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Teaching Teachers

May 22, 2009

The students that Fritz Fischer will be teaching this summer won’t just be history students, they’ll be history teachers.

Fischer, a professor of history and director of history education at UNC, is one of many UNC faculty members willing to share knowledge of their discipline and teaching expertise with K-12 teachers.

He directs and teaches in the Colorado Academy of History and is on the faculty of the Presidential Academy in American History and Civics Education. The latter is directed by Michael Welsh, a UNC professor of history of who also leads workshops in Fischer’s academy. Both projects are based at UNC, offer summer institutes and are funded by U.S. Department of Education grants.

While the two projects have different audiences – Fischer’s are primarily teachers from the Greeley area and Welsh’s are from Navajo Nation schools in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico – they both aim to improve elementary, middle or high school teachers’ knowledge of their subject and enhance their skills in presenting the information to students.

"We first spend a lot of time on the ’what’ and then we spend time on the ’how,’" Fischer said. "The better they know the material, the more ways they’ll find to present it in interesting and fun ways."

He said he’ll use the same approach later in the summer during a week-long seminar he’ll co-teach at the University of Texas-Austin, which is hosting the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, a leading source of history programming for teachers, students and scholars. More than 200 teachers from across the country apply for the 30 openings in each of the institute’s summer seminars.

As part of his association with the National Council for History Education, Fischer also this year conducted seminars for history teachers in West Virginia and Louisiana. He currently serves as chairman of the council’s board of trustees.

And he’s co-chair of the 54-member Colorado Model Content Standards Social Studies Review Committee. The committee is charged by the Colorado Department of Education with updating the state’s K-12 social studies standards so that they include 21st century skills.

Fischer said his and other UNC faculty members’ extensive involvement in professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers is partly a reflection of UNC’s long-standing role as a national leader in training educators.

It’s also because of its approach of using faculty from academic programs to instruct teaching methods courses specific to a subject area.

"The high-level of collaboration between the College of Education (and Behavioral Sciences) and schools within UNC’s other four colleges is something that’s not found at most institutions," Fischer said. "Their teacher preparation programs don’t tailor pedagogy courses to a specific subject."

UNC’s history education approach, Fischer noted, is used as a model by the American Historical Association, which includes the syllabus for his UNC history education course in the Training Teachers to Teach History in K–12 Schools section of its Web site.

Fischer is quick to point out that he and his colleagues get as much from teaching teachers as the teachers do.

"I think it improves us as teachers because it makes us more thoughtful and inventive on how we present information in the classroom," he said. "Plus, the high school teachers often have developed techniques that we can easily adapt to make history more fun and exciting for our traditional students."

Other Summer Teacher Training
While numerous professional development programs for K-12 teachers are offered through UNC each summer, two notable examples are:

The schools of Biological Sciences; Chemistry, Earth Sciences, and Physics; and Mathematical Sciences within the College of Natural and Health Sciences sponsor the Mathematics and Science Teaching Institute, which offers a variety of professional development opportunities throughout the year for K-12 teachers.

UNC’s Office of Extended Studies, in conjunction with the College Board, offers the Advanced Placement Summer Institute in June each year. UNC faculty team with high school master teachers to provide teachers of high school advanced placement courses weeklong seminars on curriculum and pedagogy for courses in biology, chemistry, environmental science, calculus, statistics, human geography, U.S. history, U.S. government and politics, English language and Spanish language.

More Information
- Colorado Academy of History
- Presidential Academy in American History and Civics Education
- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
- Mathematics and Science Teaching Institute
- Advanced Placement Summer Institute

- Gary Dutmers

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