New Jersey standards alignment

• W.WR.11–12.5

  Partially covered

  Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources

  What we do and don't cover: New Jersey's near-verbatim recoding of Common Core WHST.11-12.7. Partial: only the Coffee episode currently ships a graded research assignment. Where it runs, it meets this standard squarely.

• W.SE.11–12.6

  Partially covered

  Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation (MLA or APA Style Manuals).

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, 3+ peer-reviewed sources and an APA bibliography
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option C, interview ethics: informed consent, right to review

  What we do and don't cover: New Jersey's near-verbatim recoding of Common Core WHST.11-12.8. Partial, same reason as W.WR.11-12.5: the Coffee project's graded options require gathering authoritative sources with an APA bibliography, but it is the only graded assignment currently shipping.

• 6.1.12.GeoGI.1.a

  Partially covered

  Explain how geographic variations impacted economic development in the New World, and its role in promoting trade with global markets (e.g., climate, soil conditions, other natural resources).

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: how climate, soils, and natural resources decide where commodities grow and how they enter global trade is the Commodity Map's spine. The standard's full New-World economic-development frame is one thread through it, not a survey.

• 6.1.12.EconGE.6.a

  Partially covered

  Determine the role geography played in gaining access to raw materials and finding new global markets to promote trade.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 1 · Follow the Money: Bean to Cup
  • · Ep 2 · Who Gets Paid, Tea and Coffee Compared
  • · Ep 3 · The Commodity Trap
  • · Ep 12 · The Jimador's Share
  • · Ep 14 · Pattern 3: Labor Captures the Smallest Share (the smile curve)
  • · Ep 21 · The Smile Curve, Confirmed

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: how geography governs access to raw materials and global markets — and who captures the value along the chain — is taught in depth through the commodities themselves.

• 6.2.12.EconGE.1.a

  Partially covered

  Trace the movement of essential commodities (e.g., sugar, cotton) from Asia to Europe to America, and determine the impact trade on the New World's economy and society.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods

  • · Ep 4 · The Sugar Islands
  • · Ep 4 · From New Guinea to the New World
  • · Ep 11 · Waste-Product Economics
  • · Ep 1 · Follow the Money: Bean to Cup
  • · Ep 2 · Who Gets Paid, Tea and Coffee Compared
  • · Ep 3 · The Commodity Trap
  • · Ep 12 · The Jimador's Share
  • · Ep 14 · Pattern 3: Labor Captures the Smallest Share (the smile curve)
  • · Ep 21 · The Smile Curve, Confirmed

  What we do and don't cover: The single closest match in the New Jersey document — it names commodity trade directly. Partial: of the commodities the standard names, the sugar industry is taught thoroughly; cotton is not a Commodity Map episode. ERRATUM: New Jersey's 2020 document prints a second, different performance expectation (on the economic policies of China and Japan) under this same code 6.2.12.EconGE.1.a; the text above is the commodities one.

• 6.2.12.GeoHE.1.a

  Partially covered

  Determine the role of natural resources, climate, and topography in European exploration, colonization, and settlement patterns.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Kava — The Root of Peace
  • Tea — The Way of Tea
  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom

  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment
  • · The Commodity Map itself, every episode pinned at its origin
  • · The Growing Belts map, production regions by latitude band and country
  • · Ep 1 · The Coffee Belt: Where Coffee Grows and Why
  • · Ep 3 · The Cacao Tree and the Narrowest Belt

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: how resources and climate shaped where colonizers went and what they grew is taught through the growing belts and the resource maps. A general geographic treatment of settlement is not.

• HS-ESS3-1

  Partially covered

  Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · Ep 1 · Climate Change Is Redrawing the Map
  • · Ep 3 · A Two-Degree Threat
  • · Ep 6 · Why Volcanic Soil Only
  • · Ep 10 · Karst Limestone and Bourbon
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, assess a producing country's climate viability and defend the assessment

  What we do and don't cover: Read this one carefully before you rely on it. This is NOT a science course, it has no laboratory work, no investigations and no scientific modelling. What it does have is precisely the content of HS-ESS3-1: resource availability and climate change shaping what humans do and where. The lessons supply the evidence; the STUDENT constructs the explanation only in the Coffee project (Option B). If your science requirement is assessed on the three-dimensional NGSS performance, this contributes to it, it does not discharge it.

What we don't claim

A standards page is only worth reading if the omissions are honest too. We looked at these and left them out:

• Mathematics — nothing. This catalog does no mathematics instruction, so it meets no New Jersey mathematics standard.
• Science — almost nothing. There is no laboratory work, no investigation and no scientific modelling here. New Jersey adopted the NGSS verbatim (as NJSLS-Science, 2014), and we claim a single NGSS performance expectation, partially, explaining exactly why on the entry itself. It is not a science course and we will not sell it as one.
• The flagship's distinctive New Jersey structure has mostly no code to cite. New Jersey Civics teaches the deliberately strong Governor (who appoints the Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Treasurer rather than voters electing them), the Lieutenant Governor created only in 2010, the appointed judiciary that earns tenure to age 70, the 40-district Legislature on its 2-4-4 Senate cycle, the absence of any citizen initiative, and the 21 counties whose boards were renamed from “Chosen Freeholders” to “county commissioners” in 2020-2021. New Jersey's 2020 standards reach the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 and 1947 (6.1.12.CivicsPI.2.a, .13.a), which the flagship backs, but the strong-governor design, the appointed judiciary, the no-initiative rule, and the county renaming have no New Jersey-specific code. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
• The Opium Wars, the sugar-vs-other-commodities split, and the War on Drugs. The catalog teaches the Opium Wars and the War on Drugs in depth, and covers sugar thoroughly. New Jersey's world-history standard names sugar and cotton (6.2.12.EconGE.1.a), so we claim the sugar content there — but it does not name the Opium Wars, and New Jersey's Active Citizenship history standards reach contemporary drug policy only through the broad “current foreign policy issue” framing (6.3.12.HistoryCA.12), which the courses do not squarely meet. We leave those unclaimed rather than stretch.
• The Amistad and climate-change teaching mandates. New Jersey law requires the Amistad curriculum (the history of the African slave trade and of African Americans) and climate-change education across subjects. These are instructional mandates layered onto the standards, not separate coded standards, so there is no distinct code to cite; the catalog's slavery, abolition, and climate content is claimed through the coded 6.1/6.2 standards above.
• The wider catalog — health, PE, AI-literacy, and languages. New Jersey's relevant frameworks for these (Comprehensive Health and Physical Education; Computer Science and Design Thinking; World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no New Jersey claims this pass.