Please, please teach them how to read and write well, clearly, analytically. Make them not hate history and instill general curiosity in the world outside America and outside their own times

But I've seen way too many college students completely unprepared for college-level writing. No five paragraph bullshit. Just teach them how to write clearly (minimize passive voice), PROOFREAD, the importance of rewriting and revision, and have a clear argument. Honestly, if all high school teachers did that, I would be very happy. I'm less concerned about content because high school can't teach in depth anyways.

Could you provide a little more detail on the timeline and geographic scope you're expected to cover with this course? I'm getting really thrown off by the idea of a world history class that "can't really get into Asia or anything."

I helped write a new world history curriculum in our district last summer. It was world history, not Western Civ, so we were really crammed for time. After teaching it, here are a few things that I want to change (and you might want to incorporate):

• Since you mention common core, I would work toward developing ways of “thinking like a historian” as my first priority and have memorization take a back seat. I gave multiple choice tests because I had to, but I think projects and essays would be a much better way to assess these goals. Maybe you are familiar with SHEG world history lessons, structured academic controversies, or primary source analyses. I would recommend using all of these in class. I called them history labs (to get the kids to kind of think of them like their science labs). It’s pretty easy to hunt down pre-made lesson plans that use primary sources for these history labs, but the key is actually teaching them the different components of historical thinking or citing evidence. I kind of just threw these in, but I would want to be more intentional about it. Maybe pick one or two skills to focus on per unit and get them in the habit of doing them well before moving on.
• It’s so easy for world history to be “one damn thing after another.” By identifying major themes in the units like you are going to do, you are helping to create some sort of narrative that ties the lessons together. I think that is a great way of doing it; I tried to do that too with moderate success. I think for next year, I am going to start each of my units with a unit overview where I introduce some of the big global themes in this unit. So for unit 1 (10,000 BCE to 500 CE), I might overview the period by talking about the formation of settled agrarian populations, formations of governments and new economic systems, and the formation of major cultures and religious. I’d be trying to identify some global patterns that could tie a lot of the stuff together that we had seen. I was thinking about putting those videos on YouTube and having them watch them outside of school. So instead of one big theme per unit, I would have several since in reality there is so much happening all over the world. Then students can choose one theme to focus on during the assessment.
• Our curriculum went up to the Industrial Revolution first semester. If you want to do current events or go into the future, the reality is that you have to leave a lot of history out. I don’t know about you, but the textbooks we have are absolutely massive, so to do this, I was skipping chapters and chapters at a time. I sped through early empires in like a week. Spent maybe a day on Greece. Two on Rome. Point is, you’ll need to plan out your pacing all the way until the end of the year, cut out a great deal of the rest, and then stick to your pacing guide. You have to create your own narrative and then choose the content that best tells your story of Western Civ (which is sounds like you are doing already). Some of my colleagues had a lot of trouble letting go of topics they were interested in even though they weren’t really that important to the goals of the class, and others just went chapter by chapter through the book since they didn’t know enough world history to tell their own story. I think both of these pitfalls could have been avoided by considering the goals of the class and preparing a pacing guide before the year began.
• I definitely would try to find more simulations and games to play...maybe one per unit. My kids were sick of reading and writing by the end. It’s hard to find quality games, but I’m going to spend some serious time this summer hunting for some good ones.
• If you need other themes for your units, you could try the NCSS standards. They have 10 big themes that students learn in social studies. A lot of them are pretty easily crafted into unit themes.
• Bill of Rights in Action has a lot of in-depth world history articles that have pretty good activities at the end of them. The activities are often debates or they connect the issues in the article to modern day stuff. I’ve been very pleased with those resources, and they often led to engaging discussions for the kids.
• Lastly, I would really try hard to include lots of people other than kings and generals. Find places to add voices of minorities, women, and common people. That’s a lot easier to do I think with world history instead of western civ. My students related to the people better when they weren’t just white, male leaders. I did several of these as webquest and then had kids write from the perspective of that person.