What I think I'll take away from this course, more than anything else, is a willingness (indeed, an eagerness) to seek out and engage sources beyond the book. I have always been a book-based organism, which certainly contributed to my passion for history, perhaps the most book-bound of disciplines. In a lot of ways, this course took me out of my comfort zone, taking the focus away from the written word or the printed page and placing it on images, on interactive technologies, on audio content. I… Continue

When presented with the task of integrating an interest of mine into a Social Studies Tangent, it wasn't very hard for me to decide that I had to go with baseball. I am a tremendous baseball nerd. I check five or six baseball websites every day when I wake up and I recheck most of them throughout the day. I have, literally, tens of thousands of posts on a baseball website. I must admit I may even have checked a score once or twice in class when the Yankees were playing the Angels in an early pla… Continue

The two main blind spots in my knowledge of history are American politics and the twentieth century, and twentieth century American politics (as a matter of historical study) might be my blindest spot of all. I generally feel like these are still so wrapped up and entangled with current politics that it's difficult to have the sort of distance and perspective that I prefer to bring to an historical inquiry. All history matters to me, but American politics, especially recent American politics, ca… Continue

Tangents for long term development

In another class this semester we examined the professional standards for development designed for North Carolina teachers. One of the directives is to “Promote global awareness and its relevance”. This to me is a challenging intellectual activity yet one that promises a huge payoff. From high school textbooks to “Western Civ” classes in undergrad, the narrative of “west and the rest” is pervasive. “global awareness” is a commodity in educational curriculum th… Continue