Curriculum Guides

North Africa — ten years after the Arab Spring began in Tunisia — faces economic, social and political uncertainty. The region’s history, geography and culture are the backdrop for new relations and contemporary strivings for a voice, fair government and economic stability. Students are introduced to the five countries through maps, photographs, videos, news and commentary.

“Rhetoric,” “misinformation,” “disinformation” and a flood of words related to the pandemic, campaigns and social media dominate the press and conversations. Lexicographers choose “lockdown” as their 2020 word of the year because of its “unifying experience for billions of people across the world.” Planet Word opens, Tom Toles retires, and The Post makes a Black and White decision. We focus on language — composed of words new and archaic. Words changing denotations and connotations, adjectives coloring the characters and scenes writers paint, words sharing roots and expressing unique cultures. Always reflecting character.

There is always change, but 2020 was a year of extraordinary changes — global deaths due to a pandemic, marches for racial equality and justice, name changes of schools and teams, a woman of Indian and Jamaican heritage on the Democratic ticket, NASA’s return to space shuttles — and mundane curtailments that influenced culture. Students read, discuss and debate, and write about these changes and those who made a difference.

News, features, guest commentaries, graphs and photographs give snapshots of life in the first months of the novel coronavirus, primarily in the U.S. Study questions, activities and suggestions for interaction aid students to understand the basics of virology, read data, reflect and express themselves through word, art and music — defining life in the time of novel coronavirus.