The Students SpeakSometimes I feel like Angela from NBC’s The Office. I like to be evaluated. Fans of the show will remember her excitement when Michael Scott would call her in for the annual “performance review.” But what I’ve never understood is that student evaluations are completed after the semester, and while they can benefit…
“Anachronistic Equivocation” Nina McCune I am an unabashed fan of the British monthly History Today’s “Contrarian,” Tim Stanley. I not only like the content of his writing, I like how he writes- straightforward, provocative, thoughtful, and concise. As a teacher of history, I’d like for my students to write like this – flexible and analytic…
What Taxes Teach (in that terrible movie Hitch, Kevin James plays an accountant,and when I saw his AICPA mug on his desk I exploded in joyat the movie theater. That was the only good part of the movie. Thanks to the good people at TurboTax, I have once again complied with federal and state law…
Using Blogs with DiscussionsNina McCune After visiting positions at Columbia University and Pratt Institute, Nina McCune has relocated to the deep south to teach Modern American History at Baton Rouge Community College. She is currently writing a book on human and civil rights in interwar America. Her other publications include writings on xenophobic violence and…
National Symbols Now that the patriots won the Revolution, ditched their first government structure, and wrote a new one while wining and dining at George Washington’s expense, the United States must become “a nation” in our class. I asked my students to name all the ways they “know” they’re in the United States each day.…
A quick follow up to our interview with Thomas Kidd. He is also the editor and co-editor of some tremendous primary source collections on religion in the 18th century. He published one of those marvelous Bedford series books on the Great Awakening, which has 36 documents from a range of folks influenced by the Great…
Baylor Professor Thomas Kidd on the revolutionary era Teaching United States History is lucky to have Thomas S. Kidd, associate professor of history at Baylor University, to discuss the era of the Revolution. Tommy is another amazing scholar, the author of a host of books (including one on evangelicals and Islam from the colonial period…
Crafting and Grading the First Assignments Our comrade at last week’s webinar on using blogs to engage students and faculty, Scott Williams just blogged about how he received his first batch of essays to grade for the semester. His “rambling” reflections led me to think about our first assignment and how in the future I…
A Quarter for Your Thoughts on the Quartering Acts For some reason, my San Diego friends in the military always want to tell me about their housing situations. Last weekend helping a family move out of military housing, the wife explained, “We get this much a month, but if Bobby is deployed, then we get…
Goods and the GoodHere is part 2 of our interview with Professor Linford Fisher. He discusses the kinds of primary sources he likes for the classroom and how to integrate commercial history with religious history in the colonial period. I also want to draw your attention to his marvelous historiographical essay on “Colonial Encounters” in…
