Amy-Elizabeth Manlapas

Spring 2011, my professor assigned Into the Breach by Robert Bain, a fantastic article about how to deal with the gap between secondary education and higher education. Since reading this article, I keep promising to actually take Bain’s advice and write about my thoughts about my graduate studies outside of class assignments. Judging from how rarely I update my site, this hasn’t quite happened yet – but I swear it will!  So, to help me out I’ve made a list of blog topics that I am going to work on over Spring Break.

1. Hayden White 

I read Hayden White’s book Tropics of Discourse, which really gave me some intellectual fits. I read this book in January, and I am still obsessing about it.

2. Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m a huge sci-fi fan and I was so excited to see that my professor had assigned Le Guin’s essay It Was a Dark and Stormy Night; or, Why Are We Huddling about the Campfire. Her essay has provoked interesting thoughts about the role of the historian as a narrator and the historian’s relationship with death. Yes, our relationship with death. If you read the essay, I promise that it makes sense.

3. Project Based Learning

My school is totally awesome and has been experimenting with project based learning. I’ve been teaching college prep World History and Advanced Placement World History with a World Literature teacher to tenth grade students. My students have been producing really cool work – lots of 3D games using 3Ds Max, videos and photography. At some point, I am going to reflect on the benefits of PBL and why educators should think about trying a “backwards classroom” next fall.

4. Karl Marx

How do you approach Marxism while teaching teenagers? I have some ideas, but I need to refine them and keep working towards something more polished for next year.

It seems like it was just June. June in my planner was called, “The Month of Meetings.”  When I said month of meetings to myself, I’d pretend that I was hearing the “Game of Thrones” theme music. This past June, I attended an amazing PBL seminar with Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss (buy their book here) then started summer semester, then went to the four-day AP World History training at Kennesaw State presented by Patrick Whelan. The next week, I attended a three-day county training session where I heard Brad Fogo from Stanford University  present their fabulous  Read Like a Historian program. I can honestly say that I was impressed by all of these seminars. If you have time to do any kind of professional development at your school, I highly recommend getting any of these wonderful educators to come speak.

July was almost totally dedicated to graduate seminars and AP planning with my teammate Roger. I took two classes this summer, Issues and Interpretations in American History and Issues and Interpretations in European History. Believe it or not, these classes were actually really helpful. My American history class got me thinking how a trans-national and global approach to American history would really add strength and meaning to U.S. History. We read several books on the subject, but my two favorites were Thomas Bender’s A Nation Among Nations and America on the World Stage. America on the World Stagewas particularly cool since it also includes sections on how high school teachers can apply these fairly hip, new approaches in their classrooms right away. I think that’s a definite must-read for any American history teacher. European history  had me reading some really hardcore, intellectual books that stretched me intellectually and got me thinking about my own historiographical interpretations of history. My favorite of the course was Claudia Verhoeven’s The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism  which dissects the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander II. I am highly impressed with her writing, organization and talent as a scholar. I left that book not only knowing more about the subject, but also inspired to “level up” my own scholarly work after reading such an excellent book.

I also ended up writing my Margarets paper, about the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Margaret Murray, which would have NEVER been possible without JSTOR or my friend Ness who assured me that my topic was not entirely crazy. I can’t imagine trying to locate book reviews from 1890-1930 ten years ago without some kind of panic attack.

As for my thesis, I’ve been plowing through secondary works on a weekly basis, but I remain torn on my topic. I love the idea of writing about the history of science education (particularly race) but I am also intrigued by the idea of studying ladies fashion in the Philippines under American rule. There is always my interest in religion too. Gaah.  So many things I want to study and write about, but so little time! I have 520 days from today to research, write and defend my thesis. There’s also the small matter of learning to read Spanish and pass my language exam in the next 520 days. Can you tell I like deadlines?

So, that’s where my summer went. It wasn’t entirely restful but I have been so inspired by everything I learned, I don’t really mind my busy summer.  Now, I need to get my house and wardrobe ready for back to school. Tomorrow I’ll be back to post my first post about teacher survival.