Purpose

• Teach social studies to the best of the teachers’ abilities
• Have a better understanding of the subject matter with students
• Work with students to excel in Georgia Milestone testing

Details

• Eleven teachers in the department
• Currently 10 classes, six with College Prep and Advanced Placement options
• Susan King is the social studies department chair

Classes offered and teachers

• Joseph Bara, AP Human Geography, World History
• Mark DeCourcy, Economics, AP Macroeconomics
• Walt Ellison, Government, Economics
• Sean Hickey, AP and CP Psychology, Sociology
• Jon Gloer, US History, Government
• Shane Ratliff, US History, Current Events
• Derek Rials, US History, World Geography
• Rebecca Rickeard, AP European History, World History
• Diane Ruane, AP World History, AP Government
• Jay Taylor, Government, World History
• Susan King, CP and AP U.S. History

Social studies is one of the core classes offered in high school, and every student is required to have at least three credits at the end of their senior year.

Starr’s Mill students have the option to take AP human geography or world geography during their freshman year before taking a mandatory world history class as a sophomore. Juniors are scheduled to take U.S. history before taking government and economics as seniors.

This year will be the first where teachers are heavily affected by the Milestone testing, which is a new test meant to help evaluate teacher performances.

“We are evaluated based on the growth score. The growth score for U.S. history is based on the amount that a student has grown since your eighth grade history EOCT,” King said. “Fifty percent of our evaluation is based on your growth score, which is very scary. More than half of our evaluation is based off of a test that we have never seen before.”

King leads the department, and was a teacher at the Mill for 13 years before leaving the school after 2012-13 school year to teach at Union Grove, a school closer to where she lived.

However, she came back after one year away and became department head, citing her co-workers as one of the major reasons she came back.

“I love the people in this department,” King said. “We have such a fun group of people who teach here. No one gets upset about little tiny things and we’re all pretty chill. We all put our students first and I would say that everyone here has a different strength. I think they’re all brilliant.”

The social studies teachers do work outside the classroom as well. Bara, DeCourcy, Ellison, Ratliff, and Rials all coach at least one sport, while Hickey coaches the Speech and Debate team and sponsors multi-cultural club.

Gloer and Ruane run the Close-Up trip to Washington D.C., and Rickeard, Taylor and King are class sponsors.

The amount of student involvement fits the attitude of the department, and King has always believed that they are the “social” department of the school. She even came up with an idea for the next pep rally.

“I think it would be really fun to do a Hunger Games style game between the departments,” King said. “Take two teachers from each department and put them together. I’m not sure if the social studies department would die at the cornucopia or win the whole thing. We’d be one of the extremes, though.”