Pete Seeger was nearly 80 years old when I saw him perform with Arlo Guthrie in St. Paul, Minnesota. He seemed to take a nap on the stage while Guthrie was playing, an approach to life that may have helped him to live another fifteen years. It was 1988, a year and a half before […]
While working more on my timeline project for teaching the history of Latin American independence today, I spent some time thinking about one of the colorful characters of the Atlantic Revolutions–Francisco de Miranda–and how he confounds the standard World History class narrative on revolution in Spanish America. The painting below commemorates the declaration of the […]
Students can develop understandings of contingency in the process of Latin American independence by working through groups of events in specific regions.
Dr. Lawrence Williams introduced me to African American History as its own important narrative.
Complexity requires us to choose and we should the highlight experiences of the people who made up these revolutions.
Teaching Latin American Independence. I’ve been thinking about an evergreen topic among World History teachers: bringing more Latina American content into our classes.
Abuses of the Enlightenment in history classes
Slavery in the Constitution. Since some school board members seem confused about the role of slavery in the founding of the USA, I wrote a set of stimulus-based multiple choice questions from the original Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, of the US Constitution.
One approach that I have definitely embraced is to allow students to explore the meanings of concepts before presenting them with labels, i.e. formal definitions curated or generated by me.
My students at school and I worked through a wide range of human experiences in our study of World History last week. We finished the fourth week study of the Early Modern Atlantic World. Students were familiar with colonialism and coerced labor systems. This week focused on Africa and the Transatlantic Slave System. I have […]