Statement of Teaching Philosophy Keith A. Erekson “What was Abraham Lincoln’s opinion of his father?” On this, the very first day of class, I had given half of the students excerpts from two autobiographical sketches Lincoln prepared for his 1860 presidential campaign.1 I gave them time to read the documents and then asked them to report to the rest of the students. “He was pretty down on him,” one student answered. “How do we know that?” “Well, he doesn’t really say anything nice about his father,” another added. “You’re right,” I coached, “And he has several negative things to say. Who can point out an example?” “In the first excerpt he says his father ‘grew up, litterally without education.’” “Good. Any other examples?” “He repeats the same thing in the second, and he calls his father a ‘wandering laboring boy.’” “He also says his father ‘never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name.’ That’s pretty harsh.” “Great work, Northerners! Now let’s see what the Southerners can tell us about Lincoln’s father.” I had named the two halves of the class North and South for two reasons: 1) it created a simple shorthand by which to refer to the groups, and 2) it provided a subtle, context-relevant clue that their findings would not agree. While the Northerners read Lincoln’s sketches, the Southerners read the notes from an 1865 interview with Lincoln’s stepmother.2 “It’s interesting,” one Southern woman began, “because Mrs. Lincoln has sort of the opposite view. She says that because her husband could barely read and write he really ‘encouraged’ Abe to get all the education he could.” “And she said her husband ‘took particular Care not to disturb’ Abraham when he was reading; he even did Abraham’s chores so the boy could keep reading. She has a lot to say about his reading.” “Isn’t that interesting?” Then, addressing the entire class, I asked, “So why are there differences between these two? Both were there, both were eyewitnesses. How can they disagree?” Here the students presented theories about the different perspectives of adults and children, about recollections and the passage of time, and one even suggested that Lincoln’s recent assassination might have prompted his stepmother to report only the best things. Here—on the very first day of class—we were doing history. Teaching is an interpersonal blend of art and skill that rests on a substantial body of scholarly literature. With the same rigor by which I seek mastery of my specialty in American history, I likewise strive to understand and master the scholarship of history teaching and learning. My students deserve more than my own personal teaching trials and errors and so I continuously read scholarly literature, integrate sound findings into my instruction, report my findings in conferences and publications, and participate in an international community of historians devoted to improving history teaching and learning. Engagement with committed colleagues and sound scholarship helps me understand how my students struggle to read old documents, guides me to create and refine assignments that motivate my students to stretch beyond their comfort zones, and informs the design of unique and relevant assessments of successful student performance. I view the teaching of history as a learner driven, operationally organized, socially structured, personally reflective activity. http://faculty.utep.edu/kaerekson For me, teaching begins with the learner. I always endeavor to learn as much as I can about class demographics and individual interests, and I bring to the classroom a philosophical disposition to view students as people who already do history in their everyday lives. By this I do not mean that they do the same things that academics do, nor do I believe, as did historian Carl Becker, that “Mr. Everyman” performs mental operations that merely parallel the activities of academics.3 I view my students as temporal beings who operate in a historical world—a world they share with academics, especially in the public arenas of politics, education, civics, and tourism. My task is not to convince students that history is relevant, but to show them how to improve the things they already have to do. In the example above, I began the first class with the assumption that my students could read texts from the past, that they could understand major claims, and that they could sense differences of viewpoint. While I begin on the assumption that students can read and understand, I do not assume that they do so in the same way as historians. Therefore, I seek to operationalize the practice of history in order to teach students effective ways of historical thinking, analysis, and argument. The work of Sam Wineburg has informed my practice, particularly his study on the differences in the ways that academics and students read texts.4 Most of my classroom activities share the dual purposes of teaching students about history while also teaching them how to approach the evidence from the past. The Northerners above needed a little coaching to transform their generalized reactions into interpretive claims supported by cited evidence. After observing the Northerners, however, the Southerners started right in saying “Mrs. Lincoln thought X generally because she said ‘Y’ in suchand-such paragraph.” I consider it an essential part of my job to explicitly model historical practice and to provide repeated opportunities for students to perform the same analytical and interpretive operations. I also consider teaching to be a social activity. Students learn much from discussing and working together, so I must design learning activities that permit them to work together in ways that foster creativity and expression. By giving the Northerners and Southerners different documents to read, I made each, in the eyes of the other, an “expert” because the listeners had to rely on the analysis of their peers. Presenting students as “experts” also provides the reassurance that quieter students need to feel comfortable speaking out in class. Social learning activities prove most successful when I design specific tasks that are clearly linked to the students’ grades—a conclusion memorably illustrated by my first experience in allowing students to assess the contributions of their fellow group members in the style of the popular reality show “Survivor.” Even when working within an isolated learning environment—such as an asynchronous online independent study course—I try to provide student feedback that helps them see their efforts within a perspective of their peers. Finally, I strive to provide opportunities for my students to reflect on their own understanding at key points in the course, such as before and after they encounter Ku Klux Klan propaganda. I regularly solicit both informal and formal feedback from students. I also try to stay up-to-date on the scholarship of teaching and learning in history. By combining specific feedback on my own work with the findings of scholarship, I hope to improve my ability to help students learn about and do history. Notes 1. Abraham Lincoln to Jesse W. Fell, December 20, 1859, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. [1953], 3:511-12; Abraham Lincoln, Autobiography written for John L. Scripps, c. June 1860, CWL, 4:60-63. 2. Notes from Interview with Sarah Bush Lincoln, September 8, 1865, transcribed in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, ed. Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 106-9. 3. Carl Becker, “Everyman His Own Historian,” American Historical Review 37 (January 1932): 221-36. 4. Sam Wineburg, “On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on the Breach Between School and Academy,” in Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001), 63-88.