When I enrolled at my local community college at the age of eighteen, I experienced firsthand the power of good teachers to not only inform but grow their students. I was homeschooled for my entire K-12 education. While this had several benefits it also left me with large gaps in knowledge, such as not knowing what a thesis statement was, an inadequate understanding of math, and never having been in an actual classroom. My community college professors worked with me to overcome these deficiencies and made me believe that my future mattered. Now as an educator, I channel that passion for the importance of education. I have broadly reflected on my own experiences as a “vulnerable” and low-income student and on the new challenges facing students today when considering what kind of educator I strive to be, and how I can use history education for the betterment of the students that I have the privilege of teaching.
I have developed an approach to history education that is based on three overarching principles. First, to expose students to a variety of perspectives and source materials. American classrooms have a growing diverse body of students, and I believe that the material we study in the past should reflect that diversity. Second, I build connections between past and present issues. I find that this not only engages students who might not understand the relevance of the past to their lives, but also to show them how historical memory can and is being politicized. Third, I utilize both established and new ways of encouraging and practicing critical thinking skills to grow students’ academic abilities and stress the importance of a historical education.
To do this successfully, I have cultivated a teaching persona that encourages students to ask questions and be excited about, rather than intimidated by, unfamiliar histories. Most of my teaching experience has been teaching non-Western history courses. Whether it is as a teaching assistant or courses I have taught as instructor of record, I often teach subjects that students have not previously learned about before. I discovered early in my teaching that some students quickly become intimidated with the sheer scope of new information presented. To manage this—and turn it into a strength of the material I teach—I build my classroom environment on asking questions and wrestling with the unfamiliar. Rather than make students terrified of memorizing hundreds of new names and dates, I invite them to question the mysteries of the past and understand its relationship to the present. I further challenge students to consider how this new information alters their understanding of the past. For instance: what does World War II look like from an African perspective?
Engaging Diverse Histories and Voices
The past is as diverse as the present and I believe that the material of history courses should reflect this. In my teaching I surround students with a variety of source material that engages them from different perspectives and through a variety of voices. My courses feature primary sources from a diverse range of authors. These include accounts like that of Narwimba, an East African woman who was enslaved and forced away from her home in the interior of East Africa. This kind of material helps me teases out the perspective, thoughts, and feelings of individuals like Narwimba who are often excluded from historical narratives. Documents such as the Indian Delegation’s closing statements to the Bandung Conference also let me show the actions of individuals or countries in historical events which students are likely familiar with from different perspectives. Many students already have an understanding of the basics of the Cold War, but in my experience few have knowledge of the Non-Aligned Movement and how African and Asian states articulated their own “Cold War” positions at events like Bandung. I am also cognizant that the average student now reads less than they did twenty or even ten years ago, so I also try to immerse students in a variety of non-written sources, such as a short-Guardian video documenting West African World War II veterans who served in Burma, and a Radiolab Podcast episode on the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya during the 1950s. Some students might complain about having to read a twenty-five-page document, but few think twice about listening to a forty-minute podcast.
Many of the students in the courses I teach are not history majors or minorsand come from across the academic spectrum. I try to better captivate these students by presenting historical material from a variety of disciplinary lenses. For instance, in my class on the Indian Ocean World I start the course by explaining the unique environmental and climatological conditions that allowed societies around the ocean rim to travel consistently and reliably across the ocean using the monsoon winds. This topic gripped many of the STEM students in the class and allowed those who had taken environmental science courses to share additional information they were excited about. In that same course, I had four students who were supply-chain majors. To capture their interests, I rewrote a lecture on how new nineteenth century technologies changed the Indian Ocean World by highlighting the emergence of refrigeration technologies and the subsequent transformation of meat and produce supply chains. By bringing together diverse voices and a variety of academic interests, I better involve everyone in the classroom.
Relating the Past and the Present
History is an often-politicized topic and students who take history courses today are aware of it. Ignoring that reality is not a constructive approach. Rather than disregard the present and the politicization of historical topics, I have found that students appreciate and engage with historical material when they see a relationship between past events and present debates. I encourage this as much as appropriate by using events like the Third Bubonic Plague outbreak at the end of the nineteenth century to discuss the impact of Covid-19, or the Rwandan Genocide to discuss contemporary instances of political violence and genocide. I reserve the last minutes of class for students to ask contemporary questions relating to the big themes discussed in lecture that week. This engrosses students who are studying contemporary events—or even those who stay up to date with the news—and introduces them to the practice of relating past and present. It also instills in students the idea that the study of the past has real value in tackling present problems. I make it clear that history does not repeat itself, but that it does often rhyme.
Encouraging and Practicing Critical Thinking
I build my courses with the belief that critical thinking is a cornerstone of a successful humanities class. Many educators rely on written assignments to build critical thinking skills. While written assignments absolutely can achieve that, I find that the history classroom offers many more ways to build critical thinking by incorporating different forms of learning. First, I encourage students to ask questions during lectures based on both clarification and interest. I make it clear that asking a question is a form of participation, which incentivizes students to engaged with lectures and to interrogate the material I present. Second, I try to use primary sources as much of possible in my teaching. In addition to bringing diverse voices from the past into the classroom, I encourage my students to challenge the material we study. I instruct them to question the motives of those we read and study what reasons they might have to lie or exaggerate. This builds both critical thinking and close reading skills.
Finally, the written assignments for my classes are designed with critical thinking in mind. For both my African and Indian Ocean World history courses the students have a research paper assignment they complete in stages over the course of the semester. This requirement ensures that students work with the assignment over a period of roughly two months (rather than waiting until a week before it is due to begin thinking about it). This structure allows me to provide feedback at three different points before they turn in their final paper. The initial stages they turn in require them to think about and to justify the topic they selected, as well as what sources they plan to utilize. During these early stages I can identity issues such as a topic that is not feasible or sources that are not sufficient and have students correct them before writing the paper. The product is a better paper completed over the course of months, rather than one started three days before it is due.
In summary, my approach to teaching strives to build an engaging and curious classroom environment that plays on the strengths of the often-unfamiliar histories that I teach to bring diverse perspectives and information into the minds of students.
Thomas Bouril 