I’m excited this fall to be co-designing a team-taught, cross-discipline experimental course. Wow! That is a mouthful! Since transfer agreements are such an integral part of our curriculum at a community college, the opportunity to create a new course comes infrequently and with numerous challenges. This week I’ll share my experience with the early stages of this process from the history side of the course in hopes that Macmillan Community members will chime in with ideas and suggestions.   The idea for our new, as yet unnamed, course came about before the recent pandemic began. Several years ago, a colleague in the Biology Department expressed interest in my US history students’ study of the 1918 Influenza outbreak. Wouldn’t it be great, we concluded, to have a course that linked biological crises with their historical origins and context? Both of us were busy with our 5-5 teaching load, so we filed the idea away until spring 2020 when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit the United States. Amidst the chaos of moving all of our courses online, we knew we needed to revisit our idea. Students were asking questions that required complex and thoughtful answers: had this kind of crisis happened before? When? Why? How did previous generations respond?    As excited as we both were about the idea of creating such a course, reality took the reins. Where would this course be housed at our community college and how would it transfer? As much as we wanted to dive right in and think about the curriculum, we had to stop and first consider logistics. I started the conversation with my department chair who suggested at least a dozen more questions we had not considered, including the hurdles that would be necessary to clear our course on an experimental basis (two semesters) with the college’s Curriculum Review Committee. Undeterred, we continued to ask colleagues for advice and to gather materials we believe will be useful material in the course.   Our vice president for Academic Affairs suggested that we start the process by working with the department whose students would benefit most directly from the development of such a course. At our college, nursing students are required to take just one course in the Humanities or Social Sciences. Generally the students take whatever course best fits their schedule because none of the classes are designed to specifically enhance the nursing curriculum. Here, it seems, we have found our stride. As we move forward with the course design process it is with the intent of providing nursing and other health sciences students with a course that better connects their fields to history while maintaining a significant degree of scientific learning as well. We are hopeful that by studying history and biology together, health care students will recognize the interconnectedness of those seemingly distinct fields. We hope, too, that we can help our college to increase offerings in courses on public health, which seem particularly valuable in current times.   Now that we are in the planning process, I would love to hear from anyone who has co-designed/taught a course that covered two distinct disciplines. What unexpected challenges did you face? Please share!  ... View more

Author Eric Nelson speaks on blurring the lines of the in-person and digital student experience. Listen as he shares his thoughts about using low-stakes adaptive quizzing & discussion sections both now and during COVID along with other less successful methods to get here. ... View more

This past weekend marked the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack. As I reflect on my personal memories of that tragic day, I find myself, again, thinking about the US history survey and how recent history fits (or doesn't fit) into my semester-long sections of "US II." In a previous blog, Up-to-date? Where to End the US Survey (2017), I discussed the challenge of getting through as much content as possible and my avoidance of teaching topics that I had lived through. One astute reader reminded me back then that just because I witnessed a historical event doesn’t mean that students are familiar with it. So, here I am four years later, and the question still perplexes me. Do I need to get to 9/11 in a course that starts in 1877 and is already bursting at the seams with content? Is it time for me to officially abandon my quest for "coverage"?   As a mom to college-age children it is impossible to escape notice of how dramatically things have changed since 2001. My children have grown up under the cloud of the War on Terror in the same way my youth was influenced by the Cold War. And yet, so much of what I know about the Cold War was learned in adulthood, not as a college student living through the collapse of the Soviet Union. My college history professors ended US II with Watergate and the fall of Saigon, and I’m still ok with their choices. Had they tried in the early 1990s to teach the historical meanings of the Iran Hostage Crisis or Reaganomics, students would have been left with an incomplete understanding of complex topics that had not yet been fully examined by historians.    The longer I teach the more I find myself wedded to the notion that the passage of time enables a deeper, more thoughtful understanding of events. Not without bias, but certainly with additional data and facts to temper extreme partisan perspectives. That being said, while I don’t see myself incorporating study of 9/11 into my US History II sections any time soon, I do believe that providing students with the tools to begin their own study of a recent event or contemporary topic can be helpful. Over the course of a semester they come to rely on their professors as experts. Offering them a starting point for exploration of topics we cannot “fit” into the time frame of our 15-week courses, therefore, makes sense.    The knowledge my students gain about how to study history, I’ve concluded, is more valuable than coverage. Finding new ways to train our students to think as historians -- evaluate sources, look for bias, search for contradictions in the written record -- will prepare the college students of today to both analyze events as they occur around them now while also enabling them to think critically in the future about what they have experienced. As someone who teaches mostly STEM and health care majors, the process of learning history feels more important than ever.   In 2021, with US History II needing to cover more and more material, how are you training our next generation of historically-aware citizens?    ... View more

Whenever I allow students in my US Women’s History classes to choose their own research topics they automatically default to biographies. In an effort to move away from the kind of history that focuses solely on the accomplishments of individuals, this semester’s research project requires each student to study a social movement in which women were significant participants, if not the leaders. Since my course covers the period 1600-1900, I’ve created a list of suggested topics that includes abolition, temperance, and voting/political rights, as well as mental health, public health, and education. My hope is that students see groups of women as significant actors in the development of our modern-day ideas and institutions, rather than singling out specific women for their individual achievements and ignoring the communities around them. I was inspired to discourage students from writing biographies this semester in part by my spring-semester students’ desires to focus on women with whom they were already familiar. Rosa Parks, for example, immediately came to mind for students when they were assigned a research project for US Women Since 1900. Since I had not made a blanket “no biographies” rule I tried my best to steer students towards women such as Ida Wells and Ella Baker, who were significant as civil rights activists but not staples of middle-school history curriculum. Anyone who remained committed to Rosa Parks as a topic had to study her work aside from the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While at first students were unhappy about my “rules,” ultimately they seemed pleased by semester’s end to have expanded their understanding of Parks’s work or to have learned about women that were previously unknown to them. I’m hopeful that by studying women’s participation in 19th-century social movements students will engage in deeper thought about both the motivations of these women and the challenges they faced forging a space for themselves, and others, in the public sphere. How did their families/communities respond to their desire to be publicly active? Did the women view their work as political, or were they inspired by moral or religious beliefs? Who did they lean on in their public and private lives for support? Students will need to acknowledge the privilege that enabled upper-class white women to work for social causes while servants and enslaved women managed the heavy responsibilities of their masters’/employers’ households. Ultimately, I want the students to see that women’s social activism during this period of our history required more than the desire to make change. While some women wrote abolitionist pamphlets or toured decrepit institutions for the “insane,” the day to day toil of other women in private homes made the work of social pioneers possible. Communities of women made change possible then, as now.  What are you doing to expand your students’ understanding of how the individual fits into the larger picture of our national history? Ideas and suggestions are welcome.    ... View more

In 2007 when I was first hired by the community college where I’m about to start my fifteenth year, the centerpiece of my teaching load was a course called “America’s Experience in Vietnam.” The class was very popular among a specific sub-group of students: recent veterans of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of them had permanent war-related injuries, while others were open with their classmates about their struggles with PTSD. Still others were physically and emotionally healthy but working incredibly hard to rejoin civilian life after an extended period of time in the armed forces. They added an element of realism to the course discussions that had been absent when I taught a similar course at a private four-year college.   As the years went on, and the turmoil in the Middle East continued to draw on the human and economic resources of our country, the “Vietnam course” as I liked to call it became more and more difficult to teach. Historians had a clearer picture than ever before of the errors in policy made in Southeast Asia and there was plenty of Vietnam-related data for analysis and discussion. My students, however, were beginning to see parallels between the war they were studying and the one in which they had been combatants. It was obvious to me that some were quite troubled by the proverbial notion of “history repeating itself.”   Class discussions became tangled in a question that I couldn’t answer with any authority: would a historian one day be making the argument that US military action in Afghanistan and/or Iraq had been misguided? I admittedly started to have a difficult time keeping the students on track because their concerns about the similarities between US policy in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, though decades apart, were so troubling. It seemed that every conversation about Vietnam ended with thoughts on the Middle East. Eventually I began to believe that a class focused solely on the war in Vietnam no longer made sense for a generation of students who were themselves living through a protracted military engagement overseas and needed broader historical context. I began to encourage student veterans to take general US history courses so that they could better understand how US foreign policy has changed over time in response to diplomatic and economic crises throughout the world.    I’m thinking a lot this week about those students I taught in 2007, 2008, and 2009 who were new to college but veterans of combat. My college is offering additional support to current student veterans feeling stress and anxiety over the situation in Afghanistan, but I know that those young men and women I taught more than ten years ago -- wherever they may be today -- are likely thinking back to our class discussions. It’s unsettling.    What do we say to students when we literally see history repeating itself in front of our eyes? I’m mulling this question as we prepare to start a new school year with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to wreak havoc on our daily lives. In these immensely challenging times I want to find ways to be truthful in my classroom while also offering hope for the future. Seeking suggestions.    ... View more

Happy International Pirate Month! Here are a few female figures from the extensive history of piracy to celebrate a pirate-centric August.  First, though, it’s important to note that experiences of women on pirate ships are less documented than their male counterparts. It’s often hard to distinguish myth from history, and the ends of all these women’s lives below are not known. Still, their piracy careers are fascinating and worthy of study.    Anne Bonny and Mary Read These two famous English pirates both were active during the early 1700s, both were illegitimate children, and both dressed as men at different parts of their lives.  Eventually, Anne Bonny left her sailor husband James Bonney to join the crew of John “Calico Jack” Rackman, where she dressed as a man when interacting with other ships. In one of these interactions, the ship took Mary Read, dressed as a man, prisoner. The two women became friends, fighting together on the ship.  They eventually both stood trial in Jamaica and were found guilty, sentenced to be hanged. But, they were not killed at that time, as they were both found to be pregnant. While the primary source on these two pirates, Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates says a lot, it doesn’t state what happened to these two women in the end. It also doesn’t say what is certainly true, and what might be myth.   Sayyida al-Hurra When the Spanish armies conquered the Muslim Granada in 1492, Sayyida became a refugee and vowed to avenge herself. After she went to Chaouen, in present day Morocco, she married Abu al-Hasan al-Mandri. After he died in 1515, she became the sole governor of Tétouan and thus the last woman to hold the title of “al-Hurra.” This also makes her the last Islamic queen. Twenty-three years after becoming a refugee, Sayyida assembled a fleet and started her piracy career by attacking Portuguese shipping routes in the Mediterranean. The profits from these exploits were used to rebuild her city.  Still, Sayyida’s full story is not well documented, especially after she married the King of Morocco in 1541. We don’t know how she was deposed, but her career as a pirate and ruler was certainly prolific.    Zheng Yi Sao (Ching Shih) Ching Shih, or “Cheng’s widow” started her career in piracy after her husband’s death, taking over his fleet of 1,800 ships and 80,000 men. The two had married in 1801, and Ching died in 1807. Ching Shih then started a relationship with Ching’s adoptive son, whom she eventually married.  Ching Shih then became leader of the infamous Red Flag Fleet, which she commanded until she retired in 1810. She died in 1844, but like all the female pirates on this list, not much is known about her later years. She also inspired the character Mistress Ching in The Pirates of the Caribbean.    How do you approach the role of stories in history? Discuss in the comments!  For more on pirates, check out the Bedford Document Collection Pirates and Empire in the Seventeenth Century Atlantic-World by David Head.  ... View more

This week’s blog is my 101st for the Macmillan Community! While I wish I had a provocative way to remark upon the experience of blogging about teaching history, instead, as I prepare to start a new academic year, I face my annual anxiety about what is to come in the year ahead. So, this week I offer more jumbled thoughts.   First, I’m thinking about how much I miss being on campus and lamenting that I will continue to long for a return to academic normalcy for at least one more semester. Enrollment at my community college is such that demand for online courses is outpacing on-campus offerings. The unknowns of the Delta variant, amongst other factors, means that all of my courses are running this fall as remote, asynchronous once again. I had such high hopes for being back in the traditional classroom that, admittedly, it’s going to take a little extra effort on my part to generate excitement for remaining full online. Are you on campus or online? What challenges are you facing as you prepare for either format or a combination of both?    Second, I’m thinking about the college search process and how overwhelming it can be for students. I’ve spent a good part of this summer prodding my youngest son to look at colleges. Our conversations in the car after campus tours have reminded me that students on the cusp of transitioning from secondary to higher education need our compassion just as much if not more than our content expertise. It has occurred to me several times during these visits that at 17 years old I had absolutely zero plans to be a historian. To paraphrase my son after one presentation: “looking at colleges is really scary.” No doubt! As a parent and professor I’m often just as confused about which college would be best when I leave the information sessions/tours as I was when we arrived on campus. It's no surprise to me that many of my students come to community college after spending time a four-year school that was not the right "fit." There has to be a better way. Ideas? Advice?   Finally, as a historian, I continue to reflect on how best to help my students place themselves within the context of this unprecedented time in American history. Just as we thought society was moving towards a new “normal” we find ourselves again facing mask mandates and engaging in debates about the value of vaccination. No doubt this is a confusing time for students and teachers alike. As always, I encourage fellow teachers to reference times in our history when we’ve faced similar challenges. I recently started listening to the inaugural season of the Intervals podcast released this year by the Organization of American Historians and available free of charge through Spotify. Subjects include yellow fever, smallpox, the influenza outbreak of 1918, and the use of disinfectants during the Gilded Age. It’s easy to get drawn in by the fascinating subjects of this fabulous series. Any one of the episodes could offer an early-semester writing prompt in a history or English class.   As we approach this new academic year, what are you thinking about? What challenges do you anticipate as we move into this new phase of pandemic-era higher education? Please share.     ... View more

This year’s Olympics in Japan is ‘different’ than all of the previous ones--I don’t just mean that it’s happening during the COVID pandemic, it’s also the one that has the largest number of athletes who are openly a part of the LGBTQ+ community. This year, there are currently 168 athletes who belong to the LGBTQ+ community, maybe even more as there are some athletes who aren’t open about their sexuality. What’s even more impressive is that if all of the LGBTQ+ athletes were representing a country, they would be ranked 14th in the world in the number of medals won. Here are some of the athletes making headlines: Tom Daley: After having won a bronze medal in diving when he was just 18 in the 2012 Olympics, he won a gold medal this week in the men's synchronized diving competition along with his diving partner, Matty Lee.  Megan Rapinoe: Megan’s skills as a soccer player, her unflinching support for LGBTQ+ rights and amazing hair color has placed her on the map as one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ athletes in the Olympics and in the soccer world. She has already won a gold medal back in 2012 and a world cup winner as well. Chelsea Wolfe: Chelsea was the first trans athlete to qualify for the Olympics from the USA team. She will be serving as an alternate in the BMX freestyle event. The reason why this year’s Olympics is particularly special for trans people is that this is the first time there are trans athletes competing. Trans athletes were able to participate in the Olympics back in 2004, but it wasn’t until this year that trans athletes actually participated. This is amazing news; while the number may seem small, it was by far much much larger than it was before and it's important that athletes from all over the world, are able to express who they are and what they do wholeheartedly without fear of judgement or retribution. I hope that this will be a gateway in helping other LGBTQ+ athletes come out and be open about who they are in the future. ... View more

What pulled you into teaching history, and eventually, becoming a history textbook author? I grew up with maternal grandparents who spoke German as a first language; my grandmother was born in the US but into a large German-speaking farming family and my grandfather emigrated from Ukraine (at the time we called it the USSR or Russia). This made me curious about European history and languages so I first studied German, then French, and finally ended up in French history because of my interest in the French Revolution. I loved studying history and also teaching it, both in large undergraduate classes and small seminars. It seemed to me then and still seems to me now that studying history gives you a new perspective on yourself, your family, your community and your nation and a sense of belonging to a wider world. Textbooks are essential because they provide an introduction to all the fascinating questions that could be studied in greater depth and they also, when they work well, give a sense of how things fit together, whether it’s different kinds of experience (war, economic change, cultural variations) or developments over time (how much we have inherited from the past). Can you tell us a little bit about the courses you teach/have taught and where you've taught? I began my career at the University of California, Berkeley teaching Western Civ, general European history and French history in particular. I have taught very large lecture classes (many hundreds of students) and small seminars, both undergraduate and graduate, and everything in between. Berkeley was somewhat unusual (aside from the fact that it was Berkeley, the home of radicalism) in that the history department required every major to write a thesis, not just the honors students. This got students involved in original research and writing and was often very rewarding both to students and their professors. After Berkeley I went to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school, but I still taught the same variety of courses. Then I went to UCLA where I continued to teach a variety of courses. I still teach an online summer version of Western Civ. I loved all the places where I taught and found the students always very engaged (not every single one, of course!), though I also learned that students respond to their professors – if they sense enthusiasm and passion for the subject, they tend to feel the same way themselves. With The Making of the West going into best-selling 7th edition, and a new Achieve platform, what are you most excited about showing your fellow history professors this fall? The online component of teaching is only going to grow, and the most important thing is that that component reflect the same research and analysis that go into textbook writing and the research and writing of history more generally. What I like about the Macmillan platform for the 7th edition is that it had great input from my co-authors and myself. It reflects our interests and priorities, not some generic template. At the same time, Achieve offers so many choices. No one has to do the same thing as everyone else; the customization possibilities are endless, as I discovered for myself teaching this course with Launchpad over the last few years. What are the biggest themes that you try to convey? What are the organizing principles of The Making of the West? Interconnection above all else: we have tried to bring all the different kinds of history (from military to women’s and gender history) together into a seamless (in so far as that is possible) narrative without privileging any one aspect or region. Interconnection in the sense, too, that Europe is part of a wider world and we would like to think that we were very much in the forefront of emphasizing that aspect of Western Civ. What has been the best "teachable moment" to emerge from teaching in the era of the pandemic? I am not sure that enough has been made of how the online format can actually increase professor-student interactions. If you teach a bricks and mortar version of Western Civ as I have, it is very hard to get to know individual students if you have a class of 150-500 students (except those in your own section if you have one). And it’s very hard to get students to come to office hours because they have busy schedules and are often convinced that no one will be very interested in their problems when there are so many other students. With the move online during the pandemic, students have been more willing to email their professors because it’s the only way to contact them. Yes, in synchronous classes, you can stay and ask a question after the lecture but in asynchronous ones, you cannot. But you can email the professor or attend his or her zoom office hours. Without this, I’m afraid that the pandemic would have been even more disastrous for learning. ... View more

The Tokyo games will begin this Friday, July 23, and there has been recent news around Rule 50 of the Olympic games which bans “demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda in Olympic venues.” The Olympics, though, have a long history of protests, and I think it’s helpful to view current events in the context of this history.  Here are three stories of protest at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. If you watch or follow the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and the associated protest that might occur, you can think of them within this larger context of historical protest at these world games.  Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ protest is probably the most famous of these games. The two men won the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meter race. When receiving their medals, Smith and Carlos wore black socks without shoes to symbolize African-American poverty and a black glove to symbolize African-American strength and unity, and they each raised a fist with lowered heads during the national anthem.  Smith and Carlos were then suspended from the US team and forced to leave the Olympic Village, but they were not forced to return their medals.  Wyomia Tyus is mostly known as a former world-record holder in the 100 meter race, and the first person to win gold in this event twice. During her 1968 gold-medal performance, she also protested against racism and human rights abuses through her clothing.  She did so by wearing dark blue running shorts, in contrast to the white ones the other Americans in this event wore. She also criticized the actions taken against Smith and Carlos for their own protest. Her shorts are now in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and she recently published a memoir detailing these games.  In gymnastics, Věra Čáslavská also protested at these historic games. When receiving her four gold and two silver medals, she turned her head from the Soviet flag. Two months earlier, the Soviet Union had invaded Čáslavská’s home of Czechoslovakia. She then fled to the forest and trained by swinging from trees and doing floor routines in a meadow.  After the games, Čáslavská was barred from the sport in Czechoslovakia, so she decided to coach in Mexico. ... View more

In May I described my plans for a deconstructed research project to be assigned during my six-week summer intensive course in place of a traditional writing assignment. (See “Summer Project: Assignment Reboot” for details.) My goal was to have the students complete the key elements of a research project in structured sections, due over four weeks, rather than handing in a finished product at the conclusion of the course. Having just finished reading spring-semester research projects, I hoped that with this new approach the summer projects would be academically stronger if they were broken up into sections even though the summer students would have less time to complete the project than the spring semester students. Thanks to everyone who wrote to me after the blog was published to share their experiences with deconstructed projects!   So what did I find? Here are some observations from my first experience assigning this project with a class of 24 online students.   First, seasoned students who had completed research projects in other courses were initially confused about “the point.” I had a handful ask if they could “just write the whole paper” instead of breaking down the projects into my four step process. Although some students clearly already knew how to complete a research project, I explained that all students could benefit from slowing down the process. Part One of the project asked students to explain their topic and identify three secondary sources in MLA citation form. Right away some students hit a roadblock because they did not know where/how to locate secondary sources and/or they were unfamiliar with MLA. Since they had only seven days to complete the assignment, however, there was no time to procrastinate. Anyone who needed assistance with the sources had to immediately schedule time with our reference librarian, and the majority of students did just that.   Having students focus Part Three of the assignment on primary sources provided an opportunity to once again offer help. Part Two asked students to summarize the basics: who/what/where/when/how. Part Three required them to find primary sources to illustrate the details. In semester-long research projects I have consistently seen students ignore the differences between primary and secondary sources as they rush to complete a project in the crunch of a deadline. In the deconstructed project the students had seven days to identify three primary sources. For most students, successful completion of this part of the project meant brushing up on what a primary source is -- I provided links to several online resources as well as a sample of my own work for students to mirror. Again, I reminded students of the short window of time and encouraged them to ask for help. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many students booking virtual appointments with our college librarians and the college Writing Center.   Finally, Part Four required students to submit two paragraphs on the historical significance of their topic along with a final Works Cited page in MLA format. I provided several prompts to help the students to think more broadly about their topics and to draw connections to contemporary issues when possible. Once more the students had seven days to complete this part of the project. No time to procrastinate.   Ultimately, my trial run with a (time-sensitive) deconstructed research project was a success. The vast majority of  students completed all four parts of the assignment on time and I was pleased with the effort put forth. It’s difficult to judge whether the results will be the same during a semester-long course because in my experience students who take summer-intensive courses are extra motivated by the need to earn those last few credits that will allow them to graduate and/or transfer. I’ll try the project in a semester-long format this fall and am considering whether or not to maintain the same four-week plan. I’m curious to see if the four-week approach reduces the amount of procrastination that tends to seep into semester-long research projects.   Thoughts? Suggestions? ... View more

As I’m thinking about the start of the new school year I’m brainstorming the return to campus. At my community college, a return to campus in September will mean students in the physical classrooms after nearly eighteen months of remote learning. I’m wondering how to help students reconnect in that physical space after working independently for so long. Usually the first day of classes is spent discussing the syllabus and course expectations. While these tasks will still be part of my plan, I’ve decided to also have students group-share on that first day to discuss how their working lives have changed as a result of the pandemic.    Here are some of the questions I will have students address in small groups:    Did you work before the pandemic began? If so, what did you do?  How did the earliest months of the pandemic impact your personal work life or the experiences of those with whom you live? Did you change jobs during the pandemic? If so, why/why not? What was your experience seeking work during the pandemic? How could a historian document your pandemic work experience? What artifacts may exist that could help tell the story of your experience in the future? What do you want students one hundred years from now to know about your pandemic-era work experiences?   I’m inspired to start the semester with this discussion because I believe that the majority of my students or their families will have experienced some significant work-related changes during the pandemic era. We spend a great deal of time in my US history classes studying the changes that came about during the First and Second World Wars in regards to work. The most recognizable icon to students on the first day of US History II is always “Rosie the Riveter” -- even if they cannot explain her significance they are able to link her to World War II. I’m hoping to help students to see that their experiences during the pandemic will one day be the subject of study in history classes.   In addition, I’m hoping that by focusing on work rather than health issues during the pandemic I can help the students connect to each other without delving too deeply into painful personal experiences/losses that may have occurred as a result of COVID-19. I want the students, from the very first day back together in the classroom, to be reminded of their shared experiences as a society over the past eighteen months.    Do you have any plans for re-integrating students into the physical classroom this fall? Please share. ... View more

Vice President Kamala Harris faced criticism this week for telling Guatemalans not to come to the US/Mexican border  seeking entry without first following other pathways to citizenship. Whether or not we concur with the White House’s stance on undocumented people and conditions at the US/Mexican border, as historians we can agree that our students know more about the political mud-slinging that goes on in relation to immigration policy than they do about the countries that are the birthplaces of millions of people who desire economic opportunity and security here in the United States.    I am acutely aware of the students’ frustration with this lack of knowledge because I teach at a community college with a large population of students whose families are from the Caribbean and Latin America. In most cases, the students themselves were either born in the United States or were brought to this country at such a young age that they do not remember the living conditions that led to their families’ migrations. Often they will say they know only that their families were “extremely poor” or that one or both of their parents sought political asylum in the United States. Family members, the students tell their professors, are often reluctant to discuss the conditions that led to the immensely difficult decision to leave their homeland.    It’s time for us, as historians, to help these young people understand their families’ origin stories.   At my college we hope to start this process by hiring an historian who can teach courses specifically related to Latin America and the Caribbean, while also helping us to create a more globally-based survey course. None of this may sound groundbreaking to those of you who teach at universities with dozens of fields of specialization. However, those who teach at community colleges across the United States have long faced the challenge of teaching outside of our fields of expertise so that we can offer as many courses as possible. For an increasingly diverse student population, we must do better.   Consider, for example, that the American Association of Community Colleges reported in 2019 that approximately 41% of all undergraduates in the US are enrolled at community colleges. When we look at statistics for Native American, Hispanic, and Black college students those numbers increase to 56%, 53%, and 43% respectively. It’s well past time, then, for community colleges to commit to more diversity in their history curriculum and to offer content beyond the traditional US history and Western Civilization courses that have typically transferred seamlessly to four-year colleges. If students of color are taking their first college history courses at community colleges, those courses need to not only educate them about important historical events but also help them to see where they -- as people -- fit into the narrative of world history. For first-generation Americans and first-generation college students this need is especially great.   To my fellow community college faculty, a question: what courses is your department offering outside of the traditional US and Western Civilization surveys? How have students responded to the offerings? Is enrollment strong or struggling? I’d love to hear from Macmillan Community faculty grappling with this important challenge.  ... View more

This past semester a kind of remote-learning fatigue seemed to set in amongst my students. Coupled with my own remote-teaching fatigue, final projects were less ambitious than in previous years and took me much longer to grade. I’ve decided that summer is a good time for a reboot of the semester-long research project to re-energize my instruction and help students to focus on the quality of each individual part of their research project.    I’m teaching a six-week intensive Black History course this summer and instead of assigning the research project at the start and then waiting to see the results at the end of the session, I’m breaking the assignment into four parts that will be submitted separately. The goal of the project is for students to research an aspect of Black History that we will not cover in detail as a class but relates directly to the larger themes and content. Together the four parts will comprise a research project, but students will be graded on each individual section as it is completed rather than on one document at the course’s end.    Here is my work-in-progress plan for what will be submitted in each part of the project during the six-week course:   Part One (due Week Two) Topic with thesis statement and defined parameters. Example: a study of the life/work of Martin Luther King, Jr., would be too broad for this project but a study of the significance of MLK’s work in Montgomery in 1955 or Birmingham in 1963 would work well. Draft Works Cited: three secondary sources in MLA format. Sources will be articles retrieved from College Library’s databases; students will receive support from a reference librarian.   Part Two (due Week Three) In 2-3 detailed paragraphs, explain the who/what/where/when/how of the topic. Use in-text citations (MLA format) to identify sources used.   Part Three (due Week Four) Three annotated primary sources providing examples to support information presented in Part Two and illustrate key aspects of the topic.  Examples: images of subject/events, newspaper/magazine articles from period, segments of speeches/letters/writings from period. Each source should have a 1-2 sentence annotation to explain its relevance to the topic. Primary sources may come from academic databases or from the general web.  Sources must be cited in MLA format.   Part Four (due Week Five) Two paragraph conclusion that addresses historical significance Where does the topic fit within the wider framework of our course? What was the long-term impact of the topic on the history of the era we are studying? Final version of Works Cited page   It is my hope that by deconstructing this research assignment my students will experience the value of producing quality components that together create a well thought-out project. I would love to hear from anyone who has tried this kind of piece-by-piece assignment and whether they were satisfied with the results. Any pitfalls I need to be prepared for?  Suggestions welcome!  ... View more

Last week in his blog post “History of Violence in the Chinese Community” my Macmillan Community colleague Steven Huang emphasized the importance of studying the historical origins of the anti-Asian violence that we have seen dramatically increase since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In particular, Steven encourages us to listen to the voices of Asian-American people across the United States as we search for a more comprehensive approach to anti-racism.    I’ve been particularly struck by the increased media attention on anti-Asian violence because so many of the students at the community college where I teach identify as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI). In my US History II survey class we study the nineteenth-century origins of anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese sentiment in the western part of the United States. Students in the course have researched Angel Island and Japanese Picture Brides for their independent projects, and the centerpiece of our discussion of World War II is the internment of people of Japanese descent from 1942-1945. And yet, there is so much more that we could/should be covering to gain a more complete picture of the history of AAPI people in the United States.   It stands to reason, then, that many of us who teach US history need to increase the presence of AAPI in our survey courses. Here are some web-based resources that I have found useful:   A great place to start the search for new material to share with students is Elizabeth Kleinrock’s article “After Atlanta: Teaching About Asian American Identity and History” (Learning for Justice, 17 March 2021). “I can’t change the past...” Kleinrock writes, “But what I can do in this moment is direct these emotions into action to take one step towards ensuring that no Asian child is called ‘Kung-flu’ by a classmate and that my students will not grow up to harass and attack people of Asian descent on the street.” Kleinrock shares the results from having surveyed her students about their knowledge of Asian Americans after the Atlanta attack, and then identifies materials that can help begin the conversation about AAPI history in the classroom.   Numerous government historical repositories including the Library of Congress and the National Archives are hosting a joint web site for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. In addition to finding links to videos from the Smithsonian’s historical collections, teachers and students can access numerous primary sources and lesson plans on such topics as the annexation of Hawaii, immigration, and exclusion.    The University of Southern California library system has developed an extensive digital finding aid for primary sources related to AAPI. In addition to print sources and dozens of photographs, the site contains images of artifacts found as the result of archeological digs in California. Students will be fascinated to see the items retrieved from the site of a former Chinese laundry (circa 1880-1933), among other interesting pieces of social and cultural history.    Any conversation about the history of immigration to the United States is incomplete without discussion of Angel Island, the Pacific Coast’s point of entry from 1910 to 1940. It has been my experience that the majority of college students have no idea that immigrants entered the country through any place but Ellis Island (New York). The Angel Island Immigration Foundation site documents a period when people from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada, South America, Russia, Asia and the Pacific Islands sought entry to the United States through the island off of San Francisco. Immigration restrictions placed on people of Asian descent made the process extremely complex and stressful in these years, and Angel Island served as a location at which authorities could separate the immigrants by nationality to prevent the entry of “excluded” people.   A simple Google search for AAPI-related historical materials will lead to many more open resources -- what I’m offering in this blog is merely a starting point. It is critical that we convey to students that any discussion of race/racism must include the challenges faced by the AAPI communities throughout our national history. The willingness to include these groups in our course curriculum is a great way to start students on the path to deeper understanding.    ... View more