Introduction: During our first week, we focused on how to create a collaborative learning community and on the controversies that have long surrounded the teaching of history. One of the things we learned is that there is quite a gap between what the public believes is American history and what history teachers believe to be American history. For the next three days, we are going to try to bridge that gap a bit by talking about the characteristics of good history teachers. By understanding what we should expect from ourselves as history teachers in the making, we can better explain our stance to the public.

Discussion Goals:

1. To examine what Robert Fried in The Passionate Teacher calls our "stance" as teachers.
2. To critically think about the characteristics of good history teachers.

Goal #1: To examine what Robert Fried in The Passionate Teacher calls our "stance" as teachers

What is a stance? According to the dictionary, a stance is "the attitude of a person or organization toward something; a standpoint."

Discussion:

1. What do you think it means that teachers need to have a stance?
2. Should everyone's stance be similar? Why or why not?
3. Can we share some of our visions for our stance?

Goal #2: To critically think about the characteristics of good history teachers

Good history teachers..

1. Are passionate about history and about teaching history, and such passion helps them create respectful classroom environments.  Such teachers show their passion for teaching, hear their students and respect their voices, allow students to freely express their intellectual thoughts and personal opinions, encourage students to respect and listen to diverging viewpoints and attitudes, and continuously use new teaching methods that fit student needs.
2. Understand and use the social sciences in their classrooms. Such teachers especially incorporate geography, political science, sociology - as well as music and art - in their lessons.
3. Use the tools of historians, especially primary documents, historiography, and debate.  Such teachers teach students to examine primary documents for evidence to support the historical record and their viewpoints, encourage them to raise questions about history, and require them to analyze and compare historians' competing and often controversial views in the classroom setting.
4. Celebrate diversity, model democracy, and teach for social justice.  Such teachers create a classroom in which students learn about the multicultural makeup of the American people, teach about democracy and model democratic values, and  help students understand that they do their best work when they strive to make society more just.
5. Know and question historical interpretation and eagerly embrace controversy. Such teachers continue to search for and incorporate new and diverse historical content and innovative teaching methods into their classrooms and revise their beliefs about history as they learn more content.
   • History teachers, then, are often revisionists. As such, they engage in an on-going process of reexamining the past and deconstructing myths based upon new discoveries, evidence, and perspectives.
   • History teachers must relate how controversy has shaped history - and that through the use of debate and compromise have we made much progress.
   • Cold Call: Second cold call on the required viewing - Without Sanctuary at http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html
   • End of second day discussion.
6. Collaborate with colleagues.  Such teachers engage in discussions with colleagues, ask for advice and mentoring, and talk with teachers at other school sites, educators at professional conferences, and with fellow subscribers to professional journals.
7. Make connections between the past and the present.  Such teachers show students that history is relevant to their lives by illustrating how the present is illuminated by the past. (You may also want to examine this effort to make history relevant by relating how the decisions made during and after World War I contributed to the 21st Century rise of Isis.)
   • Cold Call: Third cold call on "relevant" discussion on how to make connections between the past and the present.

1. Understand the importance of chronological understanding. Such teachers understand that chronological thinking is at the heart of historical reasoning. Without a clear sense of historical time-time past, present, and future-students are bound to see events as one great tangled mess. Without a strong sense of chronology - of when events occurred and in what temporal order - it is impossible for students to examine relationships among them or to explain historical causality. Chronology provides the mental scaffolding for organizing historical thought.
2. Are life long learners and active myth busters, search for new research and resources to enliven their classroom discussions, and embrace new technologies. Such teachers understand that they must stay on top of new research, read the newest books on topics related to their teaching content, and learn how to use the newest technology in their classrooms.
   • History teachers must understand the power of myths, especially that sometimes myths are more powerful than the facts. This may be the most important point of your required viewing for today - Lisa the Iconoclast (The Simpsons, Season 7, Episode 16) -http://www.animetoon.eu/the-simpsons-season-7-episode-16.
   • Cold Call: Third cold call on required viewing - Lisa the Iconoclast.
   • History teachers must embrace the newest technology. An example is learning to use podcasts as a way to keep ourselves informed and as a way to inform our students. Assignment #1 - due September 15 - Teaching with Podcasts- is a an example of how you can use podcasts in both capacities. Click here to access the assignment.
3. Seek to understand their students. Such teachers work hard to understand who their students are both in and out of the classroom. To get a better understanding of who our students may be, we need to examine Herb Childress 's article. Later this month, we will get an even better understanding when we discuss both Ta-Nehisi Coates' book and the video "Growing Up Trans."
   • Cold Call: Fourth cold call on required reading - "17 Reasons why Football is better than High School."
4. Are storytellers who who use carefully crafted themes to emphasize their story.  Such teachers develop and teach from a list of overall course themes that provide "bottom line" messages for their students, create lessons that illustrate the themes, and encourage students to demonstrate their knowledge of the themes, as well as critique and create new themes of their own.