Sarah Roeske’s Global Issues course at Stafford High School in Falmouth, Virginia is structured around curriculum resources developed by the Choices Program.

Roeske first became aware of the Choices Program in 2000, when she was creating a Global Issues course for her high school. Since the course had no textbook, she needed to find a comprehensive way to teach complex international issues with an emphasis on critical thinking skills. She started with Shifting Sands: Balancing U.S. Interests in the Middle East.

After implementing this unit in her curriculum, she attended a summer institute with the Choices Program at Brown University, then shaped her entire course around Choices curriculum resources.

The brilliance of these units is that they ask the students to use historical background and primary source documents to make connections to contemporary international issues, thus creating a better understanding of a diverse world and a better appreciation for growing interdependence.

The units begin with a background reading, each of which is thorough and detailed, yet concise and understandable for high school students. Colleagues have even borrowed the units simply to use the background readings for their own personal knowledge.

Every unit concludes with an Options role-play in which the students are presented with three to four divergent foreign policy options on the issue at hand. The students are given the responsibility to prepare and debate the Options as if they were members of an American foreign policy-making team. Finally, after gaining an understanding of the Options presented, they are expected to frame their own Option reflecting their views on the issue.

The Middle East unit in particular is especially impressive. Students who previously had little to no knowledge of the Middle East come to have a deep understanding of the conflict and are given an opportunity to debate the issues and develop a strong opinion of their own.

At the beginning of the year, the students are tentative and even a little uneasy about sharing and especially defending their opinions on issues of foreign policy. By the end of the year though, I simply have to moderate the Options debates, which basically flow on their own.

Just last week, my students completed their final Options role-play for the year. Unlike previous assignments, when provided with the Options, they created their own, showing how developed their critical thinking and shared deliberation skills had come this past year. I was impressed with their newly acquired abilities and proud to send them off to college next year.

One of the greatest rewards as a teacher is to see growth among students. The Choices units promote extraordinary growth as students look beyond themselves and see that they are part of a much larger world. They understand that they could have a role in shaping the future if they have a better understanding of the past. By engaging students to make these connections they have a greater appreciation of the ever-changing international environment and its impact on their everyday lives.