To me, teaching is about more than just repeating facts to your students. There is certainly an important place for recall and memorization, but the best teachers should strive to push their students beyond that. A teacher’s goal should be to produce students who are capable of critical analysis and interpretation. At the same time, they must understand that teaching is not a “one size fits all” endeavor. Teachers must be able to understand the needs of their students and classes. The best approaches for a small class may not be viable in a larger class, or vice versa. The best instructors are able to understand what tools work best for their class and how to work with students to set them up to succeed.

My job as a teacher is to shape and direct a class to best fit the needs of my students and to create an environment that encourages engagement, discussion, and interaction. History should not presented as isolated, discrete events, but as parts of a greater narrative. Facts without context are meaningless and unengaging. I want my students to understand that the world is interconnected and that nothing is truly isolated. Asking bigger questions about cause and effect encourages students to think beyond a single narrative and consider different points of view. 

In this framework, a lecture cannot simply be dictation or monologue. Students are not computers that you can just input data into, but intelligent human beings who work best when they are given an opportunity to engage and interact. In a small class, this may mean having a blended lecture that integrates questions and comments and fosters discussion among the class. In a larger class, students could break into smaller groups and discuss major points in the lecture, which would include questions to think about and the use of media and technology whenever possible. Humans are easily bored and distracted, and a successful teacher is able to keep their attention by making learning interesting.

This is why the use of film, music, art, and writing in the classroom are all very important to me. These mediums bring history to life and give it context. Political cartoons can be used to compare and contrast different contemporary views in a visually engaging way. Speeches show how powerful rhetoric and word choice can be used to galvanize a population. Stories and poems help readers understand the mindset and the daily activities that were common in a given time. These types of media are as much primary sources as letters and documents are, and I think it is important to include them as well.

Additionally, I believe that the use of secondary sources should not be overlooked either. Secondary sources, when used in a thoughtful and meaningful way, can be used to expose students to ideas and points of view that they had not thought of before. Like primary sources, secondary sources can be utilized to expand on and enhance a student’s understanding of history.

For me, teaching is not a one-way street. A good instructor is not afraid or offended when they don’t know the answer to a question or get corrected by a student. I believe that we should strive to teach by example and by admitting that we don’t have all the answers, we show students that it’s okay to ask questions and to have wrong answers. It also helps us to improve ourselves professionally and reminds us that we’re still learning too. I would take such an opportunity to look into the topic in more depth so that I not only improve my students’ experience, but my professional knowledge as well. I want to continue to learn more about what methods and theories of teaching work best and improve my approach for the benefit of not only my students, but myself as well.

Citation: Shopkow, Leah. “How Many Sources Do I Need?” (The History Teacher 50, no. 2
(February 2017): 169-200. http://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/.)

In this piece, Leah Shopkow addresses what is likely the second most common question (after “how long should it be?”) that undergraduate students taking a history course ask their professors. Although the ideal answer to the question would be to use however many sources you need to support your argument, Shopkow understands that this answer is not at all a satisfying answer, particularly for students who are not history majors themselves. In fact, Shopkow found
that their writing actually turned out more muddied and disconnected when they used a large number of sources. With these problems in mind, she decided to experiment with her classes and figure out which numbers gave the best results.

Shopkow first tested whether or not three sources was enough. Admittedly, I was
pessimistic about the results; I assumed that such a low number would lead to very poorly sourced writing and spurious connections and conclusions. However, the results were far more interesting. Shopkow found that students showed a much stronger ability to connect their sources and use them more judiciously. With less noise to distract them, the students found it easier to
make connections and critically analyze the material. The citations were more spread out among the articles rather than presented linearly, suggesting that they worked fluidly with the source material. The results were not perfect; however. From the teacher’s point of view, three sources is just not satisfying. For even junior courses, choosing just three sources was not challenging enough (too easy, in other words). Students also continued to use irrelevant and poor sources,
and having just three to work with made recovering from this mistake very difficult.

Shopkow then changed the course to allow for six sources, with the hope that it would find a happy medium between three and “however many.” There was an extremely important note to her rule: six was merely sufficient, students could use more if they desired. This system seemed to work well for history and non-history majors alike while keeping intact the goal of
giving students the ability to analyze the world with a historic perspective. As with any system however, success was only attainable if the students actually completed their homework and other assignments. Six sources or more seems to be the answer to Shopkow’s question, but perhaps we should follow it up by asking how to convince and encourage students to complete their work.

Citation: Knüsel, Ariane. “Facing the Dragon: Teaching the Boxer Uprising Through Cartoons.” (The History Teacher 50, no. 2 (February 2017): 201-26. http://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/.)

I will admit, I worried a bit about choosing two articles from the same issue. With a title and topic like this though, I at least had to read it over. Using cartoons and comics as a source in history courses was something that I have always personally enjoyed, as they can reveal a lot about certain views that society held at the time. As Knusel writes, however, using cartoons can
be a tricky endeavor. There are numerous “pitfalls” students must be careful to avoid, such as the need to understand the context in which they were published in order to accurately analyze cartoons and the risk of oversimplifying or overgeneralizing societal attitudes based on them. Even with these potential problems, I think cartoons can be effective teaching tools as long as they are not relied too heavily upon.

The Boxer Rebellion is really a perfect case study in discussing how cartoons can be used in teaching. It was a complicated event that involved several nation-states fighting against an essentially guerilla faction during a pivotal time in history. This is not to say it was unique in that regard; the 1917 Russian Revolution, Iranian Revolution, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and more could be used instead. The Boxer Rebellion happens to have a component that was much
less prevalent in other examples: symbolism. The strong association of China with dragons lead to a very wide range of comics that expressed different ideas with much of the same imagery.

Knusel is right to use this as an example as it can very clearly be used to compare and contrast different sources and synthesize a more complex and nuanced point of view. Cartoons cannot teach or explain the context of the Boxer Rebellion, but with the proper background knowledge they can effectively showcase a wide variety of viewpoints and develop a more complex understanding. Knusel also notes that they can show how opinions in society have changed over time or how they may have differed regionally.

Cartoons appeal to students of
many different backgrounds (who does not like cartoons or comics?) and provide a useful aid for visual learners (myself included) who can sometimes find text to be difficult to process and analyze. They should not be the sole source used, but cartoons are a very useful and underutilized type of source material that should be used more often than they are currently.

Lectures should strive to be a dialogue that includes fair representation and equal access for everyone. A good teacher uses vignettes to engage and interest students, but prefaces them with a general overview in order to benefit different kinds of learners. They also take care to address their own biases and include perspectives from marginalized groups. The lecture is not a one-way street, but a busy street with many different lanes. If drivers get bored or lose focus, they crash. By making an effort to engage and interact with students of different learning types and backgrounds, we can keep our lectures flowing smoothly.

In The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors, Peter Filene’s insights into vignettes in lectures are particularly apt. Vignettes are a useful way to put historical events in context, such as talking about the experiences of African American members of Benny Goodman’s band during his Cold War world tour as a way of understanding race relations at the time. Stories can help make history seem more “real” or “alive” to students. However, Filene acknowledges that some students have trouble with specific examples and do better with general ideas or concepts. His suggestion that vignettes should be framed by the instructor is a great way to help bridge that gap.

I also liked Filene’s points about comparing and contrasting different points of view and providing evidence to support your own answer. In my opinion, this is a useful way to encourage critical thinking and make the lecture more interesting. It helps avoid the trap of regurgitating information and has the added benefit of opening up discussion among students who may agree or disagree with your answer. It also helps illustrate the fact that all historical writing is put through the lens of the author, reminding students to consider the biases present in texts.

Barbara Gross Davis makes suggestions as to how to encourage diversity in the classroom as well. A good lecturer should seek to identify and understand their own biases or ignorance in order to ensure that their class is equally approachable to all students regardless of background. They should also encourage other students to do the same and quash any offensive statements or feelings that come up. However, they must also be careful to avoid singling out people of certain groups as “representatives,” which is a racist concept itself. Diversity and inclusion also ensure that a multitude of perspectives are given in class.

Sam Weinburg argues in Why Learn History? that the importance of a historical education comes (or at least should come) from the critical thinking and analysis skills it helps to develop rather than presenting detached “facts” as absolute truth. Weinburg attacks the notion of learning by textbook, pointing out that it presents a particular view of history to students without drawing attention to other interpretations, primary sources, or contextual data or events. The key to historical thinking is understanding people and events in the context in which they lived or occured, not from our present point of view. By relying on a textbook for most of their educational career, students come into college not only with a narrow understanding of history, but also without the framework needed to think historically. Teaching history teaches critical thinking and allows students to move past the idea that history is just about memorization and knowledge and to develop an understanding of the importance of context.

Weinburg uses examples effectively to communicate his ideas. The experience of the elementary school principal, Colleen, was especially powerful to me in showing how difficult it can be to break out of the textbook mindset. Even after attending a seminar about teaching skills and having her historical knowledge changed as a result of learning a new point of view, Colleen made the exact same mistake in her own writing that the textbook authors made. Her passage, rather than assessing the context of the topic, presented her own point of view in the same third-person style that the textbook she now disagreed with did. Although Colleen’s view of the individual topic developed, her intellectual framework was not truly changed. This is a trap that teachers of history must be careful to avoid.

The other example I found most interesting was the comparison between the evaluation of online sources between academics and fact checkers. Initially, I thought that the historians would certainly be at least as good (if not better) than the fact checkers in evaluating online sources, but the results were the complete opposite. As Weinburg notes, this indicates that the way we interpret digital sources and information is fundamentally different from how we interpret physical data. Additionally, it calls to attention how important verifying source is and shows how influential online gateways like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit can be in deciding what information and source is prioritized. Context is more than merely temporal; where the information about an event or person comes from is just as important as the information itself.

Weinburg’s answer to his own question is that we teach history to not only educate students about our past, but to educate them about how to think about the past. The most important lesson I learned in philosophy was that metathought was as important as thought itself, and that is absolutely true in history as well.

In What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain uses data gained from extensive and carefully crafted studies to conclude that college teachers considered to be among the best in their field share a number of traits and habits that allow them to forge such strong and close connections with their students. The most important points he makes are that students’ mental models are slow to change and that the classroom is best implemented in a collaborative model, suggesting that good teaching is a result of an instructor’s ability to adapt to their students’ needs and to focus more on a deep understanding of the topic rather than mere memorization of facts.

Bain’s commentary on changing student mental models attempts to answer the problem of whether or not students should learn the facts before their views are challenged or if both should occur simultaneously. He writes that this first approach simply encouraged rote memorization and that these teachers focused more on the “delivery of information to the exclusion of all other teaching activities” and that their examinations tended to focus on recall or identification (surface learning) rather than on deep learning. In contrast, teaching facts in a greater context of questions, problems, and controversies emphasizes a deep understanding of the topic and helps build a student’s knowledge.

Additionally, the construction of a safe, experimental environment that encourages failure as a means of development is crucial to successful outcomes as well. Students’ pre-existing models must be challenged in a meaningful way to grasp their attention and in a way that avoids trauma as much as possible (though some is unavoidable). The best teachers ask questions and give feedback instead of just telling students they are wrong and correcting them. The idea of the classroom as a place of interaction and exchange as opposed to one of memorization and repetition is a core part of the methodology of the best teachers, helping to foster a collaborative rather than hierarchical environment. Teachers who fail to ask questions, teach to a style or discipline without regard to student needs, and present facts without context risk alienating or boring students. Their lectures become monologues, leaving students without an opportunity to work through the material with feedback from others. The exclusion or minimization of discussion makes it difficult for students to think critically and challenge their own assumptions and beliefs. 

The best teachers foster an environment of creativity and cooperation, understanding that dialogue is a key part of learning. They teach to their students, rejecting a “one-size fits all” model of instruction that may not work for everyone. They encourage their students to challenge their own beliefs and develop new models from their own processing of the material. They are passionate about their subject, infecting students with their enthusiasm. The best teachers understand that teaching cannot happen without learning, and that students can only learn when they are given agency and treated like equals.

Comments

My lesson plan would be based on the troika consulting idea found on Liberating Structures (http://www.liberatingstructures.com/).  Appropriately, the question would be about America during the Cold War and would be in the context of whether or not a war can truly be cold. I would ask students whether or not they thought the name is accurate or not, why, and what it might be better described as. For a minute or two, the first student would share their thoughts on the issue. Then the other two members would have a chance to ask questions for another minute or two. After this, the group would “rotate” and another student would present their ideas followed by questions and so on for the third student. Finally, we would come back into a class discussion and each group would present what they talked about.
I think that this model would be useful because it allows students to collaborate without the chaos or stress that talking in front of a large class can cause and without the possibility of domination in the discussion in a smaller class. Additionally, by having “group representatives,” more students are able to voice their opinions in a short time frame.