Office of Graduate Studies

Sarah Manekin
History

“Teaching isn’t about what you know,” he said. “It’s about understanding what your students need to know and figuring out how you’re going to help them know it.” When I first heard my mentor – a high school teacher of 30 years – say those words, I was a teaching neophyte: fresh out of college and consumed by the idea that, in order to be effective, I had to know everything. But I soon realized the wisdom of my mentor’s advice. I began to focus less on mastering the content of my books and more on taking in the rhythms of my students – what inspired them to make their own moves toward understanding. I found I did not have to be an unending font of historical knowledge. I embraced the challenge of engaging my students in their own intellectual journeys and discovered, in that challenge, what teaching can be.
A classroom is part performance space, part sports arena, part civil – and not-so-civil – society. People gather together to wrestle with ideas and their implications. They challenge accepted truths, and they offer support for those truths that endure. They risk defending unpopular positions, and they find value in dominant interpretations. They posit deeper complexities, and they reach for richer connections. A classroom of eager learners generates contagious enthusiasm and stimulates rigorous thought. As a teacher, I consider the creation of that environment the most fundamental element of my job.

In every classroom I enter, I try to create a sense of citizenship, a sense that each person in the room is responsible for the group’s forward motion. While some students leap at every opportunity for “air time,” others are more hesitant, and shaping a classroom dynamic that is accessible to all is a particular goal of mine. To that end, I invite my students to share a little bit about themselves each time we meet, and whether the subject is why their parents named them what they did or their favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor, our weekly “roll call questions” facilitate the creation of a more collegial community. I also rely on regular small group work in order to provide safer spaces for my shyer students and to decentralize the learning process. And I make myself available through office hours and impromptu gatherings after class and in Mark’s Café to ensure students have time for individual help and support.
If students feel they are expected to lead, they are much more able to find the pleasures in preparation. I try whenever possible to create situations that reinforce their ownership of the work at hand. I send out emails a few days prior to the class, advising students on the sections of the reading to which they should be attentive, and I ask students to generate questions as a springboard for class discussion. By framing their ideas in advance, they come to class with a heightened awareness of what it is they want to discuss. These questions are not just proof of having done the reading, but rather the core of my lesson plan. When students enter class and see that their words form the basis for our work, they recognize the significance of their intellectual capabilities and contributions.

Finally, I believe that the most exciting learning environments are rigorous ones, where people take ideas seriously and hold themselves to high intellectual standards. I try to model that rigor through my facilitation of discussions and my critiques of student writing. I push my students to weigh different interpretations, consider opposing viewpoints, select evidence carefully, and communicate with clarity and purpose. I ask my students to be rigorous in their analysis of history because history is my passion – and by sharing my passion with them, I am most able to support them as they journey towards insight.

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