I am writing in response to the History Faculty job opening. I earned my Ph.D in American History from the University of Memphis in 2014 and currently serve as the Department Head and Assistant Professor of History at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, TX. I am confident that my unique combination of award-wining teaching, research, and education has prepared me to teach at Next High School.
My experience as a college professor has reshaped my understanding of education. As a history graduate student, I realized that traditional teaching methods fail to prepare students because do not teach critical thinking, a vital skill in today’s rapidly changing world. As a result, my classes focus on teaching critical thinking skills through history content. My most effective classes have been based on short term projects. For example, I assign the students a role play to illustrate the civil rights movement’s importance. The first session is set in 1954 and students are put into groups and assigned a historical actor ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Dwight Eisenhower to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. On the assigned day, the groups debate a number of questions as their historical figures, such as their response to desegregation and relationship with other historical figures. Several weeks later, I repeat the activity with different historical actors and set the activity in 1972. The second session provides students the opportunity to analyze how and why the historical actors changed their views. This method has had great results. I …show more content…
Throughout my career, I have advised student organizations, such as Hall Councils and provided academic advising and mentoring for individual students. This past semester, I taught an independent study class, where I worked one on one with to help him analyze the works of several philosophers, a class rarely offered to undergraduate
My experience as a college professor has reshaped my understanding of education. As a history graduate student, I realized that traditional teaching methods fail to prepare students because do not teach critical thinking, a vital skill in today’s rapidly changing world. As a result, my classes focus on teaching critical thinking skills through history content. My most effective classes have been based on short term projects. For example, I assign the students a role play to illustrate the civil rights movement’s importance. The first session is set in 1954 and students are put into groups and assigned a historical actor ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Dwight Eisenhower to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. On the assigned day, the groups debate a number of questions as their historical figures, such as their response to desegregation and relationship with other historical figures. Several weeks later, I repeat the activity with different historical actors and set the activity in 1972. The second session provides students the opportunity to analyze how and why the historical actors changed their views. This method has had great results. I …show more content…
Throughout my career, I have advised student organizations, such as Hall Councils and provided academic advising and mentoring for individual students. This past semester, I taught an independent study class, where I worked one on one with to help him analyze the works of several philosophers, a class rarely offered to undergraduate