History & Social Studies

Our Social Studies courses are student interest-driven with a lecture and discussion-based format while incorporating hands-on, gamified in-class activities. All courses include a focus on cultivating a broad understanding of place, nations, historical eras and cultures. Recent courses include Mythology, Women in Ancient History, Personal Finance, Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Local History/Maine Studies, East Asian History: The Mongol Invasion, Government/Civics, and Geography. Independent projects are encouraged, and students can design and execute these in any Social Studies topics that they so choose.

We have cultivated relationships with local historical societies, including the Blue Hill Historical Society and the Jonathan Fisher House, to help students pursue clear and effective ways of researching, archiving and compiling historical resources. Students have been able to use this information to create a digital database of all the homes within the local Historic District to connect their community to a broader understanding of history. We continue to expand our connection to local resources of historical topics, including experts in Historical Photography and Music.

An exciting part of our Social Studies program is “Historical Inquiry and Discussion,” which is a year-long series of workshops that cover a wide breadth of topics in Social Studies ranging from Maine Tribal Groups to Japanese cultural studies. The thread running between these diverse topics is the discovery of connections between historic and contemporary events so that students gain a greater understanding of global and local issues.

Our United States History course emphasizes untold perspectives as well as how those stories, both told and untold, shape and impact our modern experiences and cultural trends. Students will be able to critically analyze perspectives in primary and secondary sources and express their findings through class discussion. Students are encouraged to generate their own lines of inquiry within the various historic eras through self-designed, interest-driven projects in a variety of formats – from a 1950’s student fashion show highlighting key sentiments of the era to creating fictionalized meetings between historic figures.