I have always believed that in teaching a teacher has two objectives: teaching what the curriculum requires and

inspiring the students to learn more outside of class. I want to pass on as much of my love of history as I can to my students. This is possible because history is full of exciting events from all over the globe. You have the kingdoms of Mali and Songhai rising up to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa, the engineering achievements of various civilizations in the Andes, the rise of the Mauryan, Gupta, and Mughal empires in India, all the various wars in the histories of China and Japan. There are plenty of interesting stories to catch a students imagination, if it is done properly. Now when I say history I refer to it as a field that requires understanding of many different subjects such as economics, sociology, and geography. The financial troubles that crippled the Spanish Empire in the late 16th century even as they were hauling large amounts of gold and silver from the New World can be understood only through an understanding of inflation and economics. Likewise one needs some knowledge of political science in order to know how Polands decentralized government allowed it to be divided and destroyed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria during the 18th century. I will discuss these different subjects while I am teaching so that my students will fully understand what Im talking about. This may be slower than a more-focused single discipline approach but the foundation I would lay would make the students learn much faster in other history classes because they would already have a very firm understanding of the material. The most important part of this is the teacher. If I am unable to excite students then I cannot achieve my goals. Thus I must constantly work to find ways to inspire my students. I will need to experiment with various methods such as games, movies, and food in find something that will excite my current students. I will also refine my public speaking skills as the ability to give a good lecture will be very useful in helping me accomplish this. As Im trying to inspire my students I will examine various kingdoms and empires from around the world to encourage them to broaden their horizons. I will also a little extra credit to find bits of history that they find interesting and present them to the class to encourage them to start looking. In short, if I think my students will like and if it will increase their understanding of history I will find a way to use it. If Im successful in inspiring my students they will seek out new historical information, at first to get extra credit, but I hope they will eventually do it for fun. They will also go over the class materials thoroughly because I will make sure that they know Im doing that to create the assignments. In class my students would be encouraged to discuss various historical topics. This would be done by arranging the classs seats in a semi-circle so all the students face each other in order to make normal class discussion much easier and creating special debate assignments where the class would be asked to debate a historical topic so the issue could be fully examined. I would only step in to keep things going and to keep the debates and discussion respectful because nothing is gained if the students are just insulting each other. Basically, I want my students to constantly be working with history so they will gain a through understanding of it. The lesson plans would be designed along these lines. At the start of each chapter I would first have a class do a small quiz on the upcoming material. Naturally this would be

participation-based, as long they do the quiz they would get full credit regardless of how well they actually did. This would allow me to determine what the class should focus on during the upcoming chapter. If they already understand a concept or know a particular event or person I can gloss over it so I focus on teaching them new information. After each section of the chapter the class would get a worksheet about that section. When the chapter is done I would give the class a study guide, have a review day, and then administer the test, which would a mix of multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions to test the students knowledge on varying levels. After the test is done I would move on the next chapter and this pattern would repeat until the end of the year with a final exam. Now while Im doing all of this I will also try to keep in that learning history can be an excellent opportunity to learn citizenship as well. I will attempt to utilize the old practice of looking at inspiring historical figures and I will make it clear to the students the reason many great powers rose is because that had numerous devoted citizens tirelessly working for that. Washingtons persistence and determination eventually led to the independence of the United States but it wouldve been meaningless without the self-sacrifice of the soldiers that served under him. By inspiring students to learn more about history on their own a teacher will not only accomplish his own objectives but he will help other teachers do theirs by giving them students have a great interest in history and a desire to learn more. With luck these methods will lead to that inspiration being provided. If not I will find different ones that will because inspiration is vital when it comes to developing a love of history, and that is a major part of learning history because you dont have it then you wont care about studying it.