It’s difficult to avoid the stories of powerful people—especially powerful men—abusing their power in every conceivable area of society, from business to politics to higher education. Credible allegations of sexual abuse and harassment by Harvey Weinstein, to Louis CK, to Roy Moore, to—most recently—Al Franken, remind us that horrific, abusive behavior by powerful people (especially…

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…

Recently, I suggested a grading workshop to my colleagues. I wanted to see how my grading standards compared to fellow history faculty at NOVA. I had looked at my colleagues’ syllabi, but I wanted to discuss grading with them a bit more in-depth. It’s great to say on your rubric that a thesis statement needs…

To my students, past, present, and future: I usually write entries to this blog with my colleagues in mind, but this time, I want to write something, very briefly, for you. You will always be welcome in my classroom, no matter where you come from, no matter what language you speak, no matter how you…

*Note: If you have not already, please read Kevin Gannon’s excellent post about this same topic.   The student, a young white woman who I’ll call Tess, stammered as she whispered to me in class. She’d been struggling for over a minute, trying to ask me a question about the Haitian Declaration of Independence. By…

“Professor,” the student said to me, with a look of embarrassment that braced for my disappointment. “I do not understand this poem.” The student was referring to a poem I had assigned students in my U.S. History I class. It’s a poem I was very excited about. It’s an 1802 poem, published in the New…

A recent article in the Washington Post highlighted how many low-income students struggle in school due to their lack of access to technology that, in our digital age, is essential. It raises an important question for all of us as educators. For me, it poses the ongoing challenge to my philosophy of using OER in…

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been teaching with the American Yawp online textbook this Spring semester. At the conclusion of the semester, I had my students complete a brief survey about the course, which included questions about Yawp, what they liked about it, and what they didn’t. The results were very…

This semester, I will be teaching with a new textbook: American Yawp. Cards on the table. I was a collaborator on Yawp, and a chapter editor, so I am by no means entirely unbiased about it. I have always liked it, and thought it carries immense potential as an alternative to the expensive textbooks assigned…

I am extremely ambivalent about extra credit. On one hand, I am convinced that most extra credit is utterly worthless, if not downright counterproductive. It has the potential to provide students with an incentive to do shoddy work on their regular assignments, or shirk them altogether. It has become so ubiquitous that students simply expect…