“This is a class that will make you uncomfortable.” That’s something I say on the first day in my intro U.S. History courses. I frontload this idea about getting used to discomfort not to warn or scare off students, but to establish a core part of my teaching philosophy and to let my students know…
As I’ve written previously, I’ve structured my survey this semester around publicly available primary documents and “clicker” software. This software allows me to sync slides to students’ phones and computers as well as to ask questions in different formats and get immediate responses. This can be obviously be used to generate mini-quizzes: using multiple choice…
I require my students to read a primary source before every class. My classes last 75 minutes and have 50 students. So I find that opening class with some primary source analysis can integrate discussion into a class structure that often requires straight lecture. While I have used lecture notes as a rough outline of…
“Our students aren’t the same as the high profile students you taught at your graduate institution. How would you change your approach to fit the needs of the students at X University?” This question, or a variation thereof, has become common in tenure-track job interviews. Some interviewees stumble through it blindly, hoping to get back…
Planning any class requires separating the essential from what can be surgically cut away. I always start second-guessing myself as soon as a few weeks into the semester. Sometimes this syllabus maker’s remorse comes from a student’s question, something that makes me think I should have devoted more time on a given topic. Other times…
This semester I’m teaching two out of my three courses online because I’m expecting a baby in April. While I’ve taught online regularly for the last five years, teaching two courses at once has led me to streamline and simplify what I’ve been doing. For me, recording online videos has been a bit of a…
I’m not teaching a survey class this semester but I feel like I’m always thinking about the survey. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the balance between content and analysis in all of my courses. In particular, I’m thinking about how to do a better job of delivering content while helping my students practice analysis in…
As I mentioned last month, I’m teaching a methods seminar this semester on reformers and radicals in US history and will be spending my posts this term talking about how to bring methods discussions into the classroom. Today, let’s talk about footnotes! So, I may have oversold myself on making footnotes fun in my methods…
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…
“Who here doesn’t like history?” Students in my US History from 1865 to present class probably didn’t expect such a greeting from their professor. But they seemed intrigued when I laughed and raised my hand too. I told them that history as it’s often taught – as a succession of dates and names and events…
