How This Class Works
Basically everything you'd otherwise have to ask me. Read it once and you're set for the year.
Your course syllabus
Open the class on your schedule. Each syllabus is ready to read on a phone, print from the browser, or review together at home.
The three classes
One of these is on your schedule. Here's what you actually signed up for.
U.S. History 9
Everybody's had a U.S. History class. This is not that class. We open in 1865 with four million people who just got free, a country with absolutely no plan for them, and a Constitution that spent seventy-eight years protecting slavery without ever once printing the word. Week one, you go find it in the actual text — it's in there, hiding in plain sight. Then we follow what happens next: who got power, who took it back, who got killed for trying to vote, and how a railroad map quietly turns into a power map. From there we keep going, all the way to the country you woke up in this morning. Almost all of it is uglier, stranger, and a lot more interesting than the version you got in middle school.
Hidden History
Two of the most argued-about stories in American history, and we're going to do the thing almost nobody bothers to do with them — actually check. Not “believe.” Not “debunk.” Check. What does the July 1947 record really say? What did the FBI put in writing that same week? What was on Nixon's tapes, who tried to bury them, and what happened to the guy who refused to fire the prosecutor? One of these two turns out to be a genuine government cover-up with paperwork. The other one turns out to be something more interesting than a cover-up. By the end you'll be able to tell those apart on your own, which is a skill you will use roughly every day of your life, mostly on your phone.
Beyond the Scoreboard
A history class that happens to be about sports. In 1876, eight guys shut themselves in a New York hotel and wrote themselves a monopoly that still runs professional sports today. In 1910 the United States government banned a movie — using shipping law — because a Black man won a boxing match. In 1921 a jury said not guilty, and the next morning a man who wasn't a judge banned eight players for life anyway, and nobody could appeal it. Every one of those is real and every one of them is on paper. If you want to understand how power actually works in this country, watching who gets to play and who writes the rules is a shockingly good way in.
The first five minutes
Same thing every single day. You'll have it down by Friday and then you never think about it again.
It still takes about eleven seconds. If you're on time, the point is automatic. If you're late, the sign-in is still recorded at 0 until I decide whether to award the point. Either way, check in instead of skipping it.
open daily check-in →Say hi. Just not that.
Genuinely — say hi when you walk in. I like it, and the room is better when people actually talk to each other.
Just don't lead with “what are we doing today?” I know it's not really a question. It's a hello that needed a job. But I answer it about thirty times before the bell, which means I spend the start of class explaining the day one person at a time instead of starting it. It's on the board, it's on the site, and it's on the screen. “Hey” covers it. So does telling me literally anything else that happened to you.
A source proves what it proves. Nothing else.
Every day, something real goes up on the screen. An actual document — the Constitution, an FBI teletype, a bank record, a photo somebody took in 1910. You look at it before I tell you what it means. Then, every time, two questions:
The second one is the whole class. Anybody can read a document and get excited about it. Knowing exactly where the evidence runs out is the actual skill, and most grown adults on the internet do not have it.
Every class has a signature move
The evidence rule above is the same everywhere. But each class has one idea it keeps coming back to, and yours shows up in week one.
Four words
Every claim you meet lands in one of four buckets. All three classes use these — Hidden History basically lives on them, because the whole course is about claims people argue over. Picking the right bucket is worth more than knowing the date.
Claim, detail, limit
Every document gets all three. One thing it proves. One detail worth stealing. One thing it flat-out cannot tell you. Miss that third one and you haven't finished reading — you've just been impressed. Fair warning: Michigan turns up in most of these stories, and not always on the right side of them.
Who could say no?
In 1908, four people had to agree before a heavyweight title fight could happen: the champion, the challenger, a promoter with money, and a state willing to allow it. Any one of them could kill the whole thing by doing nothing. That shape — find every single person who could have said no — works on a league, a law, a company, a courtroom, a school. It's the entire class in one question.
What a class looks like
Same shape every time, so you're never lost and you always know what's coming.
How to actually take notes
There's no packet in this class. No fill-in-the-blanks. You get blank paper, and whatever you build on it is what you carry into the quiz. That freaks people out, so here's exactly what a good page looks like — and a bad one.
Reconstruction was a time when a lot of things happened. Freed people wanted freedom and there were a lot of problems with the government and it was hard for them.
That's a paragraph about how you felt during class. There's nothing in it. No date, no number, no name, nothing you could get asked about. You can't study a vibe.
8/31 Freedom on the Ground
4 VERBS: marry / move / learn / claim
each one = defense against a specific threat
MARRY -> Bureau records, tens of thousands, 1861-69
why: inheritance, custody, testimony,
widow's pension (needed proof)
marriage under slavery = no legal force
CLAIM -> Field Order 15. Jan 16, 1865
Sherman. coastal strip. 40-acre plots
~40,000 people farming it by that summer
** NOT a national promise - ONE military order **
TAKEN BACK -> fall 1865. Johnson pardons.
land goes back to the former owners
proves: freedpeople moved first, on their own
can't prove: that any of it was meant to last
the "mule" = army surplus, handed out informally never actually written into the order
That's maybe ninety seconds of writing and it beats a full page of sentences. Every single thing on it is something you could get asked about.
Don't write sentences
Write the thing. Arrows instead of “because” and “this led to.” Nobody is grading your grammar. Ever.
Numbers and dates, always
If a number is on the screen it goes on your paper. Jan 16, 1865. Forty acres. Forty thousand people. That's what quizzes are made out of.
Names go down
Sherman. Johnson. Landis. Felt. If I say a name twice, that is not an accident.
Watch me, not just the slide
If I slow down, repeat myself, or say “this part matters” — that's the tell. Write it.
Leave the bottom empty
Draw a line across the bottom third of the page before we start. Don't fill it during class. That space has a job.
Messy is completely fine
Nobody is collecting these. They only have to work for one person and that person is you.
The last five minutes: repair
Retrieve
Close your notes. Write what you remember from memory. Yes it's uncomfortable. That is the entire point.
Check
Now look. Find what you missed and what you had flat-out wrong.
Repair
Fix it under the line. Everything below that line is something you got wrong once — which makes it the most useful part of the whole page.
Being wrong in private, on paper, while it costs you absolutely nothing — that's how you stop being wrong on the quiz. It's the only reason we do this every day.
How ten days work
The month is two ten-day blocks. Both run identically, so the second one has no surprises in it.
Open-note means open your note. Every answer comes from something that was on the screen, in a packet, or that you wrote down. I'm not hiding anything and I'm not trying to trick you. But “open note” does absolutely nothing for a blank page, and somebody finds that out the hard way on Day 10 every single year.
The first month, day by day
Current U.S. History unit: The Gilded Age. The table below is the original launch map, not the live pacing calendar. When class moves faster or slower, the live course page and lesson hubs are the source of truth for what we're actually doing.
| Day | U.S. History 9 | Hidden History | Beyond the Scoreboard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tue Aug 25 – Wed Aug 26 · getting set up · you're reading this on one of those days | |||
| Block 1 · quiz on Day 10 | |||
| 01Thu Aug 27 | Read the Nation in 1865 | Evidence Makes History | Sport Is a Mirror and an Engine |
| 02Fri Aug 28 | The Constitution Before and After the Civil War | Why Smart People Believe Bad Stories | The Factory City Invents Modern Sport |
| 03Mon Aug 31 | Freedom on the Ground: Family, Movement, Land, School | The Week Roswell Became Roswell | Baseball Becomes a Business |
| 04Tue Sep 1 | Packet AOn your own | ||
| 05Wed Sep 2 | FlexCatch up and repair notes | ||
| 06Thu Sep 3 | The Reconstruction Amendments Rewrite Citizenship | Project Mogul: The Secret Under the Debris | Rules, Boxing, and the Respectability Problem |
| Fri Sep 4 and Mon Sep 7 · no school | |||
| 07Tue Sep 8 | Black Political Power and Biracial Government | Bodies, Dummies, and Memory | Moses Fleetwood Walker and the Source Trail |
| 08Wed Sep 9 | Terror and Federal Enforcement | Area 51: Real Secrecy, Wrong Conclusion | How Baseball Built a Color Line |
| 09Thu Sep 10 | Packet BPlus note repair before the quiz | ||
| 10Fri Sep 11 | QuizCumulative, open-note | ||
| Block 2 · quiz on Day 20 | |||
| 11Mon Sep 14 | How Reconstruction Collapsed | The Roswell Verdict | The Belt Nobody Wanted Him to Hold |
| 12Tue Sep 15 | From Redemption to Jim Crow and Plessy | Five Men Inside the Watergate | Fifteen Rounds and the Count That Followed |
| 13Wed Sep 16 | Evidence Lab: Two Memories of Reconstruction | Follow the Money | The Law That Chased the Film |
| 14Thu Sep 17 | Packet AOn your own | ||
| 15Fri Sep 18 | FlexCatch up and repair notes | ||
| 16Mon Sep 21 | A Railroad Map Becomes a Power Map | Reporters, Sources, and Corroboration | A Statute Broad Enough to Fit |
| 17Tue Sep 22 | Railroads, Time Zones, and the National Market | The Taping System Nobody Was Supposed to Mention | Eight Men, Two Verdicts |
| 18Wed Sep 23 | The Second Industrial Revolution | The Saturday Night Massacre | The Authority That Outlived Everyone |
| 19Thu Sep 24 | Packet BPlus note repair before the quiz | ||
| 20Fri Sep 25 | QuizCumulative, open-note | ||
About the room
There's a record player. There are lights. There's a bunch of stuff sitting out where you are instead of locked in a cabinet. That's on purpose — I'd rather this feel like a room than a waiting area.
Here's the deal, though. None of it gets replaced. Not next week, not next month, probably not next year. If something breaks it's just gone, and the room is worse for everybody for the rest of the year — including whoever broke it. So treat it like it's yours, because functionally it is. Put things back where they were. If something's already broken or acting weird, tell me. You are not in trouble for reporting it. You'd be in trouble for me finding it in June.
Chromebooks and the site
Small stuff, but it comes up constantly and everything is easier if you already know it.
Put it back on the charger
Chromebooks live on the cart in here — you don't bring one from home. Take one, use it, and when you're done put it back on the charger, not just leaning in the cart. An unplugged Chromebook is a dead Chromebook for whoever has this room next hour. Two extra seconds.
Screenshots
Ctrl + Show Windows grabs the whole screen. Ctrl + Shift + Show Windows lets you drag a box around just part of it. Show Windows is the top-row key that looks like a rectangle with two lines next to it.
Finding the file
Files → Downloads. Sometimes I'll ask you to grab something off the screen — a document, a chart, one line from a source. Now you know how.
Bathroom
Passes go through grant-desk.com, not a hand in the air across the room. Go when you need to go — just do it on the site so there's a record and I'm not tracking it in my head.
Lesson hubs
Every day has a hub on the site with what we did and what's coming. It is the answer to most questions before you ask them.
Missing a day
Site first, then somebody's notes, then me. The hub tells you what we did — but the quiz is open-note and cumulative, so the notes are the part that actually matters.
What to bring
A 3-ring binder
Not a folder. Not a stack in the bottom of your bag. Everything in here is loose paper and the quiz is open-note — the binder is the difference between finding something in ten seconds and never finding it at all.
Something to write with
One pen or one pencil. That's the whole ask. Just have it on you.
A second color
Not required, and one color works completely fine. But if you've got a second pen, use it for everything under the repair line. During an open-note quiz you can spot your own fixes from across the page instead of hunting for them. Cheap upgrade.
Where all of this comes from
None of this is made up and none of it is behind a paywall. These are the actual archives the lectures pull from — the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the House and Senate historians, the CIA and FBI reading rooms. If you think I got something wrong, or you just want to go look at the real thing, go. I'd genuinely rather you did.