Many who enter the field of education want to instill their love for learning in their students. Ways to do that are as varied as there are teachers and administrators. I was privileged to work with several colleagues who continually pressed themselves and spurred those around them to best practices. It seemed they were always searching conferences, asking other colleagues, or looking at the Internet to see if there were practices and/or techniques to enhance or tweak what they were doing. It is in that spirit that I offer what I did, how I did it, and why. I had enough "well, that was an epic fail" to keep me going! If you find something useful here, good! If not, well, keep searching.

My background/degree is in Sociology with a master's degree in Counseling—not history. That had its plusses and minuses! I found I used information from sociology about how people act/respond in groups as well as individual thought patterns and challenges from my counseling background. I read books on brain research to inform me about how best to approach how people learn, retain, and use information. Information about the dendritic system, cortisol production under stress, dopamine and more about the tie of emotions and learning are some of the topics I threaded into our time together. I shared all that with my students as we discussed homework, how to approach reading in a text versus articles that they could mark up with questions, underlining, and circles, and test preparation—how to prepare questions for themselves before the test.

I emphasized to not memorize information to take a test and then forget it. I had them use notecards instead of digital access for vocabulary. That way they could touch the notecards, spread them out in some order, tell a story using them, rearrange them, shuffle them and then put them in order again. Digital could be employed later but the brain remembers "paper and pencil" differently than keyboard entry. Everything was to be connected to previous units, coming units, and to their own life. I urged them to practice using a web to organize the material as we went through it, to post questions so they could again practice telling the story of the information and to say their story out loud to someone—even their teddy bear.

You can read more about my teaching philosophy and tips and advice I've learned throughout my career teaching here: Teaching U.S. History 8th Grade

If I can be of service in some way, let me know!

Best to you,

Clark Switzer