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Maryfrances Troha - Short Essay AI am the right person to be teaching U. S. history because I believe in the importance of searching for one's personal and national identity through studying the past. I have been motivated throughout my teaching career to seek out new methods of motivating students to begin this search for themselves and incorporating into my teaching whatever techniques will facilitate their understanding and ownership of the knowledge they encounter.I was fortunate that my personal experience with teachers of history were consistently stimulating and thought provoking. My high school American History class was taught by the only African American teacher on the staff. He encouraged us to read beyond the text book and encouraged discussion and debate in the classroom. He taught us to look for turning points in American history particularly emphasizing the evolution of the Bill of Rights and Constitutional guarantees that gradually included more Americans, but not without struggle and personal sacrifices on the part of many individuals. A stimulating addition to our class that year was the white South African exchange student whose country's policy of apartheid served as such a contrast in inclusion. My interest in history was complemented by my participation in forensic debate in both high school and college. This helped me to see history in the context of debatable questions requiring evidence and analysis to see a clear picture of the historical basis behind a contemporary issue. Therefore, although I did not major in history, the process emphasized throughout the McRah program this summer was that of inquiry based on examination of historical evidence: artifacts, documents, records, and maps. As a teacher of English, sound oral and written argument is a natural carryover of this mode of thinking. The process of building an argument, whether in speaking or writing, is the same. Moreover, the process of understanding a work of literature involves the same critical perceptions needed by the historian in examining the historical document. Who is the author? Who is his audience? What is his purpose in writing this? What circumstances have given rise to his need to write the document? What can an examination of how he chose to write - his word choice, sentence structure - shape our understanding of his message now or assess its impact on his audience then? What factors affected his audience in their interpretation of the document? These are the same questions, though couched in different terminology, that the student of literature must tackle when undertaking the study of a story, poem or novel. Because I grew up in and have always taught in an ethnically and racially mixed context, the question of what or who is an American has not been one that is easily taken for granted. In Waukegan schools in the 1960s, the question was how long did one's ethnic group have to have lived in this country before its foreignness wore off. In the 1970s black outrage and frustration resulted in school integration with the resulting white backlash and racial tension invading the classroom and reshaping the curriculum. In the 1980s the Hispanic migration slowly began to gather momentum, and we began our first bilingual classrooms and new cultural encounters. The 1990s has seen a slow increase in the Chinese, Filipinos, Pakistani, and Indian student population as well as a new-wave of Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Serbo-Croatians immigrating to an area of affordable housing centered near communities offering economic opportunity. This diverse and changing population is constantly echoing the same question: who am I and when do I and my family become accepted as Americans? Because of my focus on the teaching question just stated, background and training, and my voluntary participation in the McRah project, I believe I am among the group of teachers who are right for the teaching of U. S. history.
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