My Philosophy History and teaching history is my life’s passion. I believe that when students acquire an understanding of history, they can truly understand why the world is how it is today, and what their place is in it.
I teach history with an emphasis on quality over quantity. No one can ever know all of history—there is SO much I don’t know. However, when students learn how to DO history, they gain the skills to tackle any historical issue or problem that they are faced with. In my class, students will focus on reading history—looking at primary sources (artifacts that were created at the time we are studying) and secondary sources (historian’s interpretations of events) in order to tackle historical issues, problems, and even controversies. They will also focus on writing history by researching events, finding sources, and using those sources to support a conclusion, argument, or interpretation.
When students learn to read and write history, they learn the specific skill of historians, a skill that can help them be critical consumers of information in the 21st century.
History makes me smile, makes me angry, makes me cry, and makes me think. My goal is to elicit these emotions in my students as well as we travel through history together.