Educational Biography

My desire to teach social studies comes from my own love of working with kids, my interest in history, and great history teachers who I have been blessed to have. I have always known that I enjoyed working with kids both at and outside of a school setting. I have worked with students from pre-kindergarten to college in a variety of settings and without exception have enjoyed myself and felt rewarded in those jobs. I am energized by the curiosity of some students, enjoy being able to help students develop thinking skills, love the constant interaction with people that you have in an academic setting, and love the feeling of accomplishment I have when a lightbulb goes off for a student who had been struggling.

Beyond enjoying working with kids, a good teacher must have a strong interest in what he teaches. This interest in history has always been there for me and without it I would not be entering this field. As a first grader I remember scouring the school library for books on World War II and I’ve never lost that interest. Learning about history would have been little more than a pastime had it not been for the quality of social studies teachers that I have had over the years. It was great teachers who took this interest and turned it into a love. While I had several good social studies teachers in middle school and early high school, my first great influence was my eleventh grade AP Modern European History teacher. He showed me that understanding history takes more than just knowing names and dates and that to really understand anything about history you have to be able to think critically and make connections between the facts your learned in class. I already loved history but it became much more exciting and interesting to me when I felt empowered to try to interpret events and movements for myself and not to rely on the interpretations of teachers and textbooks. He prepared me well for history courses at Davidson and after taking him it was almost a foregone conclusion that I’d be a history major. There is no doubt in my mind that if I had not taken his classes that I would not be in this program today. I hope to have the same success with some of my students that he had with me.

My basic teaching philosophy is based on my own experience and on what I thought my best teachers did effectively. I believe that facts are very important but I would not consider myself a success as a teacher if I simply conveyed information no matter how well my students retained it or did on end of course tests. The lesson I’ve learned is that the best teachers are those who not only teach you when the Battle of Hastings was but who taught you to question what you read and to try to come up with your own informed interpretations of the things we studied. I do not recall most of the names and dates that I have learned over the years but the analytical skills that my favorite teachers helped foster in me help me on a daily basis and in a variety of contexts well beyond social studies.

Having a teaching philosophy is important but even the best philosophy does not make you a good teacher. While there are many qualities that can help make someone a good teacher, I believe that two qualities are absolutely essential. The first quality that a good teacher must have is content mastery. If you do not have a firm grasp of the content that you have been hired to teach, no amount of pedagogical skill, creativity, or enthusiasm can make you a good teacher. The second essential quality that a good teacher must have is flexibility. Good teachers are not tied to a lesson plans and methods that they have used in the past. A good teacher understands what a class and certain students respond to and tailors his lessons and teaching techniques accordingly. He does this even if it means that he has to take different approaches with different classes or sections and if he has to replace lesson plans that have worked with past classes.