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1) First of all, tell us about the school in which you teach. How long have you been there and what do you teach?

Since 1979, I have taught in the Upper School at Santa Catalina School, a private school in Monterey, CA.The Upper School is all-girls, with approximately 285 day and boarding students in grades 9-12.I am in my twenty-ninth year as department chair and currently teach college preparatory U.S. History and Advanced Placement U.S. History.At other times over the years, I have taught Advanced Placement Modern European History, World History Since 1500, Honors Seminar in Russian History, and African-American History.

2) What exactly is your job and what do you try to do?

As chair of the History Department, my chief responsibilities are to mentor other instructors in the department, to ensure a high quality of instruction in all classes, to maximize the vertical integration and cohesion of the History curriculum, to promote professional development for all the department's instructors, and to work in cooperation with other department chairs to provide our students with a comprehensive, well-balanced education.

As instructor in my own classes, I endeavor to make History relevant and useful to every student.The emphasis is on informed national and world citizenship, historical literacy, and development of the skills of historians.Many people, perhaps most, do not realize that the key to success in the Information Age has been known to historians for generations:one must know how to access information, assess the quality of the information, utilize the most reliable information, and then articulate the information in a coherent fashion useful to others.Understanding of the importance of accurate documentation methodology is also something students develop.

3) How tough is it to teach history nowadays? Are kids interested in it?

The instinctive answer would probably be "Oh yeah, it's much harder to teach History today" for any number of reasons including the Internet, video games, cable TV, etc.The real answer, though, is more likely that it is no more or no less difficult to teach History now than previously, because, as others have pointed out, Americans are a forward-looking people, less interested in what's in the rear-view mirror than in what's before us through the windshield, so to speak.

Having started teaching when there were no desktop computers, no Internet, no video games but "Pong" (!), and still basically only three channels on TV, I have fair confidence in saying that kids are as interested in History today as they have ever been, and the challenge is the same:making it relevant and useful to them.Whether there are three channels or one hundred, whether the video game is "Pong" or some "Alien Death Star V" type-game, students always find those more interesting than learning History unless the teacher can find some way to make History grab their attention and engage them on the human level.

4) What kinds of things do you ask them to read? What kinds of books or newspapers or materials?

I, as well as the other instructors in the History Department at Santa Catalina, emphasize primary sources, reading the actual words of people of a given time, particularly in class.Students also, of course, read widely in both primary and secondary sources in researching their term papers, thus they get some introduction to the concept of historiography, so they understand how a historian in the 1950's, for example, might have a different "take" on an event than a historian in the 1980's.For "homework-type reading," I rely a bit on the textbook, but also on diverse handouts.

One of the things which most engages students is anything from a newspaper that reflects the importance today of something they are studying that happened 150 years ago.Back around Thanksgiving, for example, the Wall Street Journal had a great story on the upcoming football game between the Universities of Kansas and Missouri.The article didn't talk football so much as how the depth of the rivalry is today's manifestation of tensions between Kansas and Missouri that go back to "Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850's!My students were just staggered by that notion, but it also gave them a better idea of what bitter passions must have been engendered 150 years ago to so linger now.

One thing that always engages my 11th graders is when they realize how an understanding of the Federal Reserve System and its actions today can influence their chance of "scoring" a nice car when they graduate!Admittedly, that particular example is somewhat less than altruistic, but from there we can build into the subprime housing crisis, showing how being historically literate can help make one economically literate today.

5) What about writing historical research papers- when do you start that process and how do you start it?

At Santa Catalina, we start with the 9th graders becoming acquainted with the many sources that exist beyond that old standby, the World Book Encyclopedia! ;-)In World History to 1500, they begin by writing fairly short, narrative essays on people and events, basing their work on just a few sources.By the end of the freshman year, they have a good idea of the range of sources relevant to historical research.As 10th graders, they undertake their first real research paper (about 5-6 pages) and are "walked through it" in detail with a good amount of individual "face-time" with their instructors, both in and out of class.All History classes at Santa Catalina use one system of documentation, so students are not constantly shifting styles from teacher to teacher.

Our thinking is that if they truly master the "why" and "what" of documentation, they will more easily adapt to whatever "how" a particular college instructor may mandate.Feedback from our alumnae confirms this approach has served them well.By the time a 10th grader finishes her first research paper, she may not have everything committed to memory, but she has a solid foundation in the process of research and writing.

In 11th grade, each student in U.S. History writes two research papers (about 8-10 pages), one each semester. They are expected to produce higher quality analysis, use a wider variety and a good balance of quality sources, and to understand more comprehensively how historians do such work and why.

Any student who takes a History elective as a senior, usually writes a paper in the 12-15 page range, and these papers are usually the kind of work that makes an instructor proud of the progress students make in four years.One way we emphasize the importance of research and writing is by awarding each year the "Howell-Hughes Award for Distinguished Historical Research and Writing."Named in honor of two long-time teaching "stars" of our History Department, the award is given annually to no more than two seniors who receive individual plaques at a school-wide assembly and whose names are engraved on a perpetual plaque on public display.

Students are also inspired by the articles in The Concord Review, a quarterly review of historical essays written by high school students all over the English-speaking world.Seeing the work their peers produce engages and impresses them, and they are also proud that over the last twenty years, ten articles published in The Concord Review have been written by Santa Catalina students, the most recent of which was in the fall, 2007. When someone you know has written something that good, it's only natural to want to try to do it yourself.

6) We are currently "living history" if you will- we have a woman and an African American male running for President in the democratic party and a war veteran and minister/musician running for the Republican nomination. Do students have any perspective on this?

The students have great interest, but relatively little perspective.That combination, however, allows us, especially with 11th and 12th graders who are or are about to be voters, to emphasize the importance of knowing History in evaluating contemporary political choices.Regardless of a candidate's race, gender, or other characteristics, students can come to see how History helps analyze items such as the following:is that candidate offering fresh, viable solutions or merely recycling the same old ideas and simply calling it "change"?

Does this candidate make one wonder if s/he has ever actually read the Constitution?Does this candidate seem in touch with reality on the issues, such as Social Security and the graying of the Baby Boom generation?

7) How do we convince students of the importance of learning about the founding of our country, the wars and trials and tribulations we have been through?

We can't "convince" them, we have to show them that, in the broadest sense, "History" is also "THEIR-story."One thing I have found which catches attention is on the first day or two of class, I will produce a copy of Glamour magazine or some other magazine specifically targeted at young women.That catches their interest immediately.Then we start to "dissect" the cover and note common themes:how one can prepare a meal "fast," how one can do one's hair "quickly," how one can look like a movie star "in ten minutes," etc.This immediately takes us to "Why do Americans always want to do things quickly?" and "Why is faster usually seen as better?"This can steer us toward the possibly lingering effect of the frontier experience.

We often follow up with an observation that Americans love progress, especially if it is palpably technological.Students are asked to complete the sentence "Progress is _____."99% of the time, the chorused answers are "good" or "inevitable."When it is pointed out that many peoples of the world would not give those answers or see progress as either good or inevitable, we then steer into how the historical experiences of the American people have validated this view and how our sentiments might not be what they are if our historical experience had been different.

From there, we can go in a number of directions, such as the degree to which slavery and post-slavery racism affected/still affect African Americans or just how the U.S. became the world's richest and most powerful nation in only two hundred years.Our answers get students early on to see that History is not a Hollywood script where things turn out "as they should," but the result of human actions predicated on human decisions at any given point in time.Students see "from the get-go" that History is not a movie, that people of any time did largely what we do:they looked at their situation, tried to make sense of things, then largely tried to do what they thought best.

Another, more general approach which can help make History relevant and help students see the importance of past events is to take advantage of local history.For example, when we study the Great Depression and aspects such as the migration of the Okies during the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, I use recent obituaries from local newspapers to show how an octogenarian who died last week came to our local Salinas Valley from Oklahoma as a child in 1934.Obituaries in the Monterey area also bring to life the vital service of women in World War II and the internment of Japanese-Americans, among other topics, and every area of the country yields its own relevant examples.

When students realize that the senior citizen they saw at the mall the other day lived through a crucial era of American History and helped do things or make decisions that created present-day America, it tangibly links modern students with previous generations.A touching story one of my students told me some years ago validated this.This student said that she usually just "mentally shut off" when her grandmother started talking about the Great Depression, but after learning about the Depression, she realized her grandmother had been through a terribly traumatizing event but had persevered.

This student said that the next time her grandmother finished an oft-retold tale, she simply took her grandmother by the hand and said "Thank you for helping the country get through that time."It was clear that this student, and surely many others, now "got it" historically.

8) How do you go about teaching them about this great world that surrounds us---Africa, India, China, Europe, Canada, Mexico etc?

First, we balance our curriculum so that our World History courses, which we instituted in the 1980's, are truly world history courses, not just courses that cover what happened when Europeans wandered into other areas of the world.

By seeing that people all over the world were impacted by their geographical environment, for example, students get a better notion of how and why people decided to do certain things, thereby again grasping the notion that historical experiences inform modern beliefs and actions.Studying other nations, cultures, and religions in some detail helps students see the intrinsic importance of those peoples and nations, and how they contribute to the modern world.We buttress this through use of newspapers, news magazines, and Internet sources to illustrate concretely these connections.

By also encouraging students to write research papers in diverse aspects of History, we find students will delve even more deeply.A few weeks ago, I substituted in a section of World History II, and when we discussed research papers, the students had topics such as Mao's Long March, The Rape of Nanking, genocides in Darfur and Armenia, and the ideology of Che Guevara, to name a few.Because our school also emphasizes the virtues of engagement and involvement in the world as a whole, students see a further connection between "academic History" and current events.

9) What seems to intrigue students of history in this current time-frame?

In a specific sense, issues such as Iraq, Darfur, and the Presidential election generate interest as hot topics.In the broader sense, what gets students intrigued with History at any time is how it relates to what is going on now, and what life would have been like for current students had they lived at another time.

Given that we in the Santa Catalina Upper School have an all-female student body, that by itself opens up many natural avenues of exploration because pretty much every society has been dominated for centuries by men.The contrasting experiences of women past and present all over the world and how things developed as they did in diverse regions is something about which our students always want to know more.Again, the more students can see that "this stuff in class" is also "their story," the more focused on it they can and will become.

10) What question have I neglected to ask ?

A question which might come to mind is "Why is History taught so poorly, so often?"The answer is that over half the high school History teachers in America hold neither majors nor minors in History.History, like every other high school and college subject, should be taught by those who know how to DO History.

Contrary to popular, and often administrative, belief, one cannot teach History by reading one chapter ahead of the class.In its own way, History is as complex and complicated as math or science, given the networking of events and themes.For example, how does the explosion of immigrants to the U.S. around 1850 tie into the growing turmoil over slavery prior to the Civil War?How does it tie into Northern victory in the Civil War and why was that the case?

Those who have thoroughly read, researched, and had years to think about these things can best teach these subjects with both wide-view and close-up perspectives.Department chairs and administrators should insist that those who wish to teach History should have studied History. If we believe in doing things the right way, if we believe math should ideally be taught by mathematicians and science by scientists, why shouldn't History be taught by historians?We would then, as a society, I think, be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Published February 22, 2008