The Minority, Majority (Week 9)

The school that I am teaching at has a predominately Latino student population. As a Social Science teacher I struggle with the reality that this population of students is not equally represented in history books. World History in the United States is heavily euro-centric and omits history in Latin America except during the imperialism unit. That's all the history that students get about Latinos... Latin America was colonized and then fought for independence. 

How can I better connect the content to my students if they are learning about the impact that Europeans have had on the world, but not what influence their cultural groups have had? The reality of American is that the minority is quickly becoming the majority. Our course materials must begin to reflect this reality. Asians, Latinos, Blacks and even Women as a whole are omitted from our history books in a significant way. I'm sure that part of it has to do with the fact that these same groups have faced discrimination and maltreatment, but ignoring that issue does our students a disservice. 

To fill the gap, I have allowed students to teach each other about these omitted populations through the use of student presentations. Students research and present the content to the class and in essence they teach their peers about topics that are not in the standards or in their texts.