PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

My interest in history started when I was very young, my dad is a veteran and would always watch the History channel with me and take me to fascinating historical sights. It wasn’t until I was a junior in high school that I realized I wanted to become a social studies educator. Making connections through different events in history and seeing how they played out in the world around me fascinated me. As an educator, I hope to instill this same connection-based learning in my students. I also understand that some days my connections with my students will need to go further than history. My mother was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer when I was sixteen and passed away when I was nineteen. Because of this experience, I feel that I can be a supportive and understanding figure in the lives of at-risk students who may be facing something similar and need extra time or encouragement to do their best. 

In today’s political climate, all too often influenced by social media and digital technology, it is important for students to be able to see and understand the different perspectives in the world around them. In order to think like historians, students in my classroom will have regular practice analyzing primary and secondary sources like newspapers, speeches, photographs, political cartoons, etc. Having this experience will translate into the real world as students become young adults and heavily influenced by the media around them. With the skills developed in my classroom, students will be able to understand biases and tell fact from opinion in the world around them and become more mindful and tolerant of those with other views than themselves. 

One style of teaching I plan to incorporate in my classroom is teaching history as a mystery as found in the book Teaching U.S. History as a Mystery by David Gerwin and Jack Zevin. This method includes giving the students primary sources and allowing them to analyze them and draw conclusions on their own with little to no prior knowledge. This allows students to look at events with fresh eyes from the perspectives of those who lived it. This approach also allows students to do history and practice historical thinking skills rather than listening to a lecture and writing down basic dates and facts day in and day out. 

I also plan to include many diverse perspectives throughout my teaching. By doing so I hope to create a more globally aware generation of students. Being aware and understanding of different cultures, beliefs, and governments foster more tolerant attitudes towards those who have different opinions than our own. I will incorporate perspectives of Native Americans during the colonial era to the Trail of Tears and explain their place in the United States today,  the perspective of Mexicans during the Mexican American War, and the perspective of the natives of territories gained during the Spanish-American War, etc. We must not forget all the different cultures that make up the United States. When teaching World History, I will steer away from the old-fashioned euro-centric model for teaching the history of the world and balance the course with the histories of Africa, Asia, and South America. To do so, I will start the course by showing different maps including the common euro-centric based map, the Mercator projection, compared to the more accurate, Gall-Peters projection.

I would like to teach my classes through a more interactive approach than social studies classrooms have previously been taught as. Allowing students to discover their own conclusions from primary sources will give the skills they need to go forward in our society that is so heavily influenced by media. By creating a more globally conscious environment, I hope to instill more tolerant views of the world and genuine interests in other cultures than just our own.