“Enjoy studying history for its own sake,” I suggest in my personal statement as part of my application to the University of Texas at El Paso.  I must admit I was unclear as to what I actually meant by this statement; however, I have had a chance to distance myself from this essay and I have a better understanding of what I intended.  To give this statement some context, I must explain the motivation behind my aspiration to complete a PhD.  My first semester teaching at the college level, I spent an unlimited number of hours constructing lectures; therefore, preparing to reveal to my students the wonders of historical thinking.  Quickly distorted, my romantic vision evolved into boring lectures, multiple-choice questions, and several films.  By the end of the semester, frustration and exhaustion followed.  I was convinced as an educator I achieved little and my students probably less.

Consequently, I left teaching and returned to school longing for the opportunity to develop myself as a researcher.  I became acquainted yet again with the pleasures of history.  Admiring the gripping “tales” shaped by scholars such as Juliana Barr, Pekka Hämäläinen, Gilbert Din, and Shannon Lee Dawdy, I found comfort in the intellectual exercise of historiography.  As idealistic as this perception may sound, for me there remain unresolved questions, but until mid-semester of Spring 2012 one experience set me on the trajectory that allowed me to consider myself as both scholar and teacher.  In a history teaching and learning seminar, I proposed the question to my colleagues as followed: what is the practicality of history?  I received various responses but we did not necessarily agree on a succinct answer; however, historian, Keith Erekson stressed that the reason we are having difficulty is that our discipline “may not have done a good job” in answering my question.  His response urged me to reconsider my role as a historian and his comment folded sweetly into my existential quest, which made me realize that historian and teacher are inextricably linked.

As both historian and teacher, I wish to strengthen students’ “discernment, judgment, and caution,” those qualities essential in “mak[ing] choices, to balance opinions, to tell stories, and to become uneasy—when necessary—about the stories we tell.”[1]  For me, Sam Wineburg’s analysis has allowed me to not only explore the practicality of history, but also form the framework of my philosophy and set my goals as an educator.   In order to teach students to negotiate the landscape of  “historical thinking,” Wineburg cautions, comfort is necessary when reconciling the tension between our present and the present of our historical character of study; do not avoid the position historian plays in the construction of historical narrative, and lastly, evade acts of imposing your views onto your historical character of study.  I will provide an example as to how I will apply Wineburg’s definition of “historical thinking” to what I want my students and myself to accomplish.

Although some scholars of history believe primary sources used as a teaching tool to understand historical thinking is a “grandiose notion,” I have a similar opinion.  If students are not instructed in reading skills, the learning exercise will be lost; however, to begin with a secondary source may address our concerns.  Therefore, begin with a chosen subject such as Louisiana history.  Take the writings of Charles Gayarré, one of the first historians to write about Louisiana.  We begin with secondary sources because it is easy for the teacher to contextualize the source and student to grasp the context because of the limited possibilities an academic author is writing.  After we have accomplished reading skills, we move into historiography and give the students an understanding of who, what, where, and why scholars debate certain arguments.  Once we have moved beyond the secondary source, we have achieved knowledge of the historiography and then direct our energy toward the primary sources.  The student’s conception of the past maybe to far removed when thinking of a certain period of time.