When Does US History Begin?

Ok, so everyday we must consider the "how to teach," the boring stuff about pedagogy.  But then there is also the "what to teach," the exciting stuff about content--the stuff that, frankly, I've been thinking about since graduate school (where we NEVER discussed pedagogy).  The actual content of history is far more interesting to me and I've spent a lot more time considering it than history pedagogy (which is why I'm forcing myself to think more about pedagogy).  Given that, it is all the more pathetic that I still don't have definitive answers to some fundamental questions regarding history content in the classes that I've been teaching at CBC for thirteen years.

Today I’m thinking about this:  Where do you begin the US history survey?   When is the beginning of America, or, I should say, the beginning of what becomes the United States of America?  Is it 15,000-20,000 B.C.E. when the first humans migrated into the Americas?  Is it 3,000-5,000 years ago when the various American "tribes" began to develop their cultural systems?  Is it around 1000 B.P. when the people we call the Anasazi were building massive structures in Chaco Canyon or the Mississippian cultures were constructing their earthen mounds?  Is it when the Vikings were making land fall in Newfoundland? Or does it begin in 1491 with Columbus (who never set foot in the place that would become the United States)?  Or does it begin with Jacques Cartier traveling down the St. Lawrence or with Jamestown or Plymouth Rock?  Or perhaps US history should actually begin in 1776 with the actual establishment of the United States of America?  No brainer, right?

I used to begin my US History I survey (US History to 1865) with a couple days on Native Americans and a couple days on the Spanish conquests before I transitioned to the French and then the British.  My decision for this was justified in a lot of ways: How can you understand the subsequent history of the Americas without understanding the "First Americans"?  How can you understand British North America without first understanding the Spanish expeditions, who spearheaded the colonization of the Americas (and in fact established the first permanent settlement in what becomes the United States near Santa Fe)?

But my choice was also pragmatic: as an expert in Native American history, I had a lot of ready material on Native Americans and Spanish colonization and in my first year of teaching those notes helped me stay one week ahead of my students.

Over the years I took that first temporary framework and made it into a permanent structure--those lectures on Native Americans and the Spanish became pillars of US History I.

As I began to elaborate on other subjects, however, I found that I had less and time--I was barely making it to the Civil War.  And I felt like I was glossing over other really important things, like the Constitution.  Shouldn't I be spending more than a day on the Constitution?

In the last couple years I began to rethink everything.  With the rise of the Tea Party Movement, I became more of an expert on the Constitution (I even gave an hour-long lecture--no notes--to the League of Women Voters last year on the Constitution, something I could never have dreamed of doing a decade ago) and I began to wonder if I wasn't doing students a disservice by not spending more time on the history and central tenets of our republican system of government so that, when they went out into the world, they would not be hoodwinked by loud-mouthed demagogues who literally make stuff up about our Founding Fathers and our Constitution.

In short, I began to think about basic civic literacy.  I've got one shot with these students.  Maybe I should sacrifice my lectures on Native Americans and Spanish Colonialism in order to squeeze in more readings and discussions about the Constitution and Founding Fathers--actual history about those things, rather than the fantasies made up by people with a political agenda.  Shouldn't our students learn more of the real history about those traditional topics before we throw them to the wolves and expect them to survive?

Or am I doing them a disservice by glossing over the precontact history of the Americas?

There are a hundred other decisions like this--What do you choose to discuss and what do you cut out? How do you organize the material you present?  The decisions are endless and I make them everyday.

But at least if I make the wrong decision the plane doesn't crash in the Potomac and kill the entire class.  My decisions are not quite as split-second and consequential as that.  But maybe they shape the way someone will vote or view the world.  And that's pretty important too.

To Powerpoint or Not to Powerpoint?

It would be easy to default to old habits right about now.  The burnish of excitement and anticipation that was Week 1 has now worn off, both for me and the students.  What lies ahead is much harder and more problematic than having spontaneous conversations about "What is History."  What remains is  ten weeks of teaching and learning US history.  But how?

Those PowerPoints--so painstakingly and lovingly created over the years--are looking awful good right now.  They come pre-programmed with all the important points I want to make, adorned with interesting pictures, funny cartoons, and poignant quotations.  They've taken me through a lot, those PowerPoints.  They were there for me when I was making that first transition from lecturing with notes to a more free-flowing style.  But after a few years, those slides, once so liberating, began to imprison me in their inexorable logic.  Powerpoints move from one predetermined slide to the next, each slide connected to the next like links in the heavy chain of my enslavement. 

Not liking the fact that the slideshow itself was controlling which direction class would move, I began to revert to "chalk and talk" presentations that were more fluid: student comments would begin to the fill the board, categories would emerge, and it seemed that the outcomes of class were more collective and certainly more dynamic. 

But for every benefit there is a cost: what I (and my students) gained in dynamism, flexibility, and student involvement, we paid for with disorganization and specialization.  I didn't cover as much and I didn't cover it as neatly as when I used a Powerpoint presentation.  Some students loved the free-flowing conversational style; other students were totally confused--they longed for clear, bullet-pointed certainty.  I loved the unwieldy and messy dynamism, but always felt uncertain that I was covering enough and summarizing things up enough for those students with little background in the field.

On Monday, instead of Powerpoint slides, I asked my students questions ("How did WWII transform American Society?" or "European Colonization of the Americas: Who and Why?") and helped them to help me fill in the answers.   The result was more student participation; but we also didn't get through as much material; students didn't get the lecture on the Spanish Conquests or the impact of WWII on women, although both were alluded to…..

So which is better?

I know I’m really horrible about creating false polarities.  As I tell my students, there are more than two answers--and usually, as in this case, the best answer is BOTH.

A good lesson is like a smart grid or a strong economy--it is diversified; it is not powered by one thing.  The best lessons are powered by lecture, discussion, and student activities.  I'm just not sure I'm quite there yet (especially because I have an ingrained prejudice against "student activities" which I will discuss at a later time…).

Another thing: I believe that an instructor should follow their instincts (because a happy teacher makes happy students), but, an important caveat:  sometimes what YOU believe are the best and most dynamic lessons are, to some students, the most disorganized and incoherent lessons.  Some students will prefer to be led by the hand through the material, and PowerPoints provide a comforting framework.

Note to self: if I go with the fluid, disorganized, free association, discussion model, it needs to be countered with an outline; list of terms, etc…. I need to supply a few safety lines to aid those students who see those kind of conversations as "disorganized."  I need to  help them get a foothold on the material and begin to pull themselves up the mountain…… (presumably so that they can get to the mountain top and look out over the promised land…...)

Spent Entire Day NOT GRADING

On Thursday, two sections of my US history survey course posted writing assignments on primary documents--there are 89 assignments awaiting me in Angel, our online course platform.  The plan, of course, was to begin grading them on Friday, except that a longer than expected history department meeting (which, to be clear, was NOT drudgery--it was longer than expected because it involved pizza and scintillating conversation, especially from Dr. Bob) and other tasks (catching up on email, writing a letter of recommendation, grading my first week's discussion for my Native American Cultures hybrid course) got in the way.  Today I got up and rode 65 miles for the CFF Cycle for Life and then spent most of the late afternoon hobbling around the house and thinking, "I should start grading those assignments."  The problem is that grading is hard enough when you're chipper and well-rested; it's inconceivable when you're completely wiped out from a long bike ride. 

Why is grading so painful?  This is something that I haven't been able to figure out in fourteen years of teaching.  Why do I resist grading?  Why do I have to marshal so much energy to begin and sustain a productive session of grading?  Shouldn't it be fun?  "I can't wait to sink my teeth into these papers and see what my students have learned!"  In the past, I've speculated that grading, unlike, say, reading a book or watching a movie, is hard because you're not learning anything or being entertained.  But both of those statements are false.  You're learning what your students know (or at least how they performed) and sometimes the papers are quite entertaining.  So why the resistance?  Can anyone explain why grading is so unrewarding?  [Of course, I can think of a number of answers to this, some of them probably not too kind to my students...]  Can anyone provide new insight into grading that will make it fun, like the rest of my job?

To be discussed in coming posts: rubrics, theories of grading, and more....  My plan is to make my blog about as appealing to read as a term paper.....Enjoy!

Why I had fun this week and why I feel so uncomfortable about it.....

Why did I have fun this week?  Mostly because I didn't give any boring lectures (yet!).

Monday and Tuesday we talked about the syllabus, my expectations, their responsibilities.  We could not finish the syllabus on Monday.  Although somehow I used to be able to go through a syllabus in less than an hour, now I find that it takes a couple days, but this includes discussions about textbooks/readings (what is the difference between a primary sources and a secondary source?), how to read a primary document, as well a thorough introduction to the course website, where they will post their assignments, where I will post articles and links and basically everything else.   Now that time-saving devices and technology have liberated us from drudgery, everything takes so much time!

On Tuesday our discussion of the syllabus, which was supposed to take only a few minutes at the beginning of class, went on longer than expected (perhaps because of necessary diversions into how the brain works, why they should strive to take notes, the power of pretending [to be interested], and the necessity of extensive training and personal sacrifice in order to defeat Apollo Creed [not that I believe Apollo Creed must be beaten]).  This left only a few minutes at the end for  the "What is History" discussion.

 Wednesday was taken up entirely with the "What is History" conversation, where I came prepared with ten full slides brimming with my favorite famous quotes about history (which can be found at http://hnn.us/articles/1328.html).  I only got through the first two quotes and then the students took over.

They had some good thoughts about who writes history (the winners), about how "facts" must be interpreted, about how epic events and great men count for more in "history" than everything else.

It was fun and lively but not definitive.  We came to no certain conclusions and left out a thousand things, not to mention the "why should we study history" discussion.  Moreover, I didn't step in and tie everything together into a nice neat bundle at the end.  The discussion was left unwrapped, like a delinquent gift awaiting the day that it would finally be pulled from the closet and be made presentable. 

No matter, we had to move on because Thursday would be taken up discussing primary documents.

Today--Thursday--we discussed ONE primary document in each of my US history sections.  In my modern US class we spent nearly the entire period analyzing the following advertisement:

In my colonial US history survey, we spent the entire period discussing a letter that Columbus sent to one of his patrons.  As with the above document, I was trying to get the students to locate the document in a historical context, to summarize it, and to analyze it.

So that was my week.

So why do I feel so uncomfortable about it?  For so many reasons.  First and most importantly,  for the same reason that I enjoyed it: because I didn't give any traditional lectures.  Great, I'm doing what all the education-ologists say I should be doing--not lecturing--but am I really involving all the students in the hands on work of learning history?  What about the 75% of each class who did not actively participate in the discussion?  And what about the 100% of each class who got no lectures on the historical context of WWII or the Age of Exploration and Discovery?  Shouldn't I be doing that?

I have to admit, I enjoyed discussing the documents with my students.  We could do one per day for the entire quarter and I'd be happy, but then wouldn't I be teaching a literature class?  Shouldn't I be telling them what happened?

I know that I draw false dichotomies (malpractice or cutting edge pedagogy).  One can use pointed lectures along with discussions of primary documents, but finding that balance is very tricky.