On August 15, I tweeted about how relatively few Ph.D. programs in History have in-depth courses on teaching and I offered to send my teaching methods syllabi to anyone who might be interested. I was not prepared for what happened next—over 200 people asked for my syllabi! The overwhelming response for readings about teaching stirred…
[Originally posted on Process History on September 5, 2017.] Near the end of the spring semester, my department asked me to teach a summer session of U.S. History since 1865. I had a short time to think about what I’d teach and how I’d teach it. For me, it was important for students to “do” the work…
Preparing students for exams used to stress me out. I used to do what many novice teachers do: I had students come up with a list of questions they could ask the day before the exam. This was an unsatisfactory experience, to say the least. These exam prep sessions were exhausting. I answered a ton…
On September 16, 2018, Slate published an excerpt from Sam Wineburg’s new book, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone). The piece, “Howard Zinn’s Anti-Textbook,” comes from a chapter entitled “Committing Zinns.” As the Slate byline makes clear, Wineburg believes that Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (originally published in 1980)…
Last summer, as I prepared to teach the Modern U.S. History survey, I decided that I wanted to double-down on fostering historical empathy after I read the AHA’s Tuning Project’s Discipline Profile and Core Concepts. Right away, the Tuning Project identifies that empathy is required for the study of history. In an item under the…
