From Ferguson to George Floyd

If you ignore the present, how can your students trust you to teach the past? 

I first started this blog in August of 2014, just weeks after Michael Brown's murder led to protests in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time, I remember thinking that perhaps this would lead to systemic change in the United States. Nearly six years later, I am now hopeful that the murder of George Floyd will lead to the kind of change we need.

I also remember being aghast that my children's teachers did not discuss Ferguson and what had happened AT ALL. At the time they were in grades 9 and 7. At the time, I was working at the university level, teaching and advising pre-service teachers in social studies. Now I am back in the classroom. I teach 8th grade U.S. history, which picks up where the 7th grade leaves off after Reconstruction.

On social media, I have read a lot of posts recently such as, "why didn't we learn this stuff in school?" or "Schools need to do a better job of teaching the truth about our country's history."

Well....

As a teacher, I feel this responsibility deeply. I have been feeling it intensely for the last 6 years as so many current events have intruded into the classroom since I returned to teaching. And even more so in the last 2 weeks.

I returned to the classroom in the fall of 2015. Beginning with the attacks in Paris that November, the rocky primary season of spring 2016, the election of 2016, the school shooting at Parkland, the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, the impeachment of Trump (yeah, I know, seems like forever ago now, doesn't it?) and right on up to our present moment.

Since I began remote learning this March, I have found it impossible to ignore comparisons from the past to the present, as I taught about the Great Depression and the New Deal and World War II. I did not know, of course, when I taught about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the end of April how closely that would echo our current moment.

I have learned throughout these experiences that while it can be challenging, there is tremendous benefit to be gained from connecting the present to the past. It has everything to do with why we teach and study history (though it is not just about making it relevant to students' lives). If you ignore the present, how can your students trust you to teach the past? You are fundamentally ignoring the question that underlies everything students wonder:

Why do we have to know this?

As I work this summer to prepare for an uncertain fall, I think it is high time to make some revisions on this blog. I will try to update some of my posts to include new things I have done since 2014.

I have had to ask myself, if there are so many outstanding resources (and here) available online for history teachers why would anyone need my blog?  I'm not a professional historian.

But I am a professional teacher with high standards and nearly 20 years of experience. I owe much of my success to long conversations with colleagues. In particular, I own an enormous debt to my dear friend and department chair when I taught high school. Most of what I do well, I do well because of his help during those early years of my career. It is the outcome of those kinds of conversations I am trying to recreate on this blog. The kind of discussions you have with a colleague who you trust, who has some good ideas, who helps you tweak your own and make them better.

Sometimes I find the resources online too overwhelming. Sometimes, you just need to know how to teach about insert any topic here. Preferably before 3rd period tomorrow. That is what I hope you will find on this blog.

At this historic juncture, we need to teach in order to bring light to the truth. As the now Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Ida B. Wells said,  

The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.

Please check out the post I did last fall about why students need Black history all year long, not just February, on Middleweb.

Please follow me on Twitter (@UShistoryideas) and check out my other posts on Middleweb, where I have been doing most of my blogging for the past few years. For those of you who teach high school, there is much to be learned from middle school teachers.

Updated post of the day: colonial slavery (Some new links in here to other resources; check 'em out!)

Post I'm working on next: Reconstruction. Stay tuned.