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Sitting through Dr. Sabaja's class, and even my methods class, I've been silently telling myself that I won't be like those history teaches that I had in high school. I won't make my students hate history; I know that rote-memorization won't do my students any good in the long run, and getting them to view history as something fun that they can submerse themselves into will be a difficult task - especially with historical thinking. I loved what Calder wrote about the fact that "[students] do not collect facts the way homeowners collect furniture." This old method of instruction that has taken over history - and other high school/high education - courses has somehow managed to assume that this is the best way that students learn, even though it's been scientifically disproven. Sitting through some of my own history courses that I've taken here at Appalachian where I have to think historically and place myself in my specific topic area, I've found that I remember the information noticeably better than I did in high school, or other college courses, where the information was simply given to me and copied from the PowerPoint to my notes.
In my encouraging thoughts to myself, I came to the conclusion that in the future my classroom and teaching style would be a mixture between Ms. Todd's course and Mr. Brinton's course. The goal is to make history fun for my students - I want them to want to take my course because they know it'll be something that they will enjoy going to. However, on the intellectual aspect of the course, I want them to be able to form their own opinions about the material being covered - I don't want to just tell them the facts and basically give them a perspective about the material. I liked that her tests weren't just all multiple choice and that she had them write out essays that allowed them to discover their own views on a debated topic from two excerpted readings. As a history teacher, our main goal should be to help our students develop their critical and historical thinking skills, while also nourishing their love of history, and that's what I think a hybrid of their classes would do, while also pulling in the different modes of inquiry that Calder discussed in his article.