Pennsylvania standards alignment

• 6.4.12.A

  Partially covered

  Evaluate the comparative advantage of nations in the production of goods and services.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Tea — The Way of Tea
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Tequila & Mezcal — Heart of the Agave
  • BVC: The Toast — Season Synthesis
  • BVC: The Full Spectrum — Who Draws the Line?
  • BVC: Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • BVC: Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · 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
  • · 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

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: where commodities are produced and why, and who is paid what along the value chain (the smile curve), is the Commodity Map's spine. The formal comparative-advantage framework, by name, is not taught.

• 7.1.12.A

  Partially covered

  Use geographic tools to analyze information about the interaction between people, places, and the environment.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Tea — The Way of Tea
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • BVC: Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace

  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option A, map the supply chain of 3 items from your morning routine
  • · Ep 1 · Assignment, Option B, Coffee Belt climate report, with maps and data tables
  • · 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

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: the Coffee project has students prepare their own maps and data tables, and the Commodity and Growing-Belts maps analyze where commodities grow and why. The standard's full range of geographic tools is not surveyed.

• 7.4.12.A

  Partially covered

  Analyze the global effects of changes in the physical systems.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection
  • BVC: Chocolate — Food of the Gods
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace
  • BVC: Whiskey — Fire Water
  • BVC: Beer — Liquid Bread

  • · 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
  • · Ep 6 · Islands Under Pressure
  • · Ep 8 · Beer Geography Is Shifting

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: how changes in climate reshape where commodities can grow — and the published forecasts of that shift for coffee, cacao, and kava growers — is taught with the evidence supplied. It is one worked thread through the physical-systems changes the standard names, not a survey of them.

• 8.4.12.D

  Partially covered

  Evaluate how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations have impacted the development of the world today, including its effects on Pennsylvania.

  Covered by

  • BVC: Tea — The Way of Tea
  • BVC: Guayusa & Kola Nut — Forest Wisdom
  • BVC: Kava — The Root of Peace
  • BVC: Opioids — The Poppy's Promise
  • BVC: Khat — The Afternoon Leaf
  • BVC: Sugar — The Sweet Revolution
  • BVC: Rum — Sweet Poison

  • · Ep 2 · Who Grows the Tea (colonial and plantation labour)
  • · Ep 5 · Whose Knowledge Is It
  • · Ep 6 · Kava Governs
  • · Ep 17 · The Opium Wars
  • · Ep 20 · The Ban Against the Evidence
  • · Ep 4 · The Triangular Trade and the Middle Passage
  • · Ep 4 · Resistance and Revolution
  • · Ep 11 · The Maroons
  • · Ep 11 · The Haitian Revolution
  • · 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

  What we do and don't cover: Partial: world conflict and cooperation are taught through imperial and colonial systems and the resistance to them, and through the Cold War's end in Poland. The standard's “effects on Pennsylvania” framing is not addressed by these courses.

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 Pennsylvania Core mathematics standard.
• Science — nothing, and here is exactly why. Pennsylvania did NOT adopt the NGSS. Its standards in force are the STEELS standards (Science, Technology & Engineering, Environmental Literacy & Sustainability, effective July 2025), which are Pennsylvania's own — so, unlike California, New York, and D.C., there is no shared NGSS performance expectation to adopt here. This is also not a science course (no lab work, no investigation, no modelling). The catalog's resource-availability and climate-change content is claimed instead under Pennsylvania's Geography standard 7.4.12.A, where it honestly belongs.
• The Pennsylvania Civics flagship's distinctive structure has mostly no code to cite. Pennsylvania Civics: How Your State Government Works teaches the nation's largest full-time state legislature (a 203-member House and 50-member Senate), the elected-then-retained judiciary (partisan election to 10-year terms, then nonpartisan yes/no retention, with the Superior and Commonwealth intermediate courts), how a bill becomes a Pennsylvania law (the three-considerations rule, the two-thirds override, and the Governor's line-item veto on appropriations), and Pennsylvania's 67 counties with their ACTIVE township layer — Pennsylvania does NOT abolish townships — under home-rule and code municipalities. Pennsylvania's 2009 Civics standards reach the Commonwealth's own constitution and rights (5.1.12.D, 5.1.12.E) and general electoral processes (5.3.12.E), which the course backs, but the legislature's size, the elected judiciary, the state lawmaking process, and the township layer have no Pennsylvania-specific code. The gap is in the standards, not the course.
• Act 77 mail-in voting and Pennsylvania's other election specifics. The flagship teaches Act 77 no-excuse mail-in voting (struck down then upheld in McLinko v. Department of State, 2022), closed primaries, first-time-voter ID, and the 15-day registration deadline with no same-day registration. Pennsylvania's Civics standards name only “United States electoral processes” (5.3.12.E), with no Pennsylvania-specific election standard, so we claim Pennsylvania's own rules only through that general standard and the flagship. The specifics have no code.
• The Opium Wars and the Haitian Revolution — Pennsylvania's history standards are too abstract to name them. The catalog teaches both in depth. Pennsylvania's 2009 History standards are analytical standards organized by broad categories (“conflict and cooperation,” “continuity and change”) rather than by specific events, so — unlike Washington, D.C., whose standards name them explicitly — there is no Pennsylvania standard that names the Opium Wars or the Haitian Revolution to cite. We claim the world-history content only through the broad 8.4 categories, and mark those partial.
• Personal finance and most of the Economics framework. Scarcity and opportunity cost as named concepts (6.1), market competition and economic indicators (6.2.A-C, E, F), public goods and taxation policy (6.3.A, C), and the multinational-corporation and technology standards (6.4.C, D) were checked against the Grade 12 Economics framework and are not genuinely taught by these courses. We claim only the economic-systems, government-in-trade, labor-regulation, comparative-advantage, and supply-and-demand standards the catalog actually reaches.
• The general-ELA rhetoric standard, and the science/technical literacy strand. Pennsylvania revised Common Core's RI.11-12.6 (rhetoric) in its general Core ELA (CC.1.2.11-12.D reads differently), so we do not claim it — the catalog's honest, verbatim literacy home is the History/Social-Studies strand (8.5/8.6) mapped above. Pennsylvania's Reading and Writing in Science and Technical Subjects (3.5/3.6) strand is likewise not claimed by this history-and-economics catalog.
• The AI-literacy ladder, the language courses, and Learning How to Learn — deferred, not denied. Pennsylvania's relevant frameworks for these (Business, Computer and Information Technology; World Languages) have not been fetched and verified yet. Our rule is fetch-or-don't-cite, so these courses carry no Pennsylvania claims this pass.