I opened the school year by asking 9th graders to prove or disprove the flat earth myth. The hinge of the whole inquiry is a fabricated 1828 source that some textbooks still reference without knowing it's fiction. Four days later, every student had a full DBQ, a writing sample, and (I hope) a little more suspicion toward a good story.
Teaching Historical Thinking Skills
Reclaiming Inquiry and PBL with National History Day
Inquiry and PBL get thrown around so often they've lost meaning for a lot of teachers. This post digs into what these strategies actually require when done well, using National History Day as a working example. Resources are linked.
Yes, We’re Doing Historiography in High School
Historiography is often treated as a university-only exercise, but it belongs in the high school classroom. When taught intentionally, it helps students see history as an interpretive discipline, strengthens historical thinking and argumentation, and invites students to engage historians as participants in an ongoing conversation rather than distant authorities.
Games and Simulations in Social Studies
Games and simulations give students something traditional instruction can’t: the chance to step inside a system and make meaningful decisions with real consequences. When used intentionally, whether to model abstract concepts like legitimacy or to explore content-rich scenarios like diplomacy, state-building, or economic behavior, games transform learning from something students receive to something they actively experience, question, and apply.
National History Day Resources
This post highlights ongoing efforts to expand and improve National History Day (NHD) resources in China. From teacher workshops on historical thinking to new classroom tools and an upcoming resource booklet, it reflects a commitment to helping educators and students engage deeply with inquiry, research, and the process of doing history.
Enhancing Historical Thinking: The Role of Agency
Teaching historical agency means helping students see history as a series of choices, not inevitabilities. Through primary sources on figures like Richelieu and Louis XIV, students explore how power, structure, and context shape what individuals and groups can—and cannot—do, revealing the complexity behind seemingly inevitable historical outcomes.
Negotiating History: A Classroom Simulation of the Treaty of Westphalia
Simulations bring history alive, even if students don’t always land on the “right” outcome. My Treaty of Westphalia simulation in AP European History pushed students to negotiate, compromise, and reflect, skills as valuable as the history itself.
Teaching Responsible Use of AI Tools in the Social Sciences
From fabricated speeches in ancient history to AI-generated fake sources today, the challenges of exaggeration, bias, and distortion aren’t new. Teaching students how to spot and overcome these pitfalls builds stronger thinkers than banning AI ever could.
Bridging Math and History: Eratosthenes and the Flat-Earth Myth
Blending math and history, I used flat earth debates to show students how interpretation, sources, and myth-making shape what we think we know.
Designing Competency-Based Rubrics Aligned to the C3 Framework
Back in December, I shared some thoughts on the differences between standards-based and competency-based teaching and assessment. Since then, I’ve drafted competency-based rubrics for each dimension of the C3 Framework. In this post, I’ll share those rubrics and explain the thinking behind how I constructed them.