Engaging the Past - (Teaching History Today and in the Future) by Elizabeth George (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book presents a variety of strategies to help teachers rethink their relationship to the content and their students. Each chapter explains an active learning approach, practical steps for how to put the approach into practice, and ideas for how teachers can customize the strategy.

Book Synopsis

This book presents a variety of strategies to help teachers rethink their relationship to the content and their students. Each chapter explains an active learning approach, practical steps for how to put the approach into practice, and ideas for how teachers can customize the strategy.

Review Quotes

Americans don't know much about history, but the larger problem is that they don't know how to think about the past. In this wide-ranging and compelling primer, Elizabeth George shows how beginning teachers (and even full professors!) can enlist innovative pedagogies to address one of the great challenges of our time: how to rethink the past.

Elizabeth George recognizes that 'hands on' activities are not necessarily 'minds on.' George's realism about her own recommended teaching methods is refreshing. She supports her ideas for making history instruction intellectually rich and personally engaging in learning science and scholarship on history teaching and learning. Her methods are field tested, too, allowing George to give concrete advice about how activities can go wrong and what to do when that happens. But what I like most about Engaging the Past is George's recognition that for new teaching methods to win acceptance, they must not only improve student learning but see to the flourishing of teachers' lives, too. That means reducing the burden of grading while creating more opportunities for teachers to immerse themselves in life-giving moments doing history with students.

If turning the history classroom into a place buzzing with intellectual excitement is your goal, then Engaging the Past: Action and Interaction in the History Classroom is the book for you.

About the Author

Elizabeth George is associate professor of History at Taylor University, where she also oversees the Social Studies Education major. She has published and presented on using games, role-playing, and other active learning strategies in history and social studies classrooms.