I’m back! After a semester of maternity leave, I was thrilled to get back in the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, my seven month old is cute and cuddly, but I really like college kids. Before the summer break, I contemplated on this blog about shedding content in favor of emphasizing analytical skills and modern…
One of my favorite scenes in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High is when Mr. Hand, the crotchety U.S. history teacher, berates his students for their recent exam performances. “Three weeks we’ve been talking about the Platt Amendment,” he growls. “What are you people? On dope?” Alas, if your own students are likewise befuddled by…
This semester I’m teaching America in the Nuclear Era: 1945-1968 (syllabus linked). I recently divided my 1945-present elective into two halves to allow for better exploration of the moments in the years covered and develop a more thematic approach. As with all my courses, I include a significant amount of popular culture. For the previous…
When people hear that I am a social studies teacher, their responses typically fall into two camps: they either tell me how much they love history or hate it. The reason for any negativity towards the subject is typically because, “I’m not good at memorizing dates.” And indeed, students’ image of a social studies teacher…
It’s a new academic year, and optimism and energy are in abundant supply. There are new ideas for class, new ways to engage students, and great questions to wrestle with as the intersections between past and present have rarely been so obvious. And it all goes swimmingly, it seems, until the first time we actually…
One of the perks of working at my institution is a somewhat unusual academic calendar in which our graduation occurs the last Saturday in April. We may start our spring semester alarmingly soon after New Year’s, but it’s all worth it come May and nearly four months of open time beckons. This longer summer recess…
When I was a graduate student, one of the professors I TA’d for taught the survey like, well, a survey. We “visited” a variety of places examining not only the history but the ways in which the place had remembered that history. So, for example, we visited Santa Fe and thought critically about the Fiesta…
Tara Strauch wrote a thought-provoking post about using children’s books in her U.S. history survey course. It’s a great idea, for the reasons she lists. And it speaks to an update I’m planning on making to my survey course for the fall. I’ve been reading some pointed criticisms of the traditional lecture format recently. Like…
A few years ago, as part of a general curricular revision, my department moved to a three-semester sequence for both our World and US History surveys. There were several reasons we made the move: we wanted more room to focus on the particular outcomes these courses embodied as part of our university’s core curriculum (particularly…
This semester I took an experimental approach to the dreaded online discussion board. Unless discussions are significantly scaffolded, it can be troublesome to effectively facilitate back-and-forth among students. While a mediated discussion does resemble survey-level discussions in class, with the professor usually acting as the conduit to connect student points, an online environment seems to…
I had a great new idea for a final project for my survey classes this semester. It was going to be awesome. This assignment was going to draw on the skills my students were practicing every week but then take it all to a new level. Critical thinking! Public writing! Digital tools! The semester started, and…
We are pleased to include the following guest post from Dr. Gary Wilson of College of the Mainland in Texas City, Texas. In the following post, Dr. Wilson reflects on four decades of teaching and administration, highlighting his use of online quizzes and his attempts to minimize reliance on lecturing. I taught my first college…
Recently I caught another article about an approach to high school writing instruction that many of you are familiar with: “progressive mastery.”1)Full disclosure: I have not read the deeper literature on this, and much of what I’m doing in this post is simply riffing on some of its broader ideas. If I have fundamentally misunderstood…
Next semester, I’ll be offering an online version of my Civil War and Reconstruction course. This is the third time I’ll be teaching this upper-level, reading- and writing-intensive course in a fully online environment. Thanks to being a part of the initial cohort of the Council of Independent Colleges’ Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction, I’ve…
I’m still on maternity leave so I headed to the library with my kids last week. While perusing the picture book section hunting for Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late with my 4 year old, I came across a book I had been meaning to read. A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins and Sophie…
