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Teaching
Philosophy
I am committed to creating a
quality educational and intellectual experience for my students. I consider
a class session and an entire course successful when I have been able to
actively engage students in course issues. For this reason, I place much
emphasis on classroom discussion and interaction between students, not
just interaction between students and myself. I perceive myself as a facilitator:
students are responsible for their own learning and the extent to which
they engage the subject matter. My role is to provide a classroom environment
and assignments that enable students to do just that. I emphasize not the
just the acquisition of content knowledge, but also just as importantly,
the development of critical thinking (analysis and interpretation) and
communication skills (speaking and writing). Realizing that students learn
in varying ways, I try to balance lecture with discussion, and I use a
variety of media, including textbooks, primary documents, novels, slides,
and videos. Many students describe my courses as demanding- and I am indeed
proud of this. I strive to be fair in the demands I make, and in return
I expect a fair effort. I do ask a lot of students and expect a lot in
terms of reading and writing assignments and class discussion, but I have
found that these challenges are often appreciated, as students work hard
to improve skill areas that will serve them well beyond my courses.
My approach to the teaching
of history emphasizes the nature of the discipline as an interpretive endeavor.
In my upper and lower level classes, students encounter no "historical
truth," but rather, learn about the ways in which the study and telling
of history itself is conditioned by many factors that change over time,
leading to revised interpretations of the past. Students themselves are
asked to develop interpretations, not simply to retell what happened (memorization),
but rather to analyze and explain based upon their sources. I also carry
into the classroom the perspective that history is often not so much about
the past as it is about explaining the present and satisfying present needs
to understand current problems and issues. The historian thus needs to
be acutely aware of his/her role in shaping this understanding of the present.
History also does not exist as a monolithic truth-- there is no "one" history.
In my courses, I challenge students to consider historical issues and events
from different perspectives, such as gender, social class or ethnicity.
By considering these different perspectives, the past becomes a much more
complicated, and interesting, place, and "history" itself can look entirely
different. Students in my courses will find that I concentrate on social,
cultural, and political history, rather than diplomatic and military history.
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