New York State History standards and Core Curriculum requirements can be met through creative and integrated unit designs. In the summer of 2007, we worked with scholars and writers Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos to engage in a study of how teachers can use an everday commodity such as sugar as a unifying theme to teach a range of historical topics. Key understandings of this unit were:

• The desire for, and production, of sugar led to the creation of some of the most brutal, exploitative labor systems (ie slavery) and ideas (racism); and yet this same desire and system of production helped shape some of the most profound ideas the West has ever developed about freedom (through, for instance, abolitionism and the Haitian Revolution).
• The sugar trade was pivotal in the development of the modern world because with the spread of sugar came the spread of technology and ideas and the meeting up of cultures and peoples.