Welcome, High School Faculty!
The American Sociological Association encourages the inclusion of sociology in the secondary school curriculum and supports high school teachers of sociology by providing professional development resources and networking opportunities.
Have questions? Contact [email protected]
Membership for High School Faculty
ASA has a special reduced fee membership category for high school teachers of sociology that provides the full package of member benefits. To learn more about ASA membership and to join or renew, click here. When you join ASA in the High School Teacher member category, you will be automatically included in the High School Teachers of Sociology listserv. High school sociology faculty from all over the country share instruction ideas and discuss the best practices for engaging students to think sociologically about current events, and more.
National Council for the Social Studies C3 Framework
The American Sociological Association has contributed to NCSS’s College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History. Its objectives are to: a) enhance the rigor of the social studies disciplines; b) build critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills to become engaged citizens; and c) align academic programs to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies. Sociology appears as Appendix C (beginning on page 73)
ASA High School Expert Spotlight Program
Do you want your students to hear from a sociologist first-hand? Sign up for ASA’s High School Expert Spotlight Program! The program gives high school instructors the opportunity to request a sociologist as an expert guest in their high school classroom. ASA will manage the matches and the rest is up to you! Topics for the Expert Spotlights can include substantive issues in sociology, such as race, class, or gender, or focus on more general topics such as: What is a sociologist? The program launched in June 2021 and will accept requests and volunteers on a rolling basis. Only those who are regular members or high school teacher members of ASA are eligible to participate in this program.
You can request an expert guest or volunteer to be an expert guest by signing up here: High School Expert Spotlight Sign-Up. For more information, contact [email protected].
Teaching and Learning Symposium at the Annual Meeting
The Teaching and Learning Symposium consists of four back-to-back sessions of workshops, roundtable discussions, and poster presentations that are focused on teaching and learning in the discipline. Proposals to present at the symposium (which are due in January of each year) consist of a 300-word structured abstract. The symposium creates new pathways to engage a broader array of sociologists in discussions of teaching and learning in the discipline. The symposium is scheduled either the day before or the day after the main day of sessions organized by the Section on Teaching and Learning, resulting in two full days of programming focused on teaching at the Annual Meeting.
Note that high school faculty are eligible for a substantially reduced Annual Meeting registration fee. For more information, visit the Annual Meeting Page.
National Standards for High School Sociology
ASA’s National Standards for High School Sociology guides teachers and administrators in the development of high-quality, developmentally appropriate, one-semester introductory sociology courses for students in the 9th-12th grades. The National Standards do not address all of the topics that could be covered in a one-semester sociology course. Rather, they establish the minimal content that any foundational sociology class at the high school level should cover.
Read the standards and the 2022 addendum for updated guidance on your high school sociology curriculum and access the High School Workshop Toolkit for lesson plans connected to each of the competencies in ASA’s National Standards.
Teaching Resources
Faculty are at the heart of the discipline of sociology. ASA offers resources and programs to support pedagogical success for faculty and teachers across the full range of institution types. For high school specific teaching resources, see the “Lesson Plans” chart below. Additionally, visit the ASA Teaching webpage for information on online learning, TRAILS (ASA’s online peer reviewed library of high-quality teaching resources), and more. To take your teaching to the next level, our public sociology journal Contexts and our Sociological Insights video collection are also excellent ways to communicate cutting-edge social research to general audiences. There are also some valuable collections of videos online. Check out YouTube’s Crash Course on Sociology for bite-sized videos on 45 introductory sociology topics.
