This post is dedicated to my favorite history teachers from high school, who made me all love history in their own unique ways.
Middle School history wasn’t particularly fun or interesting. At Alamitos, I pretty much learned nothing in Ms. Gurzi’s class, and had some fun with US History in Ms. Barling’s class. It was not till I got to high school that things got interesting.
Halfway through my freshman year of high school, my world history teacher got pregnant, only to be replaced by Mr. Murray. Not only was Mr. Murray the most lax teacher you could ever find, he was easy to talk to. I remember having discussions with him very often about the television series 24. In addition to that, he made history easy to understand and comprehendible, with the insane amount of videos he let us watch. In my curriculum today, I embed lots of videos in honor of his great work. I still remember my high school experience from freshmen to senior year, hanging out in his room every single morning. It was great, and just shows how strong of a connection he made with us throughout our lives.
In my sophomore year, Christy Schirmer was by far the most knowledgeable teacher in history. Unlike most teachers, she lectured quite often, and made them VERY interesting. I loved everything we did in European AP, but I think I soon realized that year that history was something that just was “easy” to me. I remember when did a simulation of a historical event, and it was awesome. I try to embed some role play in my curriculum today as a direct reflection of that. Of course I made study guides for everything too.
My junior year was interesting, where my favorite historical time period came to life in the form of American History. Even though it was her first year teaching APUSH, my history teacher Mrs. Bunnell was really down to earth, and insanely like-able. Despite some initial setbacks, I enjoyed everything we covered in that class, and even enjoyed creating a random 24-skit simulating the dust bowl in that class. With some of the projects we did in class, I would later embed project-based learning into my future teachings.
I hope these teachers look back and are aware of the great impact they have made on me. They have inspired me to become a teacher myself, and inspired my love of history. Murray – with his videos, Schirmer – with the knowledge of her content, and Bunnell – with her worldliness. I try to embed all three personas in my teaching as I seek to inspire the future generation of the world.
