During my freshman year at the College of William and Mary I discovered that I loved history and the social studies as a whole.  As I registered for classes I did not know what I wanted to do in my college career, but at the very least I knew that history was a subject I would probably enjoy while I was figuring out what to do with my life.  I soon realized though that not only did I enjoy it, but that no other subject compared to the excitement that I received from history.  My professor that semester was so incredibly enthusiastic in his teaching of the subject that even the students who hated history loved going to his class.  If that man can have that much fun teaching history, I thought, then I can too.  From that experience came my primary philosophy on teaching social studies.  As an educator I hope to help to pass on my knowledge of the social studies in a way that conveys my passion for the subject while helping young learners become stronger students and individual thinkers.

       A good social studies teacher fosters the pursuit and exchange of knowledge with enthusiasm.  I once heard someone say that for each subject, no matter how irrelevant it may seem, there are people who devote their entire lives to its study and to sharing it with others.  As a future teacher, I want to share my passion for social studies with all of my students.  This does not mean that I think that teachers should be on a mission to instill in their students the same passion for the subject that the teachers themselves enjoy; to believe that I can teach everyone to love history would be very naive.  Yet this does not mean that I cannot at least teach history in such a way that the students benefit from the subject’s study or from the educational process in general.  Even if John Doe in my history class cares very little about the French Revolution and its subsequent impact on the world, John still deserves to be taught by someone who is excited to share his or her knowledge of social studies.

      In sharing knowledge of a particular subject with students, it is also the teacher’s job to make them better learners and thinkers.  The act of learning any subject is beneficial not only in the way in which it increases one’s knowledge of that particular topic but also in the way that it molds one as a thinker.  Math, for instance, is often as much a lesson in logic as it is in numbers and variables.  Studying history does not just increase students’ knowledge of dates and facts; it can also increase their capacity to analyze what they read and experience.  And if we hope to continue living in a healthy democratic society full of citizens who engage in critical analysis, then we must start by building students’ confidence as active, independent thinkers.  My best teachers were the ones who pushed me to what I thought were the limits of my academic capacities and refused to let me be a passive learner. As a teacher it must then be my job to teach my students to confront the evidence and opinions that abound in the social studies and to make careful interpretations for themselves. 

      While the primary part of my teaching philosophy revolves around the idea of sharing knowledge and stimulating learners, with this go the ideas that social studies education cannot be mundane and that it should not feel irrelevant.  If we believe that education is an inherent good, then we should also believe that there must be some aspect of education that is enjoyable.  Not every part of social studies education is always fun, but there should be a great deal of fun involved in the learning process.  My most memorable teachers were all challenging; however, often they were also some of the most unusual people that I have known.  Even my fellow students who loathed social studies were often excited to go do their social studies classes if their teacher was someone who found fun and creative ways to liven up the subject.  I do not mean to say that every teacher must try hard to tell jokes and be the ‘cool’ teacher who always makes their students laugh, but when we do not animate our subject matter, we do not do it justice.  As a professor of mine once said, “Boring history is bad history.”

      Furthermore, a great many students seem to hate social studies because they think that the study of past events, people who died long ago, nations on the other side of the world, and differing governmental systems does not relate to them personally.  In order to validate history in particular, the common defense to such perceptions of irrelevance is usually a variation on the following phrase: those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.  This may be the case; yet I believe that the phrase would be perfectly justifiable if it were simply, "those who do not study history are destined to forget it."  Though we may repeat mistakes if we forget history, even the loss of historical memory in itself would constitute a great tragedy for mankind.  There is a timeless relevance to social studies, and our instruction should reinforce that idea.  In a world that is increasingly interconnected, knowledge of our own society and history as well as other societies and histories is perhaps more important than it has ever been.