Thread by @ZachariasConn

Ok, time for a #SHEAR2022 roundtable (figuratively speaking — literally it’s a quadrilateral) on “Teaching History Amidst the History Wars: A Conversation with Secondary School History Teachers.” A subject near and dear to my heart!

Co-chair of roundtable @brfranklin4 begins with the important (and heartwarming!) point that it’s not just that college profs have something to offer high school teachers—the exchange can and should go both ways.

Nelva Williamson (@nelva) teaches at Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy, an all girls’ public school in Houston. She helped found the school and is a pilot teacher this year for the brand-new AP African American Studies course.

Chris Dier (@chrisdier) is an award-winning teacher at a progressive charter high school in NOLA (where apparently many traditional public schools were turned into charters in wake of Katrina)

Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham (@TheOtherRBG) teaches at a prestigious girls’ prep school in Northern VA, including a class called Radical US History (RUSH) in addition to maintaining a research career

Dr. Thomas Richards (@TWRichardsJ) teaches at a prep school in Philly called Springside Chestnut Hill Academy — formerly single sex and conservative, now co-ed and relatively progressive after girls’ school bailed out boys’ school — in addition to maintaining research career

Williamson: teaches at majority-minority school in the “blue dot” of Houston amid red Texas. Teaching the truth about US history is NOT to teach CRT!

Dier has conducted original research into specific traumatic episodes in New Orleans history to share with students. Published op-ed arguing that a proposed Louisiana so-called anti-CRT law would forbid teaching true history. Fortunately the bill failed.

RBG: a major difference between secondary school and college teaching is that in the former the students’ parents play an active role, including sharing opinions on teaching of hard histories

RBG: There is a real appetite among students for teaching on histories of race and racism—some of her students, picking up on language from media, actually explicitly requested a CRT class

Richards: His school, with its recent commitment to progressivism, has separate DEI team now to introduce DEI material throughout curriculum. History dept of course very much believes in teaching hard histories but doesn’t see eye to eye with DEI team methodologically

DEI team tends to start with a statement about the present, look for direct solutions, glance back at past instrumentally as opposed to History dept’s investment in deep roots, nuance, contingency, complexity

Multiple panelists agree that (as Williamson puts it) “the students are not the problem.” Even the chaos at schools, not to mention the bad faith, tends to come from adults (including outside agitators, parents, etc)

Williamson: Her approach in the classroom places primary sources above all else. “The primary sources are not going to lie.” (This is my own approach in secondary classroom though I am still refining it — inspiring to know it has worked well for such a master teacher!)

Dier: At one point Louisiana made it so that 11th grade American history students not enrolled in APUSH started in 1877 so as to avoid the “controversial” issues of slavery and the Civil War. Big jeers, naturally, from the #SHEAR2022 crowd!

This is no longer the case, but even the move away from it has not responded enough to actual teachers— new curriculum, frustratingly, did not move toward inquiry-based learning

RBG like Williamson has found that primary sources are clutch when teaching hard histories. Here’s the evidence, guys.

RBG serves on a VA history teacher’s council with a number of public schools teachers. The anti-CRT wave has in general affected them a lot more than it has teachers like her who work at (in some ways — not wrt income inequality!) progressive private schools

Richards also has curricular flexibility. For example, the “box to check” on official curriculum for the American Revolution is simply something like “Cover the causes, course, and consequences of the Am Rev”

In stark contrast, as public school teacher in Texas, Williamson has to follow a curriculum with 135(!) objectives per year. Recently objectives amended to exclude topics like MLK(!), Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Fortunately, the admin at her individual school is quite supportive of her energetic efforts to help push state curriculum in more truthful direction that doesn’t overlook/whitewash slavery and race. Same situation for Dier at his school.

RBG and Richards have both found a big appetite, at least among some students, for progressive curriculum. At Richards’s school there is a particularly vocal cohort of left-wing culture warriors whose sanctimony sometimes draws eye-rolls from more apolitical students

Williamson makes a powerful call for scholars to get involved with public schools in their area. High school students do so much for you by preparing students—do your part in other direction. For example you can physically go into schools and do guest lectures, book talks.

Dier has had historians come in and the students LOVE it, refer back to the guest lectures throughout the year. They love to meet experts and be taken seriously as thinkers—a message they is sent to them when scholars take the time to talk with them.

RBG: 1 big way historians can help secondary ed teachers is by making meaningful, interesting primary sources accessible. (Shoutout to big macher @woodyholtonusc who’s walking the walk by being in the crowd today and has shared some great Am Rev sources)

Good think pieces can also be useful in classroom — particularly ones that are genuinely stimulating and convey authorial personality in addition to content. *Translate* and *highlight* aspects of your findings. Don’t try to hurriedly “dumb down” an entire book.

Richards: Be aware that as a scholar you haven’t actually been trained in pedagogy. There’s a lot out there that you can learn about pedagogy as such if you look for it.

Williamson’s advice for new hs teachers: Be your authentic self in the classroom. Be true. Do your homework. Do your research. Don’t try to be anybody else. That won’t work. Be truthful and forthright to your students—they can smell a fake immediately

A good question from audience about what libraries and archives can do to help high school teachers.

Richards: Understandably libraries tend to think of digitization in terms of more, more, more. Check it out, we’ve digitized every page of a massive collection!

But if you want to be useful to teachers, it is so helpful if you can select particularly good sources, distill/abridge them, and provide context and even discussion questions.

Question from crowd: what can scholarly associations do to help high school teachers?

Dier: Great to be given a seat at the table, invited to attend and speak at conferences. Been teaching for 13 years but only in last year has that happened (he’s too modest to say this but I’ll say this is quite belated since he is a big deal teacher!)

Besides the meeting/talk itself these invitations allow for creation of ongoing relationships. He is now in correspondence with several professors who can provide valuable sources and content knowledge

Williamson: Helpful for you to write op-eds publicly condemning the anti-CRT panic. Helpful for you NOT to crudely badmouth high school teachers (You learned nothing in high school and I’m going to teach you everything now)

For one thing this will often turn the students against you because “they love us”

To get a lil personal: I used to have the college upper classroom school those new to college history on Day 1 by asking “What are the differences between high school and college history?” with an implied sneer

I said this even though I LOVED my hs history teachers! In the intervening years I had inhaled deeply the sweet sweet fumes of academic snobbery.

I am eating my words now. Not that there aren’t some differences in general but so foolish to set up a stark opposition, and especially to imply that one is somehow “less than”

Thanks so much to the panelists for sharing their wisdom and to all the higher ed people who sent a message of solidarity by attending today