An OAH Distinguished Lecturer's Perspective: Working with TAH Programs

Allida Black

For the past two Julys, I have traveled to Jamestown, New York, to spend two days with Paul Benson, Rick Walters, and the middle- and high-school teachers they assembled for a Teaching American History (TAH) institute. Invariably, something critical has surfaced the week before I am scheduled to leave the office that makes me regret agreeing to do the institute. Once there, however, I have been reminded not only why I agreed to collapse a semester's worth of work into six hours of lecture, but also how wonderful the Teaching American History program is.

Simply put, my summer experiences in Jamestown have been two of the major highlights of my life as a historian. The teacher/students have wanted to be there. Paul and Rick have done a wonderful job of structuring the week so that all parties felt included. And, most of all, we have all respected each other. Condescension and boredom never surfaced. We discussed. We argued. Discussion spilled over into lunch and dinner—when I went back to the inn to sleep, I found myself revisiting conversations and noting points raised by my colleagues that not only informed my research methodology but also improved my classroom style. Although I dutifully attend every AHA and OAH that I can, rarely am I this stimulated when I return home.

Why? As simple as it sounds, it's because we listened to each other and treated each other with respect—and a lot of humor. We knew that we could not cover every major example of civil rights and human rights in American history in two days and that a similar assignment regarding twentieth-century American foreign policy was bound to offend some population, region, and political party. Yet we plowed into the task, convinced that, as with good papers, a flexible outline would stimulate research and provoke discussion. My task was to present the framework and to facilitate the evaluation of evidence that the teachers used to develop their positions.

I soon learned that, despite the outlines I had prepared, class discussion took us in a different direction. So, like any good teacher, I punted. I wove the examples I preferred into narratives that the teacher/students wanted to develop and parse. Soon questions were flying, as though I was in the seminar of my life. I began to ask myself "why didn't I think of that example?" or "why have I been so wedded to using example A when example B may be just as effective?" In short, while I was the master of the material, my teacher/students were often the masters of the repartee.

At dinners, Paul, Rick, and I explored ways in which we could continue this energy. Soon we floated ideas about using iPods for distance-learning courses and constructing interactive web sites where material from The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers could be shared with teachers in rural areas across the nation, helping bring clear examples of events and personalities into classrooms in ways that help not only teachers but also those of us who strive to make our work more accessible. We are now collaborating on a new grant that would do just that.

Lest you think this is an uncritical hymn to TAH initiatives, let me assure you that it is not. When they work—and nine of the eleven in which I have participated have worked—they are wonderful experiences. Sadly, however, when the programs fail, it is as much the fault of the faculty as it is of the teacher/students. Why? To teach a TAH class is hard work. It requires new preparation, familiarity with the dreaded SOL benchmarks for the host state, and recognition that while you know more about the topic than your teacher/students, you could not do what they do. You have to be faster on your feet than you are in your own classrooms and steer discussion back on track without alienating the earnest teacher/student. In short, walking into an energized TAH classroom is doing history without a net.

So my fellow historians, be brave. Teach teachers. Study them. Laugh and work on the cheap. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt (who was a history teacher), we who love history "must hazard all we have" in its instruction.