but they are all geared towards college level I.R., which means I cannot use them in a high school setting. What I am going to do for this class is pretty much make all my own materials and/or articles and readings that I find online or in books and magazines.

I still think that I.R. is not an appropriate class for high school students. I feel that it would be better for students to spend a year in their senior year learning American Government/Civics so they have a firm understanding of how our system of government works and what their duties, responsibilities, and rights are within that system. Because we now have to teach a semester of International Relations we have to cut back on the amount of content that we teach in American Government. I think this is sad and means that important facts about American Government that could be useful to students will now not be taught.

I.R. is really a college level subject and we are only teaching it because certain people in the school pushed for its inclusion in the curriculum. The thing I find funny is that those who want us to teach this subject are not prepared to teach it themselves or be involved in developing the curriculum. I have had to develop the curriculum and, that being so, I decided to include things that I want to teach. I also made the IR  curriculum flexible because, after all, international events are constantly changing.  Even though I am not happy having to teach the I.R. class, I can at least pretty much do what I went in that class.