Since the 2008-09 school year, all Roosevelt High School sophomores were automatically placed into yearlong Advanced Placement Human Geography to fulfill social studies graduation requirements.
However, starting this school year, Roosevelt removed this course option entirely. In its place, all sophomores are now taking the semester-long Ethnic Studies World History 3 course.
The main difference between the two courses is that APHG covers more current events. It’s like an “anthropology class that focuses on the geographic perspective,” explained Michael Magidman, current co-chair of the Roosevelt Social Studies Department.
In comparison, Ethnic Studies World History 3 focuses on the 20th century while looking at “the four themes of identity, power and oppression, resistance and liberation, and reflection and action,” Magidman said.
According to Magidman, the class was removed because Roosevelt had been requiring four semesters of social studies for freshman and sophomore year, but the Seattle Public Schools requirement was that students had to take three semesters of history during freshman and sophomore year combined.
Roosevelt was the only high school requiring four semesters.
SPS had been letting Roosevelt require the class until last year. The district’s reason for changing this was because “it’s inequitable,” said Magidman. “You cannot have different requirements as a school than the district has because it is inequitable to kids in one neighborhood versus the another for high schools to have different graduation requirements,”
Barbara Burton, Roosevelt social studies and language arts teacher, said SPS made the social studies department make this decision over a short period of time. She said she was “pretty disappointed and upset that that decision was made or the way in which it was made.”
The social studies department at Roosevelt was allowed the choice to offer APHG as an option but not a requirement. However, the Social Studies Department ultimately decided to only offer Ethnic Studies World History 3 to sophomores. “We prioritized our value of inclusion instead because we weren’t allowed to require everybody to take human geography. We still would have had to offer the semester course and that would have tracked the 10th grade,” Magidman said.
This is what the Social Studies Department at Roosevelt thought was their best option, until recently.
On Oct. 20, SPS English Language Arts and Social Studies Specialist Molly Montague sent an email to one of the co-department chairs of the Roosevelt Social Studies Department, explaining Roosevelt’s options for freshman and sophomore social studies. According to Magidman, Montague said “having APHG as a required class just for Roosevelt was still a possibility, reversing its previous guidance; this was not a clear option last year when making the decision to get rid of the class.”
Hearing this has frustrated many teachers. With APHG already removed, it is harder to bring back because of all the changes the school would need to make in schedules. Magidman expressed how it felt “more than a little frustrating … for it to appear that we didn’t have to get rid of it in the first place.”
“Now if we’re back in that position where we have to make that choice again, or we have to re-think what we’ve already done — it’s frustrating,” Burton said.
The main reason Roosevelt previously required APHG for all sophomores was to prevent 10th grade from being “tracked.” Burton explains that tracking is when classes are divided into whether or not you are “college-bound,” similar to an honors class.
Having students pick their classes, whether advanced or regular, led to a divide by race and gender. “We wanted to give everybody an integrated, inclusive AP experience because we saw that in upper-level classes, students were often self-selecting by both race and gender,” Magidman said.
Follow The Roosevelt News on Instagram @therhsnews. Questions, comments, or concerns? Contact the Editorial Board at therooseveltnews@gmail.com.
Your voice matters. Share your thoughts and experiences in the comment box below.
