UBD? WTF?!

The UBD unit that I’m required to create for student teaching has been a major source of stress for me. It’s been on my mind since practicum, and as much as I feel that I have a strong grasp of backward design, I am still going through the motions about what my unit will cover. I’ve been collaborating with my cooperating teachers, searching their curriculum maps for the school year so I can align my learning objectives with the content that they intend to cover. But thus far I have not made a final decision on what the theme of the unit will be. In terms of cultural context, the unit will be about West Africa. After all, it makes sense seeing as how I’ve been living here for almost six months and have travelled around the region. Yet, West Africa is a dynamic place, which makes difficult to decide on one topic. For example, should I teach a unit focusing on the region as a whole; the lives of women in West Africa; or just Senegal. Next, I haven’t decided which class will be taught the unit. The intermediate kids are orally very strong and their level is more comparable to an advanced class in the US, but I feel that it may be more meaningful to design a unit for beginners. The question is: How do I inject content gauged for beginners into a cultural context that seems so complex and over their heads? Honestly, all of these questions have been keeping me up at night.