I am responding to John Fielding’s article ‘Engaging Students in Learning History’ from the journal of Canadian Social Studies. Unlike most articles published in academic journals, Fielding uses his personal experiences in the classroom as the basis for his claim that students must be engaged with learning history. More importantly, history teachers must inspire students’ historical imaginations through diverse teaching practices.
Having just survived my first placement, I can relate to a lot of the issues Fielding discusses in his article. In English, teachers have to inspire students’ literary imaginations, a task that is far easier written than implemented and/or conducted successfully. I appreciate Fielding’s honesty and use of personal testimony in this article. It’s comforting to know that even experienced teachers suffer from the same difficulties as I had starting out, though likely their suffering is to a lesser degree.
I also appreciate Fielding’s list of lessons, exercises, and activities to engage students with the subject matter. He has developed a lesson plan for every kind of student interaction, including exercises that are purely objective, factual, or knowledge-based as well as activities that force the student to relate history to their own life, to personalize, in a way, events that came before. I think this article is a helpful resource for any teacher in the arts, but I appreciate the emphasis Fielding places on history. In English, there is plenty of space for creativity and student input. History includes a lot of fact. Fielding manages to synthesize fact and fun within his article, creating activities that demand students’ learn the material but give them the ability to apply it in new and interesting ways.
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