Starting Your Journey
First of all … this is likely your first class with mostly (or entirely) BS History/Social Studies Education majors. This is exciting for both students and the instructor!
HIS 3626 assumes no prior knowledge or skills. For most of you, this is your first big step into 9-12 history/social studies education, and the first time you are writing lesson plans. For the first half of the semester, I will guide you on the basics of curriculum design and provide feedback on your first drafts. The bar slowly rises throughout the class as we dive deeper into different strategies and you begin to edit your preliminary work. I am here to help you every step of the way.
Teaching high school history requires constant effort and deliberate planning. Sound teaching is based on using research-based approaches in history/social studies education that puts students—not the teacher—at the center of learning. It results in an active learning environment where students have choice, where stories and concepts matter more than rote memorization of facts, and where the past comes alive through inquiry. In other words, you can’t wing it!
If this approach is not for you … that is perfectly fine! Better to know now than when it’s too late (i.e. student teaching). However, if HIS 3626 confirms you’ve made the right choice, then welcome to the first step of your journey!
Re-Thinking History/Social Studies Education
Teaching is more than loving history and wanting to share that love with high school students. It’s about empowering students to be successful in life by learning critical thinking and writing skills through history and social studies. That means we should strive to move beyond the typical lecture via PowerPoint > worksheet > video approach you most likely experienced in high school and/or college.
“But I love a good lecture! And what’s wrong with PowerPoint presentations?”
We understand that the tried and true methods might have appealed to you. However, they often fail to engage the vast majority of students. Research studies show that the lecture is one of the least effective ways people retain information. As Yale professor Edward Tufte explains, PowerPoint slides are designed for presenters to distill deep thinking into a series of bulleted points—hardly the best way to help students understand nuance, complexity, and depth of learning in history.
Instead, teaching history should be about teaching students to do history. It means helping them to think like a historian through inquiry, analysis, contextualization, research, writing, and other skills. The same applies to other social sciences (thinking like a political scientist, economist, or geographer). History is complicated, layered, and often messy. It is never an entirely objective nor accurate reflection of the past.
In HIS 3626, we will consider important questions about the production of history and how we teach it (“What is history?” “What is it for?” “Who is it for?” “How have historical interpretations changed over time?” “What’s at stake?” “How can I help students to become critical thinkers through history and social studies education?”) Our role—as both historians and educators—is not to use our position of influence to sway or indoctrinate students, because that’s not historical thinking. Our job is to help adolescents to become critical observers and thinkers so they can become informed citizens.
