As Teacher Appreciation Week draws to a close, it got me thinking about teachers who have had an impact on me, and why I love history.
I was always indifferent to the subject of history, until the teachers in the Social Studies Department at Castro Valley High School changed my mind. It started with Ms. Bogue, my sophomore year teacher. She was a new teacher, full of enthusiasm. She made history a class that I looked forward to every day. Lectures would be livened up by “guest” speakers – which really was just Ms. Bogue dressed in costume lecturing us as famous figures from history. While we were studying World War I, she made the class think hard about trench warfare buy transforming a classroom into trenches, with desks shoved against two walls. We students had to huddle under the desks as she threw balls of paper at us (mimicking bombs and bullets), playing battlefront sound effects on a cassette tape, which was fun at first, until she read an excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front, which quieted the class as we all sat in sober reflection.
Junior year I moved on to U.S. History with Mr. Goldstein. He was the first to introduce me to a primary source – an original historical document – and showed me that something as simple as a historical political cartoon can teach us a lot about our past. He also taught me to not be scared of a big book by having the class tackle a biography of FDR.
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Senior year, when I could have been focused on life after high school, Ms. Frasca kept me interested in U.S. Government. One of our projects was the “POTUS Challenge” (President of the United States), where we all learned fast facts about the presidents in order to compete against each other, trivia tournament style. She added a level of challenge to history, and many of the facts I still remember about our presidents is due to that class (although please don’t quiz me!).
These teachers all showed me that history is more than a collection of dry facts about stuff that doesn’t matter anymore. History is full of interesting people who have led interesting lives, and that the past has countless connections to the present. They made history come alive for me, and I wouldn’t have found my career path without them. Thank you, teachers!
