I'm currently doing my student teaching in an 11th grade history class. My school's in an upper-middle class suburb that's also next to an Air Force base, so most of these kids are either fairly spoiled or are military brats (some both, but most of the military kids are my best students). It's an interesting mix for sure. We just started our unit on the Vietnam War, starting with the French colonialism and just now getting into to the escalation of the war. When it's all said and done, we're going to spend about 5 weeks on it.
I didn't learn a lot about Vietnam when I was in school because we never had enough time. Now, a lot of schools are changing their curriculum so that they start the school year after the Civil War, with everything previous to that being covered in other years in school. This means we get more time to cover the Cold War, Vietnam, the 1980s, and other historical eras previously given little to no attention.
As someone who doesn't have any close relatives or friends who fought in Vietnam and who didn't get to study it in school, I'm learning a lot of this stuff along with my students. Is there anything in particular that I need to tell them, anything important that gets overlooked or lost? For you vets, if you were standing in front of my class what would you tell them? I want my students to understand this war, this time period, and be able to have open and honest discussions about it.
Thanks for the help. Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated.
I didn't learn a lot about Vietnam when I was in school because we never had enough time. Now, a lot of schools are changing their curriculum so that they start the school year after the Civil War, with everything previous to that being covered in other years in school. This means we get more time to cover the Cold War, Vietnam, the 1980s, and other historical eras previously given little to no attention.
As someone who doesn't have any close relatives or friends who fought in Vietnam and who didn't get to study it in school, I'm learning a lot of this stuff along with my students. Is there anything in particular that I need to tell them, anything important that gets overlooked or lost? For you vets, if you were standing in front of my class what would you tell them? I want my students to understand this war, this time period, and be able to have open and honest discussions about it.
Thanks for the help. Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated.