Delaware standards alignment

• History Standard Two (Analysis), Grades 9-12 — primary and secondary sources

  Covered

  students will examine and analyze primary and secondary sources in order to differentiate between historical facts and historical interpretations.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom

  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story, Beckford (1790) against Equiano (1789) and Mary Prince (1831) on the same plantation world
  • · Ep 3 · Two Ways of Seeing a Bean
  • · Ep 5 · Two Ways of Knowing
  • · Ep 18 · Whose Voice
  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story
  • · The Great Migration · every lesson carries a primary-source pointer to its real archive
  • · The Great Migration, Lesson 5 · Arrival (the Philadelphia “500% growth” claim, checked against the raw census figures it fails)

  Note: The Whose Voice method is exactly this: a planter's euphemistic account read against first-person narratives by formerly enslaved writers, the documentary record read against the oral record, and a repeated unsupported statistic exposed — teaching students to separate historical fact from interpretation using primary and secondary sources.

• History Standard Three (Interpretation), Grades 9-12

  Covered

  students will compare competing historical narratives, by contrasting different historians' choice of questions, use and choice of sources, perspectives, beliefs, and points of view, in order to demonstrate how these factors contribute to different interpretations.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom

  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story, Beckford (1790) against Equiano (1789) and Mary Prince (1831) on the same plantation world
  • · Ep 3 · Two Ways of Seeing a Bean
  • · Ep 5 · Two Ways of Knowing
  • · Ep 18 · Whose Voice
  • · Ep 10 · The Oral History That Survived (recovering Nathan “Nearest” Green's erased role)

  Note: Comparing competing historical narratives by contrasting authors' questions, sources, and points of view is the curriculum's signature move — the Nathan Green lesson sets the documentary record against the oral record and teaches why they differ and how historians choose.

• Economics Standard Four (International Trade), Grades 9-12

  Covered

  students will analyze and interpret the influence of the distribution of the world's resources, political stability, national efforts to encourage or discourage trade, and the flow of investment on patterns of international 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
  • My Daily Altar — Season Synthesis

  • · 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 4 · The Hidden Costs of Cheap Sugar
  • · 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
  • · Ep 7 · Who Captures the Value

  Note: This is the BVC commodity series' spine: how the distribution of the world's growing regions and resources, national efforts to encourage or discourage trade (the U.S. sugar program's quotas and tariffs), and where value and investment flow shape real patterns of international trade in coffee, sugar, cacao, and more.

• Economics Standard One (Microeconomics), Grades 9-12

  Partially covered

  Students will demonstrate how individual economic choices are made within the context of a market economy in which markets influence the production and distribution of goods and services.

  Covered by

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

  • · Ep 1 · Price Shocks and Why You Keep Buying
  • · Ep 4 · From Luxury to the Cheapest Calorie
  • · 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: individual economic choices inside a market are taught through real commodity markets — how a supply shock and inelastic demand move prices, and how market structure along the chain distributes earnings — rather than as a general microeconomics unit.

• Economics Standard Three (Economic Systems), Grades 9-12

  Partially covered

  Students will analyze the wide range of opportunities and consequences resulting from the current transitions from command to market economies in many countries.

  Covered by

  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • Kava — The Root of Peace
  • My Daily Altar — Season Synthesis

  • · Poland: Solidarność, Lesson 3 · A workers' state with a worker problem
  • · Poland: Solidarność, Lesson 7 · 13 December 1981: the state answers (martial law)
  • · Poland: Solidarność, Lesson 8 · 1989: a union negotiates a state out of existence
  • · Poland: Solidarność, Lesson 9 · What winning cost: shock therapy
  • · Ep 5 · The Reciprocity Economy
  • · Ep 6 · Ceremony Meets the Market
  • · Ep 7 · Two Ways of Doing Economics

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the benchmark's transition “from command to market economies” is taught through one worked case in real depth — Poland's move from a command economy to a market one, through Solidarność and the 1989 negotiated exit — alongside a direct comparison of reciprocity (traditional) and market economies. It is not a survey of many countries' transitions.

• Geography Standard Two (Environment), Grades 9-12

  Partially covered

  students will understand the Earth's physical environment as a set of interconnected systems (ecosystems) and the ways humans have perceived, reacted to, and changed environments at local to global scales.

  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 the physical environment shapes and is shaped by human activity is the curriculum's method — volcanic soil and altitude deciding what grows, climate change redrawing the growing belts — but it is taught through commodity agriculture, not as a general treatment of Earth's interconnected ecosystems.

• Geography Standard Three (Places), Grades 9-12

  Partially covered

  students will understand the processes which result in distinctive cultures, economic activity, and settlement formation in particular locations across the world.

  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
  • My Daily Altar — Season Synthesis

  • · 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 3 · Conquest and the Great Reversal
  • · Ep 5 · How Coca-Cola Got Its Name (biopiracy)
  • · Ep 7 · The Same Story, Six Times
  • · Ep 11 · The Debt of Freedom (the 1825 French indemnity and Haiti's modern poverty)

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the processes that give particular places distinctive cultures and economic activity are taught through the commodity map — why coffee, sugar, and cacao regions developed as they did, and how colonial cash-crop systems still shape them — rather than as a systematic world-cultures survey.

• History Standard One (Chronology), Grades 9-12

  Partially covered

  students will analyze historical materials to trace the development of an idea or trend across space and over a prolonged period of time in order to explain patterns of historical continuity and change.

  Covered by

  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • My Daily Altar — Season Synthesis

  • · The History of Unions, Lesson 4 · Two ideas about who a union is for: the Knights and the AFL
  • · The History of Unions, Lesson 5 · Haymarket, 1886
  • · The History of Unions, Lesson 6 · Homestead, Pullman, and the weapon that actually broke strikes
  • · The History of Unions, Lesson 9 · 1935: the year organizing became a right (the Wagner Act)
  • · The History of Unions, Lesson 10 · The hole in the law: who the Wagner Act left out
  • · Mexico, Lesson 7 · Mexico rewrites its labor law, and the 68-year gap that explains why
  • · Mexico, Lesson 10 · The Rapid Response Mechanism: an international labor rule with teeth
  • · Mexico, Lesson 12 · The limits, honestly: the cases the United States lost
  • · Ep 3 · Conquest and the Great Reversal
  • · Ep 5 · How Coca-Cola Got Its Name (biopiracy)
  • · Ep 7 · The Same Story, Six Times
  • · Ep 11 · The Debt of Freedom (the 1825 French indemnity and Haiti's modern poverty)

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: tracing an idea across a prolonged period is done for the arc of American labor (the Gilded Age through the Wagner Act to NAFTA/USMCA) and for how colonial cash-crop systems persist into the present — genuine continuity-and-change work, though not a general chronological-reasoning program.

• History Standard Two (Analysis), Grades 9-12 — research strategies

  Partially covered

  students will develop and implement effective research strategies for investigating a given historical topic.

  Covered by

  • Coffee — The Daily Global Connection

  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, climate-vulnerability report, 3+ peer-reviewed sources, APA bibliography
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option D, primary-source research paper with an APA bibliography
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, all four options are 2-3 week research projects requiring synthesis across sources

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the Coffee episode's project has students develop and run a research strategy on a historical topic, but it is one graded project in one episode, so we do not claim a sustained research program.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6

  Covered

  Evaluate authors' differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors' claims, reasoning, and evidence.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom

  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story, Beckford (1790) against Equiano (1789) and Mary Prince (1831) on the same plantation world
  • · Ep 3 · Two Ways of Seeing a Bean
  • · Ep 5 · Two Ways of Knowing
  • · Ep 18 · Whose Voice

  Note: The strongest single alignment on this page. Ep 4 puts a planter's euphemism and passive voice directly against two first-person accounts by formerly enslaved writers, and teaches the student to assess each author's claims and evidence.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.6

  Covered

  Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution

  • · Ep 4 · Blood-Sweetened Luxury
  • · Ep 15 · Torches of Freedom
  • · Ep 17 · Lin Zexu's Letter
  • · Ep 16 · Three Sentences, Three Policies

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.7

  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
  • · 19 · Your assignment: find a listing, then find the address today
  • · 20 · Your assignment: write one block
  • · 21 · Your assignment: write one firm
  • · 21 · Your assignment: test one connection of your own
  • · 17 · Your assignment: one schoolhouse, and the budget line that raised it
  • · 20 · Your assignment: write one property

  Note: The Coffee episode ships a graded assignment; the route series and the positive-track courses each close with a research capstone (find a listing, write one firm, test one connection) in which the student runs a self-directed inquiry and synthesizes multiple sources.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.8

  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 specific 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.

  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
  • · 19 · Your assignment: find a listing, then find the address today
  • · 20 · Your assignment: write one block
  • · 21 · Your assignment: write one firm
  • · 21 · Your assignment: test one connection of your own
  • · 17 · Your assignment: one schoolhouse, and the budget line that raised it
  • · 20 · Your assignment: write one property

  Note: The route and positive-track capstones require the student to locate a primary record, corroborate it across independent sources, weigh each source's limits, and write it up with citations: the whole of this standard.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9

  Partially covered

  Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

  Covered by

  • Sugar — The Sweet Revolution

  • · Ep 10 · The Oral History That Survived (recovering Nathan “Nearest” Green's erased role)
  • · Ep 4 · Whose Voice Tells the Story
  • · 2 · How we know: reading a record the enslavers wrote
  • · 2 · The center of gravity: the claim, its sources, and its caveats
  • · 9 · Reading density: what a thick section and a thin one mean
  • · 8 · The Lula record, stated as dated fact
  • · Africa Before Colonization: The Documented Record

  What we do and don't cover: Full in the BVC Nathan Green lesson, where the documentary and oral records openly disagree. Partial across the catalog-wide claim: every one of those courses integrates cited primary and secondary sources into a coherent account (the standard's first clause), and the route, labor, and contested-scholarship courses also foreground where the sources disagree, but the narrative histories (bathing, hoodoo) integrate sources without making discrepancy-resolution a systematic exercise.

• 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 Delaware (Common Core) mathematics standard.
• Science — one partial claim, via the shared NGSS file. Delaware was an NGSS lead state and the 7th state to adopt the NGSS verbatim (unanimous State Board vote, September 19, 2013), so our one honest science claim — HS-ESS3-1, partial — comes through the shared NGSS mapping with the limit stated on the entry. There is no laboratory work, investigation, or modelling in this catalog, and we will not claim more.
• Two Civics 9-12 expectations we checked and rejected. Civics Standard Two 9-12 (“examine and analyze the extra-Constitutional role that political parties play in American politics”) is not taught: Delaware Civics teaches the CONSTITUTIONAL major-party balance rule on Delaware's courts, which is the opposite of an extra-Constitutional party analysis. Civics Standard Four 9-12 (“understand the process of working within a political party, a commission engaged in examining public policy, or a citizen's group”) is likewise not taught — the course teaches running for local office and attending public boards, not working inside a party, commission, or advocacy group. The courses do not genuinely teach these, so we do not claim them.
• Economics — Macroeconomics is not taught. Economics Standard Two 9-12 (how economies function as a whole — inflation, unemployment, business cycles, and monetary and fiscal policies) is not taught by this catalog. The BVC economics is microeconomic and trade-focused (commodity prices, value chains, trade barriers), so we claim the Microeconomics, Economic Systems, and International Trade expectations and reject Macroeconomics.
• Geography — Maps (excluded as unverifiable here) and Regions. The Commodity Map itself would map to Geography Standard One (Maps), but that strand's Grades 9-12 expectation is a bulleted, multi-part standard (mapped patterns analyzed through hierarchy, accessibility, diffusion, and complementarity, each with its own parenthetical definition) that we could not reproduce cleanly verbatim in a single entry — verbatim-or-nothing, so we exclude it rather than paraphrase, and note the gap here. Geography Standard Four (Regions) is not genuinely taught. The gap on Maps is in our transcription, not the lessons.
• History — the Content strand's Delaware connection. History Standard Four 9-12 asks for modern United States and world history “and its connections to Delaware history.” The catalog teaches world and U.S. history at real depth, but not Delaware's own history, which the benchmark centers — so we map the History strand's analytical expectations (Chronology, Analysis, Interpretation) and do not claim the Content strand.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Delaware's closest frameworks (Computer Science, World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Delaware claims this pass.