Have
you ever watched a movie that you read a spoiler about or might have heard the
twist ending ahead of time? Most of the
time you pay little attention and you’re not really invested in the movie
because you already know that Bruce Willis is dead or that Kevin Spacey is really
Keyser Söze. This is what teaching
history is like. It is difficult to keep
students attention in a classroom with any subject let alone something that
happened 200 years ago. To keep students
interested with history I find the best tactics are modern day connections,
simulations, and my personal favorite “weird history”.
My job
as a history teacher is to give students the knowledge to be intelligent
members of society. When they walk out
of my classroom I want them to know how humanity has gotten to this point. They hear stuff on the news about problems in
the Middle East, but do they know how these problems started? By giving students the necessary background
information and helping them discover how decisions from the past impact us
today then they can learn from those mistakes.
They can learn how people have dealt with political, social, and
economic issues and still persevered.
They can learn that if you don’t like your leaders in office or the
direction the country is headed you can get involved, protest, and make changes
for the better.
Simulations
always get students attention in the classroom.
When I taught American politics I used computer games on iCivics.org to teach
about the Electoral College, mock Congresses, mock trials, and my favorite a
three party Presidential Election. I had
the students figure out what their candidates’ stances should be on issues in
order to gain enough voters, what states they should focus on, develop print
and video advertisements, and even had other students create investigative
journalism reports on the candidates to present to the class in order to
influence voters. Anything that allows
the students to be creative and do their own thing will hold their attention
and produce meaningful work.
My
favorite way to get student attention is by telling lesser known and weird
stories from history. These always get
students attention because it breaks off from the normal history they read in
their textbooks. Things like how the
real life inspiration for Chuck Norris jokes that is Teddy Roosevelt had a hand
in creating the modern NFL, almost died
while charting an uncharted river in the Amazon jungle with his son Kermit,
and gave a campaign speech after being shot in the chest. Or how John Quincy Adams would swim across the Potomac naked every morning
and pretended to sleep at his desk in Congress to spy on the opposition. When studying the industrial revolution I
always bring up the awesomeness of Nikola Tesla and how he made Mark Twain poop his pants. These stories make class
interesting, fun, and give them interesting things to talk about at parties
when they grow up.
