You know the scene. It’s Alec Baldwin’s only scene. In just over seven minutes, Alec Baldwin’s “Blake” harangues four hapless real estate salesmen to Always Be Closing. The film, of course, is Glengarry Glen Ross, and its language should probably be kept out of your classroom. But there is an essential message to Baldwin’s diatribe: Go and…
We often emphasize to our students that our lectures, and even our entire courses, have arguments and use evidence to make those arguments. We also talk about historiography, even if we don’t use the term, and show students how historians produce new historical knowledge. This semester, my US I class is using Liz Covart’s podcast…
I had a great new idea for a final project for my survey classes this semester. It was going to be awesome. This assignment was going to draw on the skills my students were practicing every week but then take it all to a new level. Critical thinking! Public writing! Digital tools! The semester started, and…
What methods from high school history courses are useful in the college classroom? I’ve been trying to understand how history education in college connects to that of the secondary and primary level. One of the clearest areas of overlap is the Advanced Placement (AP) history curriculum offered in many high schools. These classes culminate with…
I have written about my affinity for group projects before and I’ve posted an assignment I use in my survey classes called “The Big Book of ABC’s.” I want to share another assignment from my medical history class that can be modified for any class in which the students examine how more than one group…
It is the beginning of another academic year and here I am at another new institution with a new student body, new curriculum requirements, and a new conception of the purpose of the history survey. Centre College, my new academic home, has a general education curriculum and the history surveys serve as the gen. ed.…
I ended up in the clearly enviable situation of teaching, alongside my standard U.S. history load, two sections of Global History II this semester. Yes, that’s two sections covering the quick and unproductive time between 1500 and 2015…across the entire earth. This, my friends, to many, is the grizzle of the academic teaching world. But…
