However, I think it is only possible to give this autonomy real meaning
if I provide a classroom where students feel comfortable taking
intellectual risks. In an environment where undergraduates feel that
every performance they give is rated or graded in some way the challenge
is finding some means of encouraging them to take a chance, to reach
beyond the obvious and the safe. In the classroom, this translates into
my giving them the room to speculate; to encourage students to
experiment and to build rough ideas into something more coherent with
the help of their peers. In their research projects I offer advice on
open-ended projects rather than assignments with a neat blueprint to
follow. I also believe that exam questions should be crafted to allow
for maximum creativity; rather than ask a directive question which
prompts a single answer I think they should be asked to craft an
argument of their own.

By structuring participation and written work in this way I encourage
students to make the effort to think beyond what is offered in lecture
and recitation. Furthermore, I see it as a means to reward students who
leave behind the more mechanical attempts to fulfill each separate
course requirement and instead embark on a learning process. Although I
empathize with the many students who have concerns about “getting it
right,” I hope that I can provide a space where they feel able to take a
chance on getting it wrong, a space where they can try out new methods
and ideas and find the means of getting it right for themselves, even if
that success comes the second time around.

Over the course of the semester my first responsibility is to clarify
material for my students and help them contend with each week’s
information. But I also see my task as something more. Above all my aim
is to teach students how to ask the questions and find the answers that
make for rigorous and exciting history. I seek to develop their critical
abilities, forcing them to assess the texts we present to them, the
lectures they hear and the material I give them in class. I am there to
help them move from inquiries about content and clarification to
questions that analyze synthesizing frameworks and interrogate both the
assumptions of others and their own. In this way, I hope that students
can leave with a set of tools that will serve them beyond the end of a
semester.

Yet for me, the real joy of teaching American history is that it gives
students a chance to reconstruct the narratives that have helped shape
their own identity. Thus learning history becomes a personal challenge
for them. I also try to teach history in such a way that their
explanations of the past reveal to them how they think the world around
them works and how others see it functioning too. A discussion of when
and how the Civil Rights movement started is a chance to talk about how
social change comes about and how they believe it can be achieved. A
debate on the causes of the Civil War is an opportunity to discuss the
ideological and practical limits of democracy. I ask them to engage with
each other rather than myself, and so they develop their critical skills
collectively, learning to voice their own view of the past and our
present society. By teaching history in this way I hope that it will
always seem relevant to them, no matter what their future career. I do
feel I have a responsibility beyond the classroom, a responsibility to
help these students become citizens who can question effectively what
they see around them, who can debate and discuss issues with those they
encounter and above all who have convictions of their own making about
how they see the world and how they hope to change it.