Engaging the Past: Action and Interaction in the History Classroom provides practical steps toward using engaging strategies in the classroom to teach students to think historically. These strategies include an approach developed by the author called "The You Decide! Lecture," and innovative ways to use board games and role-playing games in the history classroom. The goal is not simply to add window dressing to fundamentally dull lessons, but rather to re-examine how teachers think about students as learners of history. This book follows the growing trend within historical pedagogy to care less about content coverage and more about deep engagement, student learning, and the importance of historical thinking. The students in our classrooms today are the history teachers of tomorrow and awakening them to the exciting complexities of the past is critical to keep the study of history thriving.
Elizabeth George is associate professor of History at Taylor University, where she also oversees the Social Studies Education major. She has published and presented on using games, role-playing, and other active learning strategies in history and social studies classrooms.
Americans don't know much about history, but the larger problem is that they don't know how to think about the past. In this wide-ranging and compelling primer, Elizabeth George shows how beginning teachers (and even full professors!) can enlist innovative pedagogies to address one of the great challenges of our time: how to rethink the past. --Mark C. Carnes, professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University, author of Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College Elizabeth George recognizes that 'hands on' activities are not necessarily 'minds on.' George's realism about her own recommended teaching methods is refreshing. She supports her ideas for making history instruction intellectually rich and personally engaging in learning science and scholarship on history teaching and learning. Her methods are field tested, too, allowing George to give concrete advice about how activities can go wrong and what to do when that happens. But what I like most about Engaging the Past is George's recognition that for new teaching methods to win acceptance, they must not only improve student learning but see to the flourishing of teachers' lives, too. That means reducing the burden of grading while creating more opportunities for teachers to immerse themselves in life-giving moments doing history with students. --Lendol Calder, professor of History, Augustana College If turning the history classroom into a place buzzing with intellectual excitement is your goal, then Engaging the Past: Action and Interaction in the History Classroom is the book for you. --Sam Wineburg, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and History, Emeritus, Stanford University
