Teaching Philosophy

I first became a history teacher because I love history. I have remained one because I’ve realized that I love working with teenagers. I love their energy and capacity for excitement. I love watching them use newly-developed cognitive abilities in ways that are still fresh to them. I have not grown to love history any less (quite the contrary), but working with teenagers has provided a richer and more fulfilling professional life than I could have imagined as a Ph.D. student. Besides teaching history, I get to coach debate, a geography competition, and senior chapel talks. I have also assisted with a production of Our Town and taken a group of twenty teenagers to D.C. to eat too much fast food and to hear Ruth Bader Ginsberg speak. I’ve even had a chance to run a scoreboard during an intramural football game, despite having very little understanding of the rules of football. I have cheered from the sidelines of playing fields and from the front rows of plays and concerts. I have been honored to write recommendations for Ivy League universities and jobs at local feed stores, sometimes for the same student. More somber moments involve supporting distressed students who are going through crises. Relationships like these shape my teaching. They are why I teach.

I know that my first duty is to create and sustain an environment that promotes the flourishing of teenagers. I am mindful of the fact that “human beings create the environments that shape the course of human development” and that this imposes an awesome responsibility on those of us who work with young people. I work for my classroom to be an environment where teenagers are supported and challenged in developmentally appropriate ways. When so many students risk simply “doing school” or becoming “excellent sheep,” I seek to encourage curiosity, love of learning, and an appreciation for the diversity of human experience. I hope my teaching helps students acquire the habit of learning and “learn to learn,” which Dewey identified as one of the most important parts of education. I also hope it helps them love to learn.

I aim to do all of this within an environment of mutual respect, kindness, and decency. This is one reason why I teach in independent schools. I share the classic prep school goal of creating “a decent community.” I try to make my classroom lively and filled with good humor, but never at the expense of decency, courtesy, and mutual respect between all people. My students know that the two rules in my classroom are “respect everybody” and “if you’re annoying people, it needs to stop.” I also know that contemporary prep schools must work to create communities that are inclusive for diverse students. One of my top priorities is to provide a space that is safe and affirming for all students. Because I know students learn best in inclusive communities, I am committed to improving as an equitable educator. To that end, I currently serve on my school’s Equity Task Force, have advised the Student Equity Committee, and undertaken professional development on promoting equity, inclusion and justice in schools.

I teach teenagers, and I believe history is a great tool for the job. Posted in my classroom, I have a quote from Cicero: “not to know what happened before you were born is to remain a child forever.” As adolescents grow into adulthood, their awareness of the world around them broadens. I seek to give my students the tools to connect their own experiences with the strange worlds of others. Sam Wineburg, whose work is an inspiration to me, has described the history teacher as navigating “the tension between the familiar and the strange.” The past may be a foreign country, but I hope students can establish diplomatic relations with it. After all, there are a lot of important issues to discuss. There are topics of perennial relevance: the use and abuse of power, identity and its constructions, and the values and challenges of cultural and economic exchanges. Students can see these at play in very different contexts. History provides students with both a mirror for their own experience and windows into the experience of others. The study of history should help develop what Martha Nussbaum has called narrative imagination. She defines this as “the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have.” The student of history, like the student of psychology, learns that past conflicts leave their marks on present lives. In a recent class we discussed how the conflicts between the Sunni Ottomans and Shia Safavids in early-modern Mesopotamia have contributed to the instabilities of modern Iraq. A superficial and orientalist reading of the conflict might portray it as something primitive. I hope my students will grow to have a more mature and empathetic understanding and recognize that we are all shaped by the contexts of history, even if we are not bound to repeat past mistakes.

My students learn to debate, discuss, and deconstruct historical narratives. My lessons center on discussion, both in small groups and as a whole class. Wherever possible, my classroom has students facing one another (in my ideal classroom, I would have a Harkness table). In a lively but supportive environment, we work together to analyze primary and secondary sources. Similarly, my assessments focus on persuasive historical writing. I want my students to realize that the study of history is an argument in which they have a part to play. My goal is that students will realize that historians use sources to make arguments about the past and become adept at doing this themselves.

In addition to my work in the classroom, I enjoy interacting with students as a club sponsor and during my supervision duties. Indeed, these are often some of the most rewarding parts of my day. Some of my favorite teaching memories have included discussions with students during lunch duty, or while driving a van to and from a competition, or during long layovers in airports on overnight trips. These are not only fun, they are important. As one of my favorite books on education puts it, “moral education for youth starts with adults: the lives we lead and thus project …. [because] the students are watching, all the time.” Students learn by watching and interacting with adults in a variety of contexts. In every context, my goal is to support and challenge students and to be a positive adult role model for them.

I know that I have not perfected teaching and never will. I am always trying to learn and improve. As a teacher, I know I am also a learner. I attend professional development frequently. I also read as much as I can, both about historical subjects and about teaching and adolescent development. If we expect our students to be life-long learners who develop a growth mindset, we must model that ourselves. I am so grateful that teaching has given me that opportunity. I look forward to continuing to learn and teach history with teenagers.