What can the universities do to better prepare teachers of history and social studies?
Hire me! The university does a great job giving the student teacher methods of instruction. They come with a whole arsenal of different ways of reaching students through shared learning. History courses at university give overviews in many cases. Have you ever fallen asleep reading a university textbook? The information doesn’t improve when you transfer it into a lesson. You don’t really learn what a teenager will eat up until you happen upon that beautifully visual history of some event. Pierre Berton is a teacher’s saviour for that. (In fact I got a chance to thank him for his contribution to my career a few years back.) Hannon and his book The Discoverers is marvelous. Student teachers ideally would come into the schools already up to speed. Look at high school textbooks; they are worse. In their first years of working teachers may be a only a few pages ahead of the students when they teach. This is unnecessary. I’ve been mentoring the new members of my department. I can give them t
