Like many historians, I have a lot of friends in the world of higher education. Each fall, I spend a good bit of time discussing the upcoming academic year with them. We compare notes on teaching strategies, talk about what works (and what doesn’t) in the classroom, and collaborate on various research or teaching projects.
One of the things I’ve noticed in these conversations is how much my teaching has changed in the past few years. More and more, I’ve turned to under-represented voices, under-appreciated narratives, and under-the-radar discussions about the meaning of history education to first-generation college students. The reason? I’m no longer a graduate student teaching small classes at a private university. Instead, I’m an assistant professor of history at a large, comprehensive community college in the country’s fourth-largest city. At my campus, we have 20,000 students, 70 percent of whom are black, Latino, Asian-American, or “other” (to use the college’s official classifications). We have a large population of international students, a large LGBTQ student population, and huge numbers of students who are the first in their families to attend college. A diverse student body facilitates an intellectual dynamism that allows for rewarding conversations about race, ethnicity, geopolitics, poverty, gender, religion, sexuality, and a variety of other topics. Yet our students bring challenges that most graduate students simply never face when teaching their first college courses.
When I taught at a private university, I often introduced a New York-centric topic with the question, “How many of you have visited New York City?” Generally, about 80 percent of the students would raise their hands, and a discussion of various neighborhoods, travel experiences, and cultural sites would ensue. To put it bluntly, these were children of privilege who were both well-traveled and keenly unaware that most 19-year olds in the country have never visited Manhattan. At my current campus, I’ve learned not to ask the NYC question, which tends to make students retreat from the discussion. But I’ve also learned that my students bring insights to the classroom that make teaching US history not just rewarding, but transformative. One of my students came up to me after a discussion of the 1960s and informed me that her grandmother organized with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Students have often linked our discussions about immigration with their own journeys to the US (and, often, the continuing fight for a pathway to citizenship and fair treatment). And countless students have spoken about their experiences with racial, religious, or sexual discrimination, enlivening course content and connecting their own lives to issues in history.
As we re-launch Teaching American History (thanks to the leadership of Ben Wright), one of the things I hope to add is a focus on teaching a diverse student population. US history courses are not “one-size-fits-all;” they require sensitivity, compassion, quick responses, and constant re-assessment. I hope to share my challenges with readers and to hear from others how they are responding to these issues in the classroom. I’m looking forward to these conversations and happy to be part of them!
Great post, Blake!
Thanks, Joe. Hope you are enjoying life these days. Congrats (if I didn’t say so before) on the great new position! But Houston misses y’all, of course.
Love this!!! You know I do!
Great stuff Blake!
Your New York City point is a great, clear, practical indicator that the way that we teach should flex depending on the students who fill our classrooms. I’ll confess that I find much of the discourse around teaching nontraditional students to be a little condescending. I’ve always found the common interview question, “how would you teach to a diverse student population,” slightly problematic–the implication being that non-white or low-income students are an entirely different type of student. I’ve sadly overheard more than one of these conversations that smack of the subtle bigotry of low expectations. But conversely, failing to take these questions seriously leads to the perpetuation of white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, etc.
I’m excited for more of your posts as helpful instigators to get me thinking critically about these questions.
Ben,
I agree with you that the assumption of difference can be troubling, especially if the implicit comparison is negative. In fact, I wouldn’t even classify our students as “non-traditional.” The average age of our students is about what you’d find at most other colleges. But I do think that teaching a diverse group of students is different than teaching students who mostly come from similar backgrounds. Hopefully, I can propose some questions around that topic, knowing there are no simple answers. I’m interested to hear from others. Happy to be on board! Thanks again for the invite.
Great points Blake. As a side note- I wonder if your experience, which is far more typical of college classrooms today, will help resolve the ever-raging debates about how to create a “new narrative” to replace the old. Scholarship of the past 30+ years is notoriously good at destroying narratives but, supposedly, bad at creating new ones. Yet as our classrooms get more and more diverse, a diverse narrative is not turning students OFF, but helping students get turned on to the importance of history. Perhaps the new narrative will not come from big books down to classrooms, but from classrooms and blogs up to the Ivy Tower’s big books.
Joseph, I couldn’t agree more. The narrative that is emerging is from the classroom up, not the Ivory Tower down. I think more and more academics are realizing the need to have these discussions.