Advanced Placement United States Government, also known as AP US Gov., was a new course proposal for De Pere High School for sophomores to seniors to connect government and politics.
The course proposal sheet says students will be able to examine the relationships between the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Also, they will be able to explore the different ideologies and opinions that shape American politics.
Kelli Schneider, the APUSH and Contemporary America teacher, was asked how AP Gov would help the students of De Pere.
“It would give students a really good in-depth look at how our government functions and major issues surrounding America,” she said.
Schneider states that the way to add real world examples would be, “Issues like national security with 9/11 are brought into it. Social and cultural conflicts of the present day are brought into it by looking at SCOTUS cases. Also the struggle between the federal and state government.”
What kind of projects, debates, or other activities are used to help students engage with the material?
Schneider said, “Right now I teach Contemporary America, which is a class that focuses on current events in conflict. I have had a lot of rehearsal with dividing the room with the room for debates, formal debates, and discussions that are centered around constitutional issues.”
Due to this being a new course, they don’t have major main focus points just yet.
“We’re just getting prepared to teach this,” she said. “We’ve never taught it before. So I think understanding the true structure and power of the different elements of our government is really essential. I think even being able to clearly identify where power is.”
The course proposal gives an outline of the unit topics:
Unit 1: Foundations of American Democracy; you will learn how the men who created the U.S. Constitution set it up as a structure of government intended to stand the test of time, and how the compromises they made left questions unresolved and continue to be debated today.
Unit 2: Interactions Among the Branches of Government; you’ll continue to explore how the government sets and administers policy, and you’ll learn about the complexities of this process.
Unit 3: Civil liberties; you’ll connect what you’ve learned about the founding principles of our government to the debates over how best to balance freedom and order.
Unit 4: American political ideologies and beliefs; you’ll explore the various beliefs that U.S. citizens hold about government, how these beliefs are shaped and how they affect which policies citizens support.
