Carlos Mendes
High School Teacher
I teach U.S. History and AP Government at a public high school in Sacramento, where I've spent the last nine years trying to make civics feel less like a textbook and more like a toolkit. I lead our school's mock trial team and helped rebuild the junior-year research curriculum around primary sources instead of summaries. Outside the classroom I coach debate and volunteer with a local voter-registration drive every fall.
Experience
Teach U.S. History, AP Government, and a semester elective on media literacy to roughly 150 students a year. Redesigned the junior-year research unit around primary-source analysis, raising the department's AP Gov pass rate from 61% to 84% over three years. Coach the varsity mock trial team to two regional finals.
Taught 7th and 8th grade social studies and ran an after-school debate club that grew from 6 to 40 students. Piloted a project-based unit on local government that was later adopted district-wide.
Provided daily literacy and attendance support to a caseload of 18 at-risk middle schoolers in partnership with classroom teachers, and ran small-group tutoring sessions three afternoons a week.
Projects
A junior-year U.S. History curriculum overhaul replacing textbook summaries with document-based lessons, now used by all four sections of the course at Rivertown High School.
Co-founded a regional mock trial league connecting five area high schools, complete with shared case materials and a rotating judge panel of local attorneys.