Country Portraits
Thank you to a Feasibility grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, which was awarded to San Jose Episcopal Day School in May 2006, the school was able to develop a template or model curriculum through which various cultures can be rotated across the years. The purpose of the curriculum is to help prepare students to be global citizens and leaders, ready them to embrace foreign languages not traditionally taught in U.S. schools, and facilitate students embracing our own cultural diversity. When applying for the grant, the School anticipated exploring development of a template. With faculty, parental, and community support, the School was able to develop the template and also test most of its components while studying China in the 2006-2007 school year.
The school plans to use the template to introduce the study of various cultures across the years at different grade levels. In the first or introductory year, when a cultural study is introduced, all students experience the school-wide activities and a focus grade has the interdisciplinary unit. In subsequent years, all components become a regular part of the curriculum at the grade level that initially experienced the interdisciplinary unit.
For example, the School chose China as its focus when developing the template and the fourth grade for the interdisciplinary immersion unit. In subsequent years, the fourth grade will continue to study China in-depth using all the components developed in the introductory year.
- Portrait of China (2006-2007)
- Portrait of Egypt (2007-2008)