Teaching History

As a graduate of the Teacher Education Program at the University of Michigan, I learned how to:

• work with young people (eleven to eighteen years old)
• collaborate with colleagues, mentors, and administrators
• develop and execute curriculum, both for individual lessons and full units (approximately three to four-weeks of lessons)
• expect challenges and create substitute plans
• meet deadlines with efficiency and diligence
• adapt and modify in the moment based on receptiveness of the audience

My key takeaways from the program are that (1) it is important to understand your audience and what their needs are when facilitating and to have fun and (2) engaging your audience in various ways can go a long way! I am wanting to work more of putting the learning in the audience's hands. It can be easy to facilitate in a lecture-style; however, the audience can be more receptive to learning when they are given the opportunity to learn through engaging activities. Please reference samples from my students as a product of a choices-based project to demonstrate their learning of the Cold War.