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Teaching United States History is gearing up for another academic year with new contributors and new conversations. Stay tuned for more about what we teach, how we do it, and why.

Erin Bartram

Using current events to teach historical thinking

In the past few years, it feels like there’s been more outcry for historians to engage with the public and “explain” the present to them, but it exists alongside the perpetual outcry about historians who might discuss current events with the public they engage with every day: their students. Professors, on the other hand, often…

Matthew Teutsch

“What do you produce as an English teacher?”

A few weeks ago, someone asked me a question that made me stop and think. The person asked, “What do you produce as an English teacher?” The inquisitor did not posit the question in a derogatory manner; in fact, I firmly believe that the person asking the question wanted to legitimately understand what I do…

Kevin Gannon

Crowdsourcing the Study Guide

I’ve always had somewhat of an ambivalent relationship with study guides. Every semester, my students have clamored for a study guide for each examination, and each semester I go ahead and provide them with one. I think every instructor wishes they could respond to the “what do I need to study for this exam” question…

Katherine Jewell

Social Reading and Identifying the Argument (Part II of II)

In my last post, I explored how to employ social reading in the online classroom using Perusall, Padlet, and other digital tools. In that application, my main goal is to ensure students are reading critically. By that I mean not just scrolling through a textbook, but actually engaging with it. I want them to consider…

How much is that in today’s money?

“But how much is that in today’s money?” Anyone who’s taught the US survey has heard this question dozens of times. It a completely understandable one, and often impels students to seek out online calculators that claim they can “convert” old timey money into today’s currency. I usually try to answer this question by talking…

Language and Syntax in the Classroom

The day after the 2017 Boston Marathon, the marathon’s sponsor, Adidas, sent an email to participants who completed the race. The subject line read, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon.” On the surface, nothing appears wrong with this line; however, given the events at the marathon on April 15, 2013, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated…

Hard Lessons from Ben Franklin’s Failure

Chances are, you already know about Ben Franklin: inventor, diplomat, postmaster, bespectacled genius. But Ben Franklin, failure? It’s true. The Founding Father struck out at one of the goals he set for himself – to become a champion chess player. Why he failed in this endeavor, but attained such greatness in others, is instructive for…

Some Thoughts about Alignment

I’m not sure if it’s because we’ve just passed through midterms at my university, or because I’ve been working on course (re)design as part of my teaching center duties, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of alignment lately. Those familiar with the methodology of “backward design” will recognize alignment as the glue…

Social Reading and the Online Classroom (Part I of II)

In an April 9, 2017, article in Salon, Martin Harris explored the potential implications of the rise of social reading and story creation. He proposed, “Our stories are going social and, as new platform technologies remake the reading experience into something increasingly interactive, we now must ask what we’re giving up in the bargain.” With crowdsourcing…

Quiet Discussions: Making Space to Hear Extroverted and Introverted Students

As both a high school and post-secondary teacher, I have struggled with how to foster an inclusive classroom discussion without resorting to punitive measures. Certainly teachers would rather use “carrot” methods of incentivizing over the punishing “stick,” but often resort to the latter. This begs the question: what, in fact, is the carrot of classroom…

Why saying “put it in historical context” isn’t enough

A few years ago, a grad school colleague of mine told me the technical term for what we were asking our students to do in many of our assignments. “Putting things in historical context,” she said, could also be expressed as “Identifying and applying relevant information.” That phrase has helped me understand just how and…

Archive Project: Taking Students Out of the Classroom and Into History

Over the past year, I have constructed various projects for my literature survey courses. Last fall, I had students define a term related to Early American literature and present what they learned. In the spring, I had students read a novel or play by an author we were looking at in the course and present…

Student Blogging as a Teaching and Learning Tool

Even though I’m teaching the Ancient World instead of my usual US courses this semester, I’ve found that both my philosophy and general approach toward the survey course have remained consistent, despite the vast chronological and geographical distance. I remain committed to active learning approaches, though I find that occasional nuggets of expository lecture (5-6…

Embedding Content Goals within Teaching Methods

In my Honors seminar in History, a class drawn from many majors (with few History majors), we are studying the Modern American Presidency. Using the teaching tools compiled by Kathryn Cramer Brownell at the Miller Center at UVA, students will be reading primary and secondary sources to consider the evolution of the institution over time,…