IAPG

The IAPG has been a blessing.  It is a pacing guide to make sure the state standards are taught in our classes.  Pam and I have had the opportunity to create them this summer for some badly needed income.  The Social Studies IAPG was such a mess last year that it was unusable.  For US History it wanted us to teach every standard every month.  In other words I should be teaching them to understand maps, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, Reconstruction, WWI, WWII, and the attack on the Twin Towers, among various other topics, every month.
The World History wasn't as bad, it wanted me to do things like teach the Enlightenment, which occurred during the 1700's at the same time as WWI.
Jeff Fowles and I worked together.  We completely erased the US History and we revised the World History.  For as much work as the World History was, we should have just erased it as well.  Doing all this was a lot easier than everyone made it sound.  Jeff and I were done in three days and we spent the other two figuring things out for how we would teach it next year and creating classroom activities.
Pam has a lot more work than we do.  Music Standards are crazy complicated and there was no IAPG for her to work with, she had to create everything on her own for every IAPG.
Next week we'll be at it again, more IAPGs, oh the joy.