Social Studies Autobiography

            Though I have loved reading and learning about social studies since elementary school, I distinctly remember the time and the place, during my junior year of high school, that I fell absolutely in love with social studies.  My AP United States History teacher, Mr. Fischbach, had arranged a field trip for our class to visit Mt. Vernon, the plantation home of George Washington. While touring the house I noticed a large, ancient-looking key mounted in a Plexiglas box on the wall of the entrance hall.  I moved closer to the key so that I could read the placard underneath: “This is the key to the Bastille prison in Paris, France, sent to George Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette after the taking of the prison in the French Revolution,” it said. 

I stood in front of that box and stared at the key for a long time, a feeling of elation bubbling up inside my chest.  This was the key, the key, to the Bastille!  I wanted to shout it out and make my classmates understand the purport of such an object!  Encapsulated in that key was a treasure-trove of history coming to life before my eyes: I could hear the crowd of angry Parisians storming a hated fortress, turning French society on its head; I could picture Washington opening up the package from Lafayette and smiling at the symbolic gift of his friend, knowing that the ideas of freedom and democracy that had founded America were beginning to transform the world…  This was a pivotal experience for me—what I call my “key to the Bastille moment”—in which I realized my passion for social studies and began to feel a strong desire to share the excitement and importance of social studies with others through teaching.

During my undergraduate college years at Wake Forest, I briefly considered majoring in English (another subject that I enjoy), but it did not take me long to declare a major in history; I realized it was the academic subject that I loved the most, as it combines both the narrative aspect of a good story and the applicability of real-life occurrences.  My favorite courses were those that involved American History, and I completed my honors thesis on Maryland’s debate over secession at the beginning of the Civil War.  This research took me deep into the microfilm collection of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Library.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with primary source documents to make sense of historical questions; still, I knew that I knew that my passion did not lie in research and academia alone.  My favorite part about learning history is sharing my knowledge with others.  Thus, I knew that teaching was still part of my vocational calling.  Though I would love to teach any social studies subject, my undergraduate experience showed me that I would most like to teach American History to students one day.

Social studies as a subject is often undervalued, but I strongly believe that it is one of the most fascinating and important subjects that a student can learn.  History, geography, political science and economics together tell a story—a long and important story—about how the world developed, how it works now, and how it can be improved.  If students today do not learn what it means to be a citizen, do not know where they came from or what the rest of the world is like, they will be unable to lead our country forward in the complex, global society in which we live.  Students will not pay attention to these crucial lessons, however, if social studies is presented to them in a dry, boring way.  Thus, I believe that the two most important characteristics for social studies teachers to possess are a solid knowledge of the content they teach and the ability to instill excitement of that content in their students.  I have studied for years to gain social studies content knowledge; now, in this class, I hope to learn how to develop a pedagogy that is dynamic and engaging, involving multiple strategies and mediums to help diverse students learn and enjoy social studies.  In this way, I hope to bring “key to the Bastille moments” into my own classroom one day.