MANY CALIFORNIAS

PEOPLE • PLACES • PAST • PRESENT • FUTURE


OVERVIEW
People are shaped by the landscape and climate they inhabit. For at least some portion of your life you have lived here, in California, in the Bay Area, on the peninsula. In the mid-1800s, the wealthy elite from San Francisco would take their carriages and travel down El Camino Real to their estates in places like Menlo Park where they had hundred acre retreats and held fabulous balls on summer evenings. And long before that, the Costanoan Indians lived here; later, they would lose the land to the Spanish who would eventually lose it to the Americans once gold was discovered and the westward expansion picked up momentum. One hundred and forty years later, scientists working in the Silicon Valley would create a new “highway” called the internet, a futuristic El Camino Real that would help create a whole new industry in California. Throughout all this change in people’s lives and their culture, stories took shape. The story of California is the story of you and me, of our families and, for most of us, our children and grandchildren. By studying the state’s culture, its history, its literature we will come to better understand what this state means to us and the millions who visit it each year; we will come to appreciate what it offers us and what you can offer it through the contributions you will make as parents, employees, and citizens. Welcome to the new semester. Let’s all do something special this semester that we will remember and people will regard with wonder.

Each student, by the end of this unit of study, will: