I, like so many of us, wonder what is supposed to come from a survey class. Almost none of our students will become historians, and the vast majority won’t become history majors. For most, the one semester they take a survey or similarly entry-level class will be their one exposure to the discipline. Among the many…
For the past seven months, I have worked as a consultant for Chippewa County Historical Society, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The experience has taught me a lot about the resources available at local public history institutions, and how little I knew about their possibilities for use in the classroom. Because it’s in a small…
The first two and a half weeks of a semester are the stuff that dreams are made of – attentive students eager to learn and teachers excited to teach. A sense of hope prevails amongst students and teachers alike. Hope that this semester will be different than the others; the promise of a new semester…
It’s that time of year again. This semester I’m teaching my “Social Science Approaches to the American Past” and as I type today, my students are meeting in their small groups to prepare for their presentations next week on runaway slave advertisements. I’m with Kelly on the value of group work from time to time. …
I began my African American history survey class with a discussion of the history of the study of African American history. I have taken this approach in past iterations of the course because I felt it was important for students to understand the context in which the study of African American history emerged. I wanted…
Continuing with the theme of holiday posts, this weekend is the Superbowl, which if television ratings are any indication, is one of America’s most beloved celebrations. When the New England Patriots won the AFC title game, their franchise name — after all, what early Americanist doesn’t appreciate a tricorne hat reference — and their lack…
Classes start this week, probably a week or two later than most. Like Nora, I am thinking about teaching resolutions for the semester. Along with the first half of the US survey, I will be teaching a Western Civilization course covering the Ancient World through the Renaissance. A lot of us teach fields outside United…
I am a strong believer in group projects, even if almost everyone else in higher education thinks they are a waste of time. Earlier this month, I had a conversation with a senior faculty member about one of my syllabi for this semester. She was surprised that I included a group project that was worth…
In previous semesters I have assigned primary sources as homework with varying degrees of success. I could rarely count on students having read the material well enough to jump feet first into discussions and their various levels of reading comprehension meant that quizzing them on the content of primary sources resulted in a lot of…
I’ve already mentioned in a previous post my own aversion to assigning secondary sources in survey courses. But I do think it’s very important to involve secondary sources in upper-level history courses. While it’s always a challenge deciding what to assign, I’ve found it’s equally difficult figuring out how to introduce historiography into my lectures…
Today is December 31st, the final day of 2014. So, in the spirit of the annual rite of passage into the New Year, I have a resolution to share. Although normally I am more focused on the usual spectrum of eating more vegetables and playing more tennis (things that always, quite frankly, feel a bit…
At my lowest moments of teaching, especially while grading a stack of final essays (say, hypothetically, all last weekend), I have always found it tempting to blame my students’ writing problems on other people not doing their jobs. My job is to help students engage with history, someone else is in charge of the writing…
On the heels of Emily Conroy-Krutz’s excellent post about primary sources, I ask the following question to my fellow history teachers: What’s your favorite primary source to use in class, that is outside your area of specialty? I ask because we all have to teach outside our comfort zones, and if you’re like me, you…
Happy Exam Week, everyone! I’ve been trying to get out from this pile of papers all week, so that I can be buried in blue books over the next few days. This time of the semester is so intense for all of us, faculty and students, as we stand at the end of the course…
Some of you may remember a session at the 2013 Southern Historical Association Meeting at which a round-table discussion attempted to weigh the utility of centering military history narratives at the heart of Civil War courses. The panelists endeavored to untangle the stereotyped courses that either decry or ignore military history altogether against those that…
