Career Post 4

Part of the reason I wanted to become a history teacher was due to the history teachers I've met while going to school. Each of the notable examples showed me something about what it is to be a teacher. In some cases, these examples were not always so happy or helpful. I suppose that if I ever do teach history, I'll carry some of these memories as influence on my own teaching style.

The first teacher who taught me only history, as opposed to an elementary school teacher who teaches all the general subjects, was Mrs. Smith in fourth grade. Overall, my impression of her was not bad. She used a lot of memorization drills to teach with. One of the largest parts of our class was memorizing the states and the capitals. By the end of the course, I had memorized all of the states and their capitals with little practice. Her class, despite largely using memorization, was not all that memorable.

In fifth grade, my history teacher was a young woman named Mrs. Cook. I liked her at first, but slowly grew to dislike her. She also taught science, which was a much more fun class. Her history class however was based largely on projects and tests. I passed the tests with little effort but I have always hated projects. The ones she had us do were usually booklets that we had to color, write in, and glue together. I didn't like Mrs. Smith by the time I left that school.

In sixth grade, one of my favorite history teachers took me through a very animated world history course. Her name was Mrs. Morrison. When the class was on the section of medieval kingdoms, she brought a scepter and tiara to class and wore them. She took on the persona of Queen Dana. When the class went over Asian culture and history, we brought Chinese and Japanese food to class during the lunch period. When the class went over WWII and the Korean War, she brought in her father's old military gear and let us try it on.

The next year, my history teacher was Mr. Thomas. He was a very straightforward and mature old black man. He didn't play around in class and was very old fashioned. Class consisted of taking notes from an overhead projector and listening to his lecture. He taught history because he liked teaching, and he loved the subject. He showed me that there were teachers who loved their jobs genuinely.

When I transferred schools that same year, I entered into a private Catholic school. The history teacher for the middle school students, I would later learn, has been teaching there for over thirty years. At first, I saw her as a teacher who worked a thankless job teaching a bunch of students who never paid attention to her. I always paid attention and did her assigned work because it was an enjoyable class and I felt that she was a teacher who needed a little extra respect for having to deal with such an undesirable group of students. Later, after I realized how long she had been teaching at the school, I saw a teacher who had an unbelievable amount of patience.

Through high school, I would attend two history classes taught by Ms. Brenneman. She was a very lively and interactive teacher. She did lots of projects which, because I enjoyed her teaching so much, were bearable. I still didn't like the amount of projects we had to do, but her classes were broken up with a hearty amount of bookwork that appealed to learners such as myself. Even students who didn't particularly like history enjoyed her class. It was there that I learned to make everything at least bearable, even if you don't really want to do it.

Whether I liked their classes or not, these teachers all gave me things to take from their classes, be it knowledge of the state capitals or a new way to look at life.