September 17, 2024 • 39 mins
Join us on Talking Texas History as we sit down with Whitney Blankenship. Whitney takes us through her career in history education. We delve into the differences between teaching in public schools and universities, tackling important issues like the complexities of teaching civil rights history and the impact of technology on education.
See her book, Teaching the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1948–1976, Peter Lang, 2018.
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Struggle-19481976-Critical-American-ebook/dp/B07J6ST5HT?ref_=ast_author_dp
Also, visit the website for more information: https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
I'm Scott Sosbe and I'm GenePreuss, and this is Talking
(00:36):
Texas History.
Welcome to another episode ofTalking Texas History.
I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I am Scott Sosman.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Scott, we're going to do kind of like a what is your
life?
Gene Preuss couple of episodes.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Nobody wants to know what your life is like.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That's true.
But we're going to go back andtalk to some old friends.
I say old in that they've I'veknown them for a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, they might not want it, they might not want you
to say old friends.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
How about?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
longtime friends.
Well, longtime friends,longtime professional
acquaintances who are still inthe historical profession and
have contributed, have changed,have made contributions because
heaven knows you and I have not.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I was about to say are we supposed to make
contributions?
I don't think that's in my jobdescription.
If it is, I missed thatsomewhere.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And today we're going to go back to a person that I
met at what used to be calledSouthwest Texas State University
.
Now it's Texas State, sanMarcos, and that is Whitney
Blankenship.
Whitney, welcome to TalkingTexas History.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Welcome, Whitney.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks for having me Want to know a little bit about
you.
Not everybody may know who youare, so tell us about Whitney
Blankenship.
Who are you and how did you getinterested in history?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Okay, I grew up in a very small town, Livingston,
Texas.
That's about an hour north ofHouston, Texas, that's about an
hour north of Houston and thenmoved to Central Texas for
college, where I have been sinceI was 18, for the most part and
that's also where I met myhusband, Lloyd Blankenship.
I spent about 17 years teachingin the Landon District at
(02:39):
Landon High School, teachingsocial studies, primarily
history, but I also taught APpsychology, IB psychology and
geography, world geography andthe AP human geography.
(02:59):
After that.
We've been there for almost 30years but we went to Rhode
Island for about six years,which was my first tenure track
appointment, and I taught atRhode Island College in both the
history departments as well asin the educational studies
department.
So I sent across two worldsthere.
(03:20):
We came back about six years agoto be closer to family you know
aging parents and all.
So we wanted to come back andsettle back in pretty much where
we left from, which was SouthAustin.
We currently live in SouthAustin and I teach at San
(03:41):
Antonio College.
And how I got interested inhistory I can't really remember
a time when I didn't likehistory, but there were a couple
of books that kind of broughtme to one of them, Of course,
the Little House series, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
yeah, arlington's wilder and I did, uh, you know,
by the second grade I had I washalfway through the series um, I
just devoured them, uh.
And then, third grade, I wentto public library and went to,
uh, check out a book and thebook I got was A Child's History
of the World that was publishedin 1924.
(04:28):
So you know, some reallyprogressive stuff going on in
there, but I absolutely adoredit and it was just so
interesting to see how thingswere different and it changed
over time and that just kind ofstuck with me.
And I've had other interestsover the years, music in
particular but history is kindof the thing that's always been
(04:53):
there for me and and and I'vekind of followed it out as I, as
I moved up in to my career.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, I forgot you were from Livingston.
I've always think every time Idrive through Livingston, cause
I'll drive here.
I'm in Houston now and, drivingup to see Scott go to the East
Texas historical association inNacogdoches, go through
Livingston quite a bit.
Alabama Cushota Indianreservation is there and I kept
(05:23):
saying I know somebody who'sfrom here and thank you for
reminding me.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
There you go Deep in deep East Texas.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It's slightly bigger than when I was there, when I
lived there, but not by much.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
They've improved the highway, they've improved 69.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So Wendy you talked about you went to Texas State.
There you were at Texas Stateat the same time that Gene was
there.
I'm sure you were miles aheadof him as a student.
And then you also got degreesat UT and obviously history was
your first love and you gotdegrees, that.
But you don't teach history now.
You've moved into somethingelse and you've gone into
curriculum and instruction andthat educational side.
(06:01):
So tell us how you transitionto that.
How did you make thattransition?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
and that educational side.
So tell us how you transitionedto that.
How'd you make that transition?
In large part there's a lot ofdifferent things.
It was that kind of all cametogether about the same time.
My undergrad was actually inapplied sociology, with a very
large history minor that wasoriginally a double major.
But I found out two weeksbefore graduation that I would
(06:27):
have to take either one morehistory class or one more
sociology class to get thedouble major.
So history has this reallylarge minor now, and then I got
my MA in history a couple ofyears later started that piece.
Ironically, when I started outI didn't major.
(06:47):
My major was not thinking aboutteaching.
My mother was a teacher.
I knew what that involved.
I wasn't really gung-ho aboutthe idea of going into the
classroom, but after spendingsome time as a graduate
instructor right at the end ofmy master's, I realized how much
(07:13):
I enjoyed teaching, and so Idid go back after my master's
and got my teaching certificate,and so that was kind of the
beginning of that transformation.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, St Marcus was great for that, because there
was so much emphasis, it seemedlike to me, on teaching and
preparing teachers.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh, definitely, definitely.
I worked really TraceEttinger-Gray was there when we
shared an influenced me as wellin that area.
Then once I I think the bigtransfer occurred after I'd been
(07:52):
in Atlanta about 12 years, 15years, I was a finalist for the
H-E-B Excellent in EducationsAwards for, I think, the-year 10
to 15-year category, and I'dalso been working doing
professional development for thedistrict, for social studies
(08:14):
and some local conferences andthings like that.
So both of them really got meto thinking about.
You know, both of them reallygot me to thinking about how I
(08:40):
enjoyed working with teachersand helping translate the
content of history intoteachable moments I guess is the
best way to put it forclassroom teachers.
And there wasn't a whole lot ofit was just based on my
experience at that point.
So after that, about 2015, 2005,excuse me, 2005, I began
(09:01):
started thinking about goingback to school and going back to
grad school and it basicallybroke down to which program was
going to.
Let me go part time so I couldcontinue teaching full time?
No way to.
I could just stop at that point.
And so I looked at the historyprogram at UT and then also
looked at the curriculuminstruction and they had a brand
new program that wasspecializing in social studies
(09:23):
education and I could do thepart-time doctorate with the
teaching.
So that's really where it kindof a little bit of practical and
a little bit of my ownexperiences kind of led me to
move from one to the other.
But the nice thing about theC&I is that I still do a lot of
(09:45):
work in curriculum history andschool history for my research,
both in my technology researchand in my World War II, cold War
era research.
So it has been kind of the bestof both worlds over time as
I've moved into it and I'vereally enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Well, you know, I think that's interesting because
and I think, very usefulinformation, because I think
students sometimes think well,you know, you decided when you
were an undergraduate you wantedto be a history professor and
it's just something you stuckwith and for a lot of us, you
know, it's kind of opportunisticright Things, doors open, ideas
(10:30):
come in.
You know new opportunities,maybe directions change and
that's what affects our careerpaths, our educational.
You know paths, paths.
Who did you write your thesisunder at san marcos?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
uh, dr little uh it was an 18th century, um, social,
intellectual, uh, on the greatawakening, I looked at how the
two sides, the old lights andnew lights, were, um, how they
went about arguing over theirdifferences within that and and
the how and the wording thatthey used and where they were
(11:06):
pulling that information, wherethey were pulling those ideas
from.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So kind of culture wars of that period.
Well, you know that's really agood transition, and you know
how do you get, how do you reachout to students.
You're talking abouttranslating history into
teachable moments.
You know how does teaching inpublic school or grade school
different from colleges anduniversities?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And strange enough there are.
There's a lot of overlap and alot of it deals with where in
that process you are.
Right now I am teachingprimarily freshman survey
classes and some dual creditclasses, which do have high
school students in them, and soand I think one of the things
(11:53):
that's really stayed consistentover the time is level of
support, whether that be firstgeneration students or older
students coming back into theacademic atmosphere or people
just coming into college, andthey all the sports may look
(12:14):
different, but they all needthat, some sort of kind of
scaffolding to help them getinto it, get back into it,
organize their time whether andlearn to self-advocate.
All of that is, as a part of, Ithink, some teaching that has
(12:37):
pretty much stayed the same.
The topics may be a little bitdifferent, what they need help
with may be different dependingon group or their age or where
they are in their life.
So, in all in all, I think thatthat's stayed the same.
Of course, the biggest thingsthat have been very different is
(12:59):
in the teaching.
I have a lot more freedom at thecollege, university level to
design my courses the way I wantto and around themes that I
think are important for them tounderstand the trajectory of US
history.
And I'm certainly much morecritical than I.
(13:23):
Probably I was attempted to becritical for my high school
students but you know there wereobviously limits with the
culture wars out there to what Icould do, and so I learned to
kind of negotiate that.
But having not having anintercourse exam that they have
(13:44):
to pass or a list of names anddates and people that the state
wants me to cover is very free,and there's also not the tedium
that comes with just planningfor a daily class, which is
(14:05):
really where we're at.
And the other big difference istime With my college students.
I see them twice a week, so in a16-week course I may see them
around 30 days, about a month'sworth of instruction, which is
very different from high schoolwhere I'm on a block schedule.
(14:27):
I see them for a much longertime every other day, but the
time period is actually longerthan the hour and 15 minutes I
get with my college students, soI have a lot more time to
figure out where they're havingissues.
We can go back, we can review,we can reteach as needed,
(14:51):
whereas in my university classmy college classes it's always
been about I've got a limitedamount of time, I can do some
reteaching, but not a whole lot,because we need to move forward
.
That's something that I've hadto really think about as I
(15:14):
design my courses and do thatmost about teaching thematically
where I can.
It allows me to go dig deeperand to run some common themes in
each of the areas as we gothrough, but also give us some
time to dig deeply there withoutgetting into all this other
(15:39):
stuff that's going on as well.
I hope that made sense.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, it made perfect sense.
You know, that's one of thebiggest challenges I think we
have, particularly in teachingthese college courses.
I can't imagine what it must bein public schools that you
figure, I think I've probablybeen doing this for over a
decade where I feel like Ireally finally figured out the
basic fundamental of what I needto do in a classroom to get it
across.
And I teach.
(16:04):
Sfa has a huge component oftraining classroom teachers.
We have, you know, formerteachers college and so we have
a lot of them come through hereand teaching Texas history.
My whole class are people thatare preparing to go be public
school teachers and always kindof struggle what is it that they
need to know to come out ofhere?
And it's got to be some sort ofa balance which kind of gives
(16:26):
us this idea.
You have, you're part of aproject and you've edited a work
for Peter Long Publishers aspart of their teaching critical
themes in American history, andwhat kind of work that must be.
And yours that you did, thevolume you edited was Teaching
the Struggle for Civil Rights1948 to 1976.
Tell us about that book.
What's in it, what's the thing,and then how'd you get it?
(16:48):
I mean, that's quite a projectto get involved in.
How'd you get involved in that?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
to that um, the, the series and the book itself.
But the series is designed toget at um, all the books in the
series have a kind of a contentsection and a pedagogical
section, and so what to teach,what to teach and how to teach
it.
Basically, um, it is, is andit's based around the social
studies inquiry design process,so it has students asking
(17:25):
questions and using sources tocreate arguments or to answer
those questions, and then to theultimate pinnacle is for them
to then take that information,apply it to real world decisions
that are going on and to takeaction within their own
(17:47):
communities around similar typesof issues.
So this particular book webroke the civil rights period up
into two, this first half,which I did, and then the second
half, which starts with 1977 tothe present, which came out a
couple of years ago, and myideas at the time that I came
(18:12):
across the call for the series.
One of the things I noticed theywere looking for someone to do
this early civil rights periodand I had been working at that
point with a book put out byTeaching for Change.
(18:33):
That's putting the movementback into civil rights history,
and I think I also had seen itthrough Zen Ed as well.
Both had done kind ofhighlights on it and I was in
the process of revisiting how Iwas teaching the civil rights
movement at the time.
And so this, as I was, and I'dbeen playing around with some
things from the putting movementback in to civil rights with
(19:01):
them on the classroom, so Ithought this would be a good
time to a way to kind of bringin my own experiences with what
I've done in the classroom, aswell as to call on other
scholars to give their input.
And so when I saw the call, Iput in a proposal and was very
(19:27):
surprised when they offered itto me and that was in 2016.
I spent most of 2016, 2017working on it and we ended up
and that was also right before Iwent up for tenure, so it was
very well timed.
But in general, it's all thatit all kind of came together at
(19:53):
the same time.
It was kind of that perfectstorm where everything I was in
a place where I was gettingready to move and rethink how I
was teaching it and was alreadykind of in that process and now
had the opportunity to sharewhat I had learned and what from
not only my own experiences,but from others as well.
(20:15):
So that was really kind of allcame together in the long run.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's fascinating.
You know, every time when asurvey course, if I teach the
civil rights, I always say, youknow I'm given this short shrift
.
I mean, here it is one of youknow, maybe I do two lectures
from this fantastic movement andhow do I get this across?
And one thing I always worryabout it's almost like the way
we teach it.
Students are on okay, we get tothe oh, it's chronologically,
(20:43):
and we get here to the 1950s, oh, let's talk about the civil
rights movement.
Well, of course, if you'reafrican-american, civil rights
movement has been ongoing sincethe nation was founded.
And then there's also the wholething.
How to pedagogically, how doyou?
What do you emphasize?
You can't do everything.
How is it the g to cross?
I think it's fine.
I have to.
I have not seen I.
I've heard of it, the book now.
Now I have to find out about it.
(21:04):
I think I can.
That's just fascinating.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
These types of things come about uh, yeah, all of you
just on the other side, all ofuh, if you go to teach civil
rightsorg, um, that is thecompanion website to it and it
has all you have to do isregister and you can get all of
the ancillary lessons.
It's now and it's like it'ssecond edition, maybe third, I'm
(21:27):
not sure so, but they'reconstantly updating.
But there are some standards,standard stuff that I've been
doing?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Is it?
Is it somewhat where I meanit's applicable?
I'm sure to say us in ouruniversity classes, but is it
also for public school teachers?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh yeah, it's designed for public school
teachers.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
OK, now, with what's going on and such, do you worry
about pushback from particularlycertain elements of a certain
state's government, yes and no.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I think a lot of it is very much about.
There will probably be someareas where it would be
controversial.
So, for instance, in my bookone of the chapters is on civil
rights movement within sportsand it has come from a very
(22:27):
critical perspective and some ofmy reviewers who were also in
the classroom were a littleskeptical about maybe possibly
using that that one, because itis it's very much as done by
chris bucey um, who has beenworking in this area.
He now actually is out of umacademia, is actually working
(22:52):
with, I believe, the the eitherUS Soccer, I think, the US
Soccer Association, where he isdoing DEI for them.
So it's very, very critical inthat sense.
But a lot of it is also you knowthat's not going to fit for, be
good for everybody, but there'sa lot of it's about expanding
(23:15):
the narrative beyond Rosa Parks,beyond Martin Luther King Jr,
and getting into people likeSeptima Clark, looking at how
Claudette Colvin and how themovement had to make a decision.
(23:38):
But who's going to be the faceof this?
It wasn't just Rosa Parksdecided that she was going to do
this.
There's a whole movement behindit.
A lot of that where it expandsupon people that maybe folks
(24:01):
haven't heard of, or maybethey've heard of them, but they
don't know a lot about them.
But it really allows you to seea lot of crossover between the
various movements, whether it begay rights, women's movement,
gay rights women's movement aswell as the Chicano movement
later on, at the same time thatthis is all going on and that
(24:23):
there's a lot of crossover, andso that's one of the reasons why
one of the of of ways to get atthese other stories that are
(24:45):
part of civil rights history, um, and I think those there's
nothing particularlycontroversial about them, um,
but it does go get away fromthat very kind of, very quick.
We've got Brown v Board, we'vegot Rose Parks and the March on
Washington, and then all of asudden, the Civil Rights Act and
(25:06):
the Voting Rights Act and donecivil rights movement.
We've done it, we finished, andyou don't hear much about it
after that.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Right, right.
It's just like this episodicstuff that happens how we do it
in the classroom and it doesn't.
You don't the nuances?
Yeah, it's always frustrated me.
I always leave when I do that Ididn't do.
This is the one thing I didn'tdo very well.
I didn't convey this as well asI should have, so it's a
difficult thing to get into.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
In the classroom.
How do students react?
I mean thing to get into in theclassroom.
How do students react?
I mean, whenever you're talkingabout a broader civil rights
movement, because you know, wekind of grew up thinking, okay,
civil rights, martin, luther,king, rosa parks and if you're
bringing in, uh, other people,you're saying that, look, it
goes back.
You know at least the moderncivil rights movement to post
(25:55):
right after World War II, evenin World War II.
And if you're including, well,let's not just talk about
African-Americans and civilrights, but let's talk about the
Chicano movement, let's talkabout AIM, let's talk about
Stonewall, if you're doing that,how do students react whenever
(26:16):
you're expanding and changingthe story for them?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
almost universally, and this goes back for until
when I first started teaching,I'm going to say in the late
2000s when I first startedteaching IB history and we did a
, and one of their topics isvery is kind of a deep dive into
civil rights.
But universally what tends tocome out over the years is why
(26:47):
didn't we learn this before?
Why, especially when they getto be juniors and seniors
younger students not quite asmuch, they don't have as much
experience, but the olderstudents very much why did I
learn this in high school?
Why did I learn this in?
You learn this in eighth gradewhen we were doing this or
(27:08):
whatever, and they're almost madabout it.
In some cases they feel likethey have been deceived in a
little way, that things were notas straightforward as they were
allowed to think that they were.
One of the biggest ones I canremember is I had my juniors I
(27:35):
think they were reading and oneof the chapters from James
Lowen's Lies.
My Teacher Told Me and it wason class from James Lowen's Lies
.
My Teacher Told Me and it wason class and this whole
discussion on this.
I was doing my research ondiscussion boards, so they did a
lot of forums and this wholediscussion came out about why
(28:01):
they'd never been.
They'd always been told thatAmerica was a classless system
of sorts, that we don't haveclasses that are, and I think
they're in that sense.
They'd always been told thatAmerica was a classless system
of source.
We don't have classes that are,and I think they're in that
sense.
They're kind of equating it tosay like Great Britain, where
it's very structured, butthey're also.
They're like.
I've never thought about this.
I've never had nobody evermentioned anything like this.
For me they were.
They were just horribly enragedabout it and talked about it
(28:27):
for weeks afterwards and thatwas pretty intense.
But it's usually not quite thatintense, but almost entirely.
Every time I get any kind offeedback on different units that
we do or different topics thatwe do, different units that we
do or different topics that wedo, it is you know you, you went
(28:57):
beyond what I've learned before.
I did not know this I.
Why didn't I know this?
How can I?
What?
What else did they not teach me?
I think it's a part of that inthere, but they, they generally
respond very well to it.
Even those that may not agreewith my interpretation are.
They do respond well to it.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I, but you know what students are much more
welcoming is the right word,maybe not the right word, but
they're much more open toreceiving something that they
hadn't probably ever seen before, and their parents are, and
it's really.
It's really eye opening,because that's.
I get that reaction all thetime.
What I didn't know that?
(29:34):
How come I wasn't taught that,which, I guess, is a good segue
for someone to ask you.
We've all been doing this for along time longer than we want
to think about doing it butyou're unique and that you've
got to do this on a lot oflevels.
You were in a public schoolsetting, two-year school setting
, four-year school setting.
You've been back and forth indiscipline, so you're a perfect
person to ask this to, I think.
(29:55):
Okay, how has teaching historychanged since you first started
doing this?
What is different and what arethe challenges?
Are there more challenges nowthan there used to be?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I think in some ways, of course, the big change is
tech just across the board, andnot so much.
Tech has become a hugedistraction.
We see that in all of the a lotof the what's wrong with
teaching, what's wrong withschools, kind of critiques.
(30:28):
Kids are glued to their phonesor they think why do I have to
learn that when I can just golook it up on the internet?
And to some extent they have apoint.
So I think what has changed inthat sense is that it's less
about specific content althoughthat's still important as it is
(30:52):
about getting them to criticallythink about the sources that
they're using.
Who said it, why they weredoing, what their motives were
that type of thing, what theirmotives were that type of thing
and where they're getting thatinformation from and then using
(31:14):
that to construct arguments andunderstanding that you can't
just look at one source.
You need to look at multiplesources to kind of figure out
what's going on.
So I think that's a large partof what has shifted, and I think
(31:37):
particularly even as early asthe 80s and 90s, when things
really began to shift in historyeducation, lecturing the stage
on the stage and more workingtowards having students grapple
with primary sources, secondarysources and the arguments that
are being made and coming to thedrawing their own conclusions
and being able to justify thoseconclusions, than just being
(32:01):
able to regurgitate whatever Isaid in a lecture in an essay
form.
So I think that's the biggestone.
I think also there isparticularly at the classroom
level, at the public schoollevel.
(32:22):
Tech has, on the one hand,opened up the grading process.
I mean, of course, when I wentthrough school I knew what I had
, either because I kept up withmy grades myself, or when the
report card came out, oh okay, Igot a bna or whatever um now
with.
And I remember I was teachingwhen the first online grade
books came out and everybody was, you know, kind of worried
(32:47):
about it and how this would playout.
In one way, it's a very goodthing because it allows parents
and students to keep up withtheir grades themselves.
They can look at it anytime.
I'm not having to field a phonecall or answer an email about
you know what the grades are orhow a student is doing.
On the flip side of that, youhave, especially over the last
(33:12):
10, 15 years, you've got morehelicopter parents.
You've got students who are sofocused on getting into college,
that they are very GPA-ric andit's all about the grade, not
the learning.
So you end up dealing more withthat great anxiety related
(33:38):
around that no one wants to seeanymore yeah, yeah, no one wants
C.
Everybody wants an A or B at thevery least, but they don't
really connect that with youknow, with the actual learning
process.
This is a reflection of whatyou know or what you can do, I
(34:00):
think what kind of couples withthat is, and I've seen this
growing.
By the time I started in thelate 90s, early 2000s, we
started seeing in the classroomsmore and more students who were
coming in with modificationsfor ADHD To some extent, for
anxiety, not as much.
Autism has gone up.
(34:23):
Knowledge, um, autism has hasgone up.
Now, whether those were alwayspresent and we just didn't
recognize it or not, uh, andwe're just now more, uh, open to
recognizing it.
Uh, that has that has changed.
What goes on in the classroom,uh, and since covid, I've seen
it get even worse because thelevels of anxiety it like shot
up.
I watched I had sophomores.
I was actually because thelevels of anxiety like shot up.
(34:45):
I watched I had sophomores.
I was actually in the back ofthe classroom during COVID and
was at the day year it started,in 2020, I had sophomores and
these were kids who were.
They were fun and they werecurious and we were always.
You know, I loved teaching themor working in class.
They were always into what wewere doing and then over the
(35:08):
course of that spring, thefollowing year I didn't have
them as juniors but when I gotthem the year after as seniors
these same kids had lost all thejoy in learning.
They had closed down.
There was not the chatter Imean they would come in, sit
down, maybe do the work, maybenot.
(35:34):
But that, along with the levelsof anxiety that they were
feeling just in general, justchanged that personality of the
class.
I think I'm seeing a littleit's starting to kind of that
group of kiddos is now movingfar enough up that the newest
students I'm seeing at SanAntonio College now.
It's still there but it's notat the same level.
(35:55):
I think we're coming out on theother side at this point.
But that's certainly theincrease in anxiety and the
modifications and just trying tokeep those folks in a place
where they can succeed and besuccessful in the class has
become much more difficult.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Well, that's a lot of information, whitney.
I mean some of the things.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I hadn't even thought about in putting them together.
But you know, yeah, allchallenges we have to face, I
mean there are challenges thatare coming on.
I disagree with them.
Those are that's.
You know, it's this weird thing.
It's not weird.
But as we move more from andyou're right teaching, history
has changed a whole lot, andparticularly in this, we want
them to critically think, wewant them to make decisions for
(36:45):
themselves, we want them to cometo some conclusions from
examining sources and stuff.
But that scares a lot of peopleand particularly, it scares a
lot of people in power thatwe're actually asking students
to do that, and I think that'sthe crux of what's going on to a
lot of things, because theydon't want I mean this sounds
trite, but they don't wantpeople thinking for themselves,
they don't want people comingback.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I would agree with that.
I think a lot of what we'reseeing, the pushback we're
seeing particularly towardshistory education, comes from
that we need to have thispositive, progressive narrative
(37:28):
narrative and because otherwiseit just makes it just depresses
everybody, rather than seeing itas a way to show students, uh,
how other folks have empoweredthemselves over the years.
They too can make acontribution.
Um, that I think thatdifference is.
It has become more and moreclear Now.
(38:03):
The History Awards, of course,have been going on since the
progressive education that beganin the 1930s and Harold Love
series that people just wentballistic over because it was
doing things like askingstudents to make decisions and
to engage with sources andeverything.
So it's nothing new, it's justthis is the latest iteration of
it.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Oh yeah, it's the news cycle.
It's what's coming along.
Yeah, the news cycle.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
So, whitney, our last question that we like to ask
everyone is what do you know?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
All right.
So I've been thinking about itand I think what I know is that
the secret to a successfulmarriage is having separate
comforters that might be, right,you do not have to struggle
(38:52):
over.
You know, and it was always mefreezing to death because my
husband was curled up like aburrito Whitney.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Thanks, this has been very good.
It's one of our better ones Ican tell already.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Thank you all for having me, and I've enjoyed
talking about it.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
I'm Scott Sosbe and I'm GenePreuss, and this is Talking
(00:36):
Texas History.
Welcome to another episode ofTalking Texas History.
I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I am Scott Sosman.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Scott, we're going to do kind of like a what is your
life?
Gene Preuss couple of episodes.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Nobody wants to know what your life is like.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That's true.
But we're going to go back andtalk to some old friends.
I say old in that they've I'veknown them for a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, they might not want it, they might not want you
to say old friends.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
How about?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
longtime friends.
Well, longtime friends,longtime professional
acquaintances who are still inthe historical profession and
have contributed, have changed,have made contributions because
heaven knows you and I have not.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I was about to say are we supposed to make
contributions?
I don't think that's in my jobdescription.
If it is, I missed thatsomewhere.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And today we're going to go back to a person that I
met at what used to be calledSouthwest Texas State University
.
Now it's Texas State, sanMarcos, and that is Whitney
Blankenship.
Whitney, welcome to TalkingTexas History.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Welcome, Whitney.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Thanks for having me Want to know a little bit about
you.
Not everybody may know who youare, so tell us about Whitney
Blankenship.
Who are you and how did you getinterested in history?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Okay, I grew up in a very small town, Livingston,
Texas.
That's about an hour north ofHouston, Texas, that's about an
hour north of Houston and thenmoved to Central Texas for
college, where I have been sinceI was 18, for the most part and
that's also where I met myhusband, Lloyd Blankenship.
I spent about 17 years teachingin the Landon District at
(02:39):
Landon High School, teachingsocial studies, primarily
history, but I also taught APpsychology, IB psychology and
geography, world geography andthe AP human geography.
(02:59):
After that.
We've been there for almost 30years but we went to Rhode
Island for about six years,which was my first tenure track
appointment, and I taught atRhode Island College in both the
history departments as well asin the educational studies
department.
So I sent across two worldsthere.
(03:20):
We came back about six years agoto be closer to family you know
aging parents and all.
So we wanted to come back andsettle back in pretty much where
we left from, which was SouthAustin.
We currently live in SouthAustin and I teach at San
(03:41):
Antonio College.
And how I got interested inhistory I can't really remember
a time when I didn't likehistory, but there were a couple
of books that kind of broughtme to one of them, Of course,
the Little House series, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
yeah, arlington's wilder and I did, uh, you know,
by the second grade I had I washalfway through the series um, I
just devoured them, uh.
And then, third grade, I wentto public library and went to,
uh, check out a book and thebook I got was A Child's History
of the World that was publishedin 1924.
(04:28):
So you know, some reallyprogressive stuff going on in
there, but I absolutely adoredit and it was just so
interesting to see how thingswere different and it changed
over time and that just kind ofstuck with me.
And I've had other interestsover the years, music in
particular but history is kindof the thing that's always been
(04:53):
there for me and and and I'vekind of followed it out as I, as
I moved up in to my career.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, I forgot you were from Livingston.
I've always think every time Idrive through Livingston, cause
I'll drive here.
I'm in Houston now and, drivingup to see Scott go to the East
Texas historical association inNacogdoches, go through
Livingston quite a bit.
Alabama Cushota Indianreservation is there and I kept
(05:23):
saying I know somebody who'sfrom here and thank you for
reminding me.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
There you go Deep in deep East Texas.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
It's slightly bigger than when I was there, when I
lived there, but not by much.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
They've improved the highway, they've improved 69.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So Wendy you talked about you went to Texas State.
There you were at Texas Stateat the same time that Gene was
there.
I'm sure you were miles aheadof him as a student.
And then you also got degreesat UT and obviously history was
your first love and you gotdegrees, that.
But you don't teach history now.
You've moved into somethingelse and you've gone into
curriculum and instruction andthat educational side.
(06:01):
So tell us how you transitionto that.
How did you make thattransition?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
and that educational side.
So tell us how you transitionedto that.
How'd you make that transition?
In large part there's a lot ofdifferent things.
It was that kind of all cametogether about the same time.
My undergrad was actually inapplied sociology, with a very
large history minor that wasoriginally a double major.
But I found out two weeksbefore graduation that I would
(06:27):
have to take either one morehistory class or one more
sociology class to get thedouble major.
So history has this reallylarge minor now, and then I got
my MA in history a couple ofyears later started that piece.
Ironically, when I started outI didn't major.
(06:47):
My major was not thinking aboutteaching.
My mother was a teacher.
I knew what that involved.
I wasn't really gung-ho aboutthe idea of going into the
classroom, but after spendingsome time as a graduate
instructor right at the end ofmy master's, I realized how much
(07:13):
I enjoyed teaching, and so Idid go back after my master's
and got my teaching certificate,and so that was kind of the
beginning of that transformation.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, St Marcus was great for that, because there
was so much emphasis, it seemedlike to me, on teaching and
preparing teachers.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Oh, definitely, definitely.
I worked really TraceEttinger-Gray was there when we
shared an influenced me as wellin that area.
Then once I I think the bigtransfer occurred after I'd been
(07:52):
in Atlanta about 12 years, 15years, I was a finalist for the
H-E-B Excellent in EducationsAwards for, I think, the-year 10
to 15-year category, and I'dalso been working doing
professional development for thedistrict, for social studies
(08:14):
and some local conferences andthings like that.
So both of them really got meto thinking about.
You know, both of them reallygot me to thinking about how I
(08:40):
enjoyed working with teachersand helping translate the
content of history intoteachable moments I guess is the
best way to put it forclassroom teachers.
And there wasn't a whole lot ofit was just based on my
experience at that point.
So after that, about 2015, 2005,excuse me, 2005, I began
(09:01):
started thinking about goingback to school and going back to
grad school and it basicallybroke down to which program was
going to.
Let me go part time so I couldcontinue teaching full time?
No way to.
I could just stop at that point.
And so I looked at the historyprogram at UT and then also
looked at the curriculuminstruction and they had a brand
new program that wasspecializing in social studies
(09:23):
education and I could do thepart-time doctorate with the
teaching.
So that's really where it kindof a little bit of practical and
a little bit of my ownexperiences kind of led me to
move from one to the other.
But the nice thing about theC&I is that I still do a lot of
(09:45):
work in curriculum history andschool history for my research,
both in my technology researchand in my World War II, cold War
era research.
So it has been kind of the bestof both worlds over time as
I've moved into it and I'vereally enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Well, you know, I think that's interesting because
and I think, very usefulinformation, because I think
students sometimes think well,you know, you decided when you
were an undergraduate you wantedto be a history professor and
it's just something you stuckwith and for a lot of us, you
know, it's kind of opportunisticright Things, doors open, ideas
(10:30):
come in.
You know new opportunities,maybe directions change and
that's what affects our careerpaths, our educational.
You know paths, paths.
Who did you write your thesisunder at san marcos?
Speaker 3 (10:44):
uh, dr little uh it was an 18th century, um, social,
intellectual, uh, on the greatawakening, I looked at how the
two sides, the old lights andnew lights, were, um, how they
went about arguing over theirdifferences within that and and
the how and the wording thatthey used and where they were
(11:06):
pulling that information, wherethey were pulling those ideas
from.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So kind of culture wars of that period.
Well, you know that's really agood transition, and you know
how do you get, how do you reachout to students.
You're talking abouttranslating history into
teachable moments.
You know how does teaching inpublic school or grade school
different from colleges anduniversities?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And strange enough there are.
There's a lot of overlap and alot of it deals with where in
that process you are.
Right now I am teachingprimarily freshman survey
classes and some dual creditclasses, which do have high
school students in them, and soand I think one of the things
(11:53):
that's really stayed consistentover the time is level of
support, whether that be firstgeneration students or older
students coming back into theacademic atmosphere or people
just coming into college, andthey all the sports may look
(12:14):
different, but they all needthat, some sort of kind of
scaffolding to help them getinto it, get back into it,
organize their time whether andlearn to self-advocate.
All of that is, as a part of, Ithink, some teaching that has
(12:37):
pretty much stayed the same.
The topics may be a little bitdifferent, what they need help
with may be different dependingon group or their age or where
they are in their life.
So, in all in all, I think thatthat's stayed the same.
Of course, the biggest thingsthat have been very different is
(12:59):
in the teaching.
I have a lot more freedom at thecollege, university level to
design my courses the way I wantto and around themes that I
think are important for them tounderstand the trajectory of US
history.
And I'm certainly much morecritical than I.
(13:23):
Probably I was attempted to becritical for my high school
students but you know there wereobviously limits with the
culture wars out there to what Icould do, and so I learned to
kind of negotiate that.
But having not having anintercourse exam that they have
(13:44):
to pass or a list of names anddates and people that the state
wants me to cover is very free,and there's also not the tedium
that comes with just planningfor a daily class, which is
(14:05):
really where we're at.
And the other big difference istime With my college students.
I see them twice a week, so in a16-week course I may see them
around 30 days, about a month'sworth of instruction, which is
very different from high schoolwhere I'm on a block schedule.
(14:27):
I see them for a much longertime every other day, but the
time period is actually longerthan the hour and 15 minutes I
get with my college students, soI have a lot more time to
figure out where they're havingissues.
We can go back, we can review,we can reteach as needed,
(14:51):
whereas in my university classmy college classes it's always
been about I've got a limitedamount of time, I can do some
reteaching, but not a whole lot,because we need to move forward
.
That's something that I've hadto really think about as I
(15:14):
design my courses and do thatmost about teaching thematically
where I can.
It allows me to go dig deeperand to run some common themes in
each of the areas as we gothrough, but also give us some
time to dig deeply there withoutgetting into all this other
(15:39):
stuff that's going on as well.
I hope that made sense.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, it made perfect sense.
You know, that's one of thebiggest challenges I think we
have, particularly in teachingthese college courses.
I can't imagine what it must bein public schools that you
figure, I think I've probablybeen doing this for over a
decade where I feel like Ireally finally figured out the
basic fundamental of what I needto do in a classroom to get it
across.
And I teach.
(16:04):
Sfa has a huge component oftraining classroom teachers.
We have, you know, formerteachers college and so we have
a lot of them come through hereand teaching Texas history.
My whole class are people thatare preparing to go be public
school teachers and always kindof struggle what is it that they
need to know to come out ofhere?
And it's got to be some sort ofa balance which kind of gives
(16:26):
us this idea.
You have, you're part of aproject and you've edited a work
for Peter Long Publishers aspart of their teaching critical
themes in American history, andwhat kind of work that must be.
And yours that you did, thevolume you edited was Teaching
the Struggle for Civil Rights1948 to 1976.
Tell us about that book.
What's in it, what's the thing,and then how'd you get it?
(16:48):
I mean, that's quite a projectto get involved in.
How'd you get involved in that?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
to that um, the, the series and the book itself.
But the series is designed toget at um, all the books in the
series have a kind of a contentsection and a pedagogical
section, and so what to teach,what to teach and how to teach
it.
Basically, um, it is, is andit's based around the social
studies inquiry design process,so it has students asking
(17:25):
questions and using sources tocreate arguments or to answer
those questions, and then to theultimate pinnacle is for them
to then take that information,apply it to real world decisions
that are going on and to takeaction within their own
(17:47):
communities around similar typesof issues.
So this particular book webroke the civil rights period up
into two, this first half,which I did, and then the second
half, which starts with 1977 tothe present, which came out a
couple of years ago, and myideas at the time that I came
(18:12):
across the call for the series.
One of the things I noticed theywere looking for someone to do
this early civil rights periodand I had been working at that
point with a book put out byTeaching for Change.
(18:33):
That's putting the movementback into civil rights history,
and I think I also had seen itthrough Zen Ed as well.
Both had done kind ofhighlights on it and I was in
the process of revisiting how Iwas teaching the civil rights
movement at the time.
And so this, as I was, and I'dbeen playing around with some
things from the putting movementback in to civil rights with
(19:01):
them on the classroom, so Ithought this would be a good
time to a way to kind of bringin my own experiences with what
I've done in the classroom, aswell as to call on other
scholars to give their input.
And so when I saw the call, Iput in a proposal and was very
(19:27):
surprised when they offered itto me and that was in 2016.
I spent most of 2016, 2017working on it and we ended up
and that was also right before Iwent up for tenure, so it was
very well timed.
But in general, it's all thatit all kind of came together at
(19:53):
the same time.
It was kind of that perfectstorm where everything I was in
a place where I was gettingready to move and rethink how I
was teaching it and was alreadykind of in that process and now
had the opportunity to sharewhat I had learned and what from
not only my own experiences,but from others as well.
(20:15):
So that was really kind of allcame together in the long run.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It's fascinating.
You know, every time when asurvey course, if I teach the
civil rights, I always say, youknow I'm given this short shrift
.
I mean, here it is one of youknow, maybe I do two lectures
from this fantastic movement andhow do I get this across?
And one thing I always worryabout it's almost like the way
we teach it.
Students are on okay, we get tothe oh, it's chronologically,
(20:43):
and we get here to the 1950s, oh, let's talk about the civil
rights movement.
Well, of course, if you'reafrican-american, civil rights
movement has been ongoing sincethe nation was founded.
And then there's also the wholething.
How to pedagogically, how doyou?
What do you emphasize?
You can't do everything.
How is it the g to cross?
I think it's fine.
I have to.
I have not seen I.
I've heard of it, the book now.
Now I have to find out about it.
(21:04):
I think I can.
That's just fascinating.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
These types of things come about uh, yeah, all of you
just on the other side, all ofuh, if you go to teach civil
rightsorg, um, that is thecompanion website to it and it
has all you have to do isregister and you can get all of
the ancillary lessons.
It's now and it's like it'ssecond edition, maybe third, I'm
(21:27):
not sure so, but they'reconstantly updating.
But there are some standards,standard stuff that I've been
doing?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Is it?
Is it somewhat where I meanit's applicable?
I'm sure to say us in ouruniversity classes, but is it
also for public school teachers?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh yeah, it's designed for public school
teachers.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
OK, now, with what's going on and such, do you worry
about pushback from particularlycertain elements of a certain
state's government, yes and no.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
I think a lot of it is very much about.
There will probably be someareas where it would be
controversial.
So, for instance, in my bookone of the chapters is on civil
rights movement within sportsand it has come from a very
(22:27):
critical perspective and some ofmy reviewers who were also in
the classroom were a littleskeptical about maybe possibly
using that that one, because itis it's very much as done by
chris bucey um, who has beenworking in this area.
He now actually is out of umacademia, is actually working
(22:52):
with, I believe, the the eitherUS Soccer, I think, the US
Soccer Association, where he isdoing DEI for them.
So it's very, very critical inthat sense.
But a lot of it is also you knowthat's not going to fit for, be
good for everybody, but there'sa lot of it's about expanding
(23:15):
the narrative beyond Rosa Parks,beyond Martin Luther King Jr,
and getting into people likeSeptima Clark, looking at how
Claudette Colvin and how themovement had to make a decision.
(23:38):
But who's going to be the faceof this?
It wasn't just Rosa Parksdecided that she was going to do
this.
There's a whole movement behindit.
A lot of that where it expandsupon people that maybe folks
(24:01):
haven't heard of, or maybethey've heard of them, but they
don't know a lot about them.
But it really allows you to seea lot of crossover between the
various movements, whether it begay rights, women's movement,
gay rights women's movement aswell as the Chicano movement
later on, at the same time thatthis is all going on and that
(24:23):
there's a lot of crossover, andso that's one of the reasons why
one of the of of ways to get atthese other stories that are
(24:45):
part of civil rights history, um, and I think those there's
nothing particularlycontroversial about them, um,
but it does go get away fromthat very kind of, very quick.
We've got Brown v Board, we'vegot Rose Parks and the March on
Washington, and then all of asudden, the Civil Rights Act and
(25:06):
the Voting Rights Act and donecivil rights movement.
We've done it, we finished, andyou don't hear much about it
after that.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Right, right.
It's just like this episodicstuff that happens how we do it
in the classroom and it doesn't.
You don't the nuances?
Yeah, it's always frustrated me.
I always leave when I do that Ididn't do.
This is the one thing I didn'tdo very well.
I didn't convey this as well asI should have, so it's a
difficult thing to get into.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
In the classroom.
How do students react?
I mean thing to get into in theclassroom.
How do students react?
I mean, whenever you're talkingabout a broader civil rights
movement, because you know, wekind of grew up thinking, okay,
civil rights, martin, luther,king, rosa parks and if you're
bringing in, uh, other people,you're saying that, look, it
goes back.
You know at least the moderncivil rights movement to post
(25:55):
right after World War II, evenin World War II.
And if you're including, well,let's not just talk about
African-Americans and civilrights, but let's talk about the
Chicano movement, let's talkabout AIM, let's talk about
Stonewall, if you're doing that,how do students react whenever
(26:16):
you're expanding and changingthe story for them?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
almost universally, and this goes back for until
when I first started teaching,I'm going to say in the late
2000s when I first startedteaching IB history and we did a
, and one of their topics isvery is kind of a deep dive into
civil rights.
But universally what tends tocome out over the years is why
(26:47):
didn't we learn this before?
Why, especially when they getto be juniors and seniors
younger students not quite asmuch, they don't have as much
experience, but the olderstudents very much why did I
learn this in high school?
Why did I learn this in?
You learn this in eighth gradewhen we were doing this or
(27:08):
whatever, and they're almost madabout it.
In some cases they feel likethey have been deceived in a
little way, that things were notas straightforward as they were
allowed to think that they were.
One of the biggest ones I canremember is I had my juniors I
(27:35):
think they were reading and oneof the chapters from James
Lowen's Lies.
My Teacher Told Me and it wason class from James Lowen's Lies
.
My Teacher Told Me and it wason class and this whole
discussion on this.
I was doing my research ondiscussion boards, so they did a
lot of forums and this wholediscussion came out about why
(28:01):
they'd never been.
They'd always been told thatAmerica was a classless system
of sorts, that we don't haveclasses that are, and I think
they're in that sense.
They'd always been told thatAmerica was a classless system
of source.
We don't have classes that are,and I think they're in that
sense.
They're kind of equating it tosay like Great Britain, where
it's very structured, butthey're also.
They're like.
I've never thought about this.
I've never had nobody evermentioned anything like this.
For me they were.
They were just horribly enragedabout it and talked about it
(28:27):
for weeks afterwards and thatwas pretty intense.
But it's usually not quite thatintense, but almost entirely.
Every time I get any kind offeedback on different units that
we do or different topics thatwe do, different units that we
do or different topics that wedo, it is you know you, you went
(28:57):
beyond what I've learned before.
I did not know this I.
Why didn't I know this?
How can I?
What?
What else did they not teach me?
I think it's a part of that inthere, but they, they generally
respond very well to it.
Even those that may not agreewith my interpretation are.
They do respond well to it.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I, but you know what students are much more
welcoming is the right word,maybe not the right word, but
they're much more open toreceiving something that they
hadn't probably ever seen before, and their parents are, and
it's really.
It's really eye opening,because that's.
I get that reaction all thetime.
What I didn't know that?
(29:34):
How come I wasn't taught that,which, I guess, is a good segue
for someone to ask you.
We've all been doing this for along time longer than we want
to think about doing it butyou're unique and that you've
got to do this on a lot oflevels.
You were in a public schoolsetting, two-year school setting
, four-year school setting.
You've been back and forth indiscipline, so you're a perfect
person to ask this to, I think.
(29:55):
Okay, how has teaching historychanged since you first started
doing this?
What is different and what arethe challenges?
Are there more challenges nowthan there used to be?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I think in some ways, of course, the big change is
tech just across the board, andnot so much.
Tech has become a hugedistraction.
We see that in all of the a lotof the what's wrong with
teaching, what's wrong withschools, kind of critiques.
(30:28):
Kids are glued to their phonesor they think why do I have to
learn that when I can just golook it up on the internet?
And to some extent they have apoint.
So I think what has changed inthat sense is that it's less
about specific content althoughthat's still important as it is
(30:52):
about getting them to criticallythink about the sources that
they're using.
Who said it, why they weredoing, what their motives were
that type of thing, what theirmotives were that type of thing
and where they're getting thatinformation from and then using
(31:14):
that to construct arguments andunderstanding that you can't
just look at one source.
You need to look at multiplesources to kind of figure out
what's going on.
So I think that's a large partof what has shifted, and I think
(31:37):
particularly even as early asthe 80s and 90s, when things
really began to shift in historyeducation, lecturing the stage
on the stage and more workingtowards having students grapple
with primary sources, secondarysources and the arguments that
are being made and coming to thedrawing their own conclusions
and being able to justify thoseconclusions, than just being
(32:01):
able to regurgitate whatever Isaid in a lecture in an essay
form.
So I think that's the biggestone.
I think also there isparticularly at the classroom
level, at the public schoollevel.
(32:22):
Tech has, on the one hand,opened up the grading process.
I mean, of course, when I wentthrough school I knew what I had
, either because I kept up withmy grades myself, or when the
report card came out, oh okay, Igot a bna or whatever um now
with.
And I remember I was teachingwhen the first online grade
books came out and everybody was, you know, kind of worried
(32:47):
about it and how this would playout.
In one way, it's a very goodthing because it allows parents
and students to keep up withtheir grades themselves.
They can look at it anytime.
I'm not having to field a phonecall or answer an email about
you know what the grades are orhow a student is doing.
On the flip side of that, youhave, especially over the last
(33:12):
10, 15 years, you've got morehelicopter parents.
You've got students who are sofocused on getting into college,
that they are very GPA-ric andit's all about the grade, not
the learning.
So you end up dealing more withthat great anxiety related
(33:38):
around that no one wants to seeanymore yeah, yeah, no one wants
C.
Everybody wants an A or B at thevery least, but they don't
really connect that with youknow, with the actual learning
process.
This is a reflection of whatyou know or what you can do, I
(34:00):
think what kind of couples withthat is, and I've seen this
growing.
By the time I started in thelate 90s, early 2000s, we
started seeing in the classroomsmore and more students who were
coming in with modificationsfor ADHD To some extent, for
anxiety, not as much.
Autism has gone up.
(34:23):
Knowledge, um, autism has hasgone up.
Now, whether those were alwayspresent and we just didn't
recognize it or not, uh, andwe're just now more, uh, open to
recognizing it.
Uh, that has that has changed.
What goes on in the classroom,uh, and since covid, I've seen
it get even worse because thelevels of anxiety it like shot
up.
I watched I had sophomores.
I was actually because thelevels of anxiety like shot up.
(34:45):
I watched I had sophomores.
I was actually in the back ofthe classroom during COVID and
was at the day year it started,in 2020, I had sophomores and
these were kids who were.
They were fun and they werecurious and we were always.
You know, I loved teaching themor working in class.
They were always into what wewere doing and then over the
(35:08):
course of that spring, thefollowing year I didn't have
them as juniors but when I gotthem the year after as seniors
these same kids had lost all thejoy in learning.
They had closed down.
There was not the chatter Imean they would come in, sit
down, maybe do the work, maybenot.
(35:34):
But that, along with the levelsof anxiety that they were
feeling just in general, justchanged that personality of the
class.
I think I'm seeing a littleit's starting to kind of that
group of kiddos is now movingfar enough up that the newest
students I'm seeing at SanAntonio College now.
It's still there but it's notat the same level.
(35:55):
I think we're coming out on theother side at this point.
But that's certainly theincrease in anxiety and the
modifications and just trying tokeep those folks in a place
where they can succeed and besuccessful in the class has
become much more difficult.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Well, that's a lot of information, whitney.
I mean some of the things.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
I hadn't even thought about in putting them together.
But you know, yeah, allchallenges we have to face, I
mean there are challenges thatare coming on.
I disagree with them.
Those are that's.
You know, it's this weird thing.
It's not weird.
But as we move more from andyou're right teaching, history
has changed a whole lot, andparticularly in this, we want
them to critically think, wewant them to make decisions for
(36:45):
themselves, we want them to cometo some conclusions from
examining sources and stuff.
But that scares a lot of peopleand particularly, it scares a
lot of people in power thatwe're actually asking students
to do that, and I think that'sthe crux of what's going on to a
lot of things, because theydon't want I mean this sounds
trite, but they don't wantpeople thinking for themselves,
they don't want people comingback.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I would agree with that.
I think a lot of what we'reseeing, the pushback we're
seeing particularly towardshistory education, comes from
that we need to have thispositive, progressive narrative
(37:28):
narrative and because otherwiseit just makes it just depresses
everybody, rather than seeing itas a way to show students, uh,
how other folks have empoweredthemselves over the years.
They too can make acontribution.
Um, that I think thatdifference is.
It has become more and moreclear Now.
(38:03):
The History Awards, of course,have been going on since the
progressive education that beganin the 1930s and Harold Love
series that people just wentballistic over because it was
doing things like askingstudents to make decisions and
to engage with sources andeverything.
So it's nothing new, it's justthis is the latest iteration of
it.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Oh yeah, it's the news cycle.
It's what's coming along.
Yeah, the news cycle.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
So, whitney, our last question that we like to ask
everyone is what do you know?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
All right.
So I've been thinking about itand I think what I know is that
the secret to a successfulmarriage is having separate
comforters that might be, right,you do not have to struggle
(38:52):
over.
You know, and it was always mefreezing to death because my
husband was curled up like aburrito Whitney.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Thanks, this has been very good.
It's one of our better ones Ican tell already.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Thank you all for having me, and I've enjoyed
talking about it.
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