"I Don't Teach History, I Make Historians"

I get a lot of requests regarding my teaching philosophy. As a graduate student, we were told to develop a philosophy regarding ourselves and how we planned to teach. Naturally, as a good grad student I thought the answer could be found by researching so I read A LOT of teaching philosophies from other masters and PhD recipients. All of them sounded the same. It wasn't until I actually began to teach in higher education that I realized what my teaching philosophy was...

"I don't teach history. I make historians."

When people think of history teachers they think of someone trying to get them to memorize dates, battles, and names. I like to think I make historians. Now, I don't expect everyone that takes my class to change their major to history but I inspire my students to think about history. I encourage them to consider what causes historical events to happen, what legacy it left, and how those events are similar to things taking place in our modern world. In my course, you will learn to look at history not as something that happened an eternity ago but how it affects us to this day.

We're halfway there! (aka "All Roads Lead to Rome!")

This is my first time ever teaching a college course and it's hard to believe that it's already halfway over. In the last four weeks I've already had so many amazing experiences and had some great challenges. There are some things I will do differently next class but there are many things that turned out very well.

All Roads lead to Rome!

This halfway point also marks the progression from studying Ancient Greece into studying Ancient Rome. Anyone that knows me knows how excited I am about this! I feel that the Romans assimilated the passion for the arts that Athens had along with the military prowess that the Spartans displayed to create one of the most powerful (and certainly the most influential) civilizations of the Ancient World.

The next four weeks of class is going to be incredible!