← Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Practical Tips for Teaching Western Civilization in Elementary School
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This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe that's podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
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Welcome to the Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms. Now your host, Scott Bertram.
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We continue a series of episodes from presentations delivered at Hoagland center for Teacher Excellence Seminars. The Hoagland center for Teacher Excellence, an outreach of The Hillsdale College K12 education office, offers educators the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge and refine their skills in the classroom. These one day conferences are hosted during the academic year in cities across the nation and feature presentations by Hillsdale College faculty, K12 office staff and leaders in the Hillsdale Network of member schools. There is no cost to attend and attendees may earn professional development credits. Currently, the Hoagland center is hosting a series exploring the art of teaching a variety of subjects. To learn more about upcoming events, visit Visit our website k12 hillsdale.edu how to.
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Help parents and students understand why this is Important this is so hard, especially in our society. I know my parents sent us to school thinking that we were just getting the same education that they had gotten and it wasn't true. The education I received was very different from what my father had received. He grew up in Mountain School in Altoona, Pennsylvania, poor, but they got an amazing education. He came out of there speaking German almost fluently and during World War II he used that. During the war he became a chemist, loved chemistry in this mountain high school where again, they had nothing. And he received an offer to go to mit and he studied at Penn State because that was closer to home. And what I want you to understand from my dad's experience, when he looks at people saying, well, we need to spend more money in schools, blah blah blah blah blah, he said, no we don't. What we need to do is get back to the basics. And it's been my philosophy, by the way, and if there are any administrators in the room, excuse me, it doesn't care what your building looks like. I don't care what the building looks like. It's the teachers and it's the curriculum. That's all. You can have a beautiful, amazing building upon which the county has spent billions of dollars. And it'd be absolutely vapid, absolutely ignorant. Nothing going on there worth talking about. Okay, so it's about the teachers and it's about the curriculum. Those two things. If you have a great school, it could be in a tent. I don't know if you'd want to teach in a tent, but anyway. Okay, so the practical aspects of teaching elementary school, I spend my time mostly in the college. I teach ninth grade, by the way. I also get to teach kindergarten. I get to teach a lot of our friends who come from around the country. You know, people who are octogenarians who are giving to Hillsdale College, wonderful friends. So I get to teach from cradle to. Anyway, that's part of what I do at Hillsdale College. It's a lot of fun. So talking about how to do this in the elementary grade. So often I find people, oh, yeah, you know, Cicero and Thucydides and Herodotus, you know, you can do that at high school because they're more advanced, but you can do this. And I think, speaking to a number of you, you can do this at any point in their education. You have to know how to use your information, how to target your information to the grades you're working at. But I'm going to give you some experiences that I've had mostly in our third and fourth grade at Hillsdale Academy. For some reason, it's been those teachers who have most often invited me. And I guess part of it is they're doing Greek history and some ancient history in third and fourth grade. And so my experiences have been there. And I start with, first of all, this idea that we have to remember that we cannot talk down to children when we start to teach them and to treat them like children, they tune out. They want to be treated as if they're important. They want to be challenged. That's been my experience. And you might say, well, you've been at a private school. Well, yeah, maybe, But I've also worked in some of the public schools around Hillsdale county, or students at our church, kids at our church, they want to be treated as if they're important. And once you start treating them like they're important, okay, I find that most of them are going to respond to that. And so if I talk down to them, oh, hi, sweetie. Forget that. I'm not about that at all. And I didn't hire teachers who were that way when I was headmaster I want teachers who are going to say, hello, Joe, how are you doing? I'm glad you're here. Let's straighten up your uniform. Let's get to work. Right? Let's do some good stuff. But then not go too high and too beyond where they are at. We have to understand that, of course, but we have to understand that the children have the ability to reason. They have been given that ability by God. They have the ability to reason, like you and I. And one of the main things that we're doing in classical education is teaching these young ones how to strengthen the ability to reason, to think through things, and then how to apply it, really. I mean, if we want good citizens, if we want good human beings down the road, we. We have to teach them not how to think or what to think, excuse me, but how to use their reason, okay? To come to decent conclusions. One thing I've always found as the headmaster of a school, and especially when I have little Simeon Jackson come into my office in the third grade, that they're all lawyers. Have you noticed that? Why? Why? Why? Right. And this little Simeon Jackson, I have him in the ninth grade right now, actually, always pushing me, wanting to know why. And sometimes I'd get exasperated and just say, because. Right. But there are times when you have to really get down to, okay, what is Simeon, the highest good in this situation? And so I begin to talk to them about the good. What is good, Simeon? What is the most wise thing to do in this situation? Talk about wisdom. And, you know, they're not beyond thinking about these things. I mean, they are human beings. And I would say that there is a natural in inclination to want to know, what is the good, what is wisdom? And getting into this question is, well, is the good? Is wisdom, whatever pops into my head at any given moment, and therefore that's good? Or are there ways in which we can sort through and discern the good, the true, the beautiful, and that which is wise and that which is not wise? All right. And, you know, I have lived among many scholars of different perspectives, but it is very interesting that in many ways we're all heading back towards that same question, you know, of what is the good and what is wisdom? How do we live together as human beings and as citizens? Now, another thing that I always notice about these little ones is not only do they have this ability to reason and to ask good questions, and that they are all lawyers, but they are also very, quite often very visual and emotional. I mean, to try and deny emotion within these little ones. I think is to not be fair to them, but to help them to understand that balance of reason and emotion and how to control emotion, okay? How to guide it. So all of that is part of, I think, at the very foundation for me, when I walk into a third and fourth grade or fifth and sixth or second and third grade classroom, those are some of the things I'm going to think about. And as the headmaster, having to pass out detentions and talk to some of these children and help them learn their lessons, always things, you know, I didn't want to say because, although sometimes I did say that because I only had 10 minutes and I had to go off to my next meeting. But often it's just like, okay, think about what you did. Is this reasonable? Is this wise? Is this good? And I have to tell you that a lot of times, not 100%, but a lot of times that worked for us. All right, so what kind of tools can we use? What kind of things can we use? Well, art and architecture. We can present to them the columns of ancient Greece, the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. I mean, all that kind of standard stuff. There's all kinds of great, especially in the Hellenistic world and in the Roman world, great statues, bronze and marble that you can present to them. All kinds of wonderful things. But I've given for you another maybe thought, and that is the use of coins. And you might not have a coin collection at your disposal, as I do at Hillsdale, but you can find stuff online. And the opposite side of your outline for the lecture, here is a coin from the time of Lucius Cassius Longinus around 63 BC. And what is that guy doing? He's voting. He is casting a vote. Because this is what you did in Rome. Now, let me tell you a little bit about voting practices in ancient Rome. Originally, in ancient Rome, when you voted, you did so publicly, because a virtuous citizen tells everyone what his opinion is and he stands by that, right. That is what a good, courageous, virtuous citizen does. Here is my position. I'm against Marcus Porcius Cato right? Now, there's obvious trouble with that, because if you do that publicly, people know where you stand. You could get all kinds of pressure, economic pressure, social pressure. It was all there in the day. Don't get invited to the right parties and that kind of thing. It happened. So you might be in a point where they know how you voted. And if you didn't vote for Marcus Porcius Cato, then you're not in our club, all right? Or in A more violent way. If you didn't vote for Marcus Porcius Cato, you know what? We're going to beat the snot out of you or worse, or we might burn your house down. All right? Especially when you get, as we talked about later on in the history of the Roman Republic, the Gracchi and Marius and Sulla, and you could lose your head for having the wrong political opinion almost as bad as today. All right, so are you with me on this so far? Very important. So what do they do around in the 60s? They pass a law, all right? Voting. You write on a text, you write on a wax tablet your opinion, your vote, and you put that into the basket. That way nobody knows how you voted. Then they go off and count them, and that creates a new problem. Who's counting them? And how do you know that it's the right count? Sound familiar? If you think this is something new, okay. Use classical education to help you understand that it's not. And you can talk to your students about this kind of thing. I mean, this is a great lesson that I think a third and fourth grader, frankly, would pretty easily grasp. Well, I've used this for third and fourth grade, and they've easily grasped this idea of this guy putting a vote. And, you know, I'd ask them, would you rather vote as a citizen publicly, where everybody can see it, or, you know, privately by putting the vote, you know, casting your vote privately, and the same arguments come up every time. They get it. They understand. All right, okay, so art, architecture, all kinds of lessons you can use from the Roman world and the Greek world to teach your students. If you have statues from the Greek world and you're talking about the great philosophers or you're talking about Alexander the Great, to give them an idea of how in the ancient world they envisioned these people and ask them questions about the art, ask them questions about the architecture that they're using. What do they notice? And then, of course, you can always ask them the question, have you seen any of this kind of architecture in the United States? And if they've been to their state capitol or they have been to Washington, D.C. or what have you, they can all say that, right? And talk about why. Talk about why. All right, Third and fourth grade. Another thing that I have found that has been happy and successful with elementary school, and again, my experience has been primarily in third and fourth grade, has been the use of biography stories about people and all kinds of biographies that have been written in the modern world or nearly modern world that are useful and Good. In the curricula that was developed K through 12 by the Hoagland center and by the Barney Initiative, there are going to be suggestions of those things, and most of them are based upon actual ancient texts. Right. Was just having a conversation about Shakespeare and his interpretation of Cicero and the death of Caesar and that kind of thing. And. And how does Shakespeare use Plutarch? People are going to take the ancient texts and use them for their own purposes. I don't think Shakespeare got it right. Am I allowed to say that? But there you go. Anyway, we can talk about that later. But the use of biography, I think, is really helpful because it brings the students into the lives and into the world that they're studying through a person. You know, it's always easy to say, oh, yeah, well, the Roman Empire was like this, or the Greek world was like that. But to meet one of these people and to enter into this world through a person I think is always very, very helpful and maybe much better than just leaving it as it is. And here we have a moment, just a clip from Plutarch of Alexander the Great meeting his horse, his famous horse, Bucephalus. And he had his horse, Bucephalus. I'm trying to think of what year this was. Probably around 338, down to 325 for a long time. And this horse was his best friend. And he rode this horse into many battles. And Alexander was absolutely fearless, and his horse Bucephalus was equally so. Right. Now you might say, well, Dr. Calvert, you're out in rural Michigan. Horses and agrarian stuff, you know, the kids understand that. Well, you know, I think anywhere you are, you know, kids are going to be interested in the story of horses. This is not a pink pony. It doesn't have a horn on it, but it's still a good horse. So let's read this. This is from Plutarch on Alexander the Great. Philip, Alexander's father, purchased an expensive horse named Bucephalus or Ox Head. At that point, every time, if I'm with a bunch of third and fourth graders, the boys are just rolling in the. In the isles about a horse named Oxhead. It's just like, what? That's the name? Are you kidding me? That's Alexander the Great's horse, Ox Head. Yes, it is. All right. And so they kind of attach themselves to that and have fun with that. But he was so vicious and unmanageable that he reared up when they tried to mount him. Alexander, who stood by, said, what an excellent horse, for I could manage that horse. All right, and here you have a young man, a kid, I could do that. It's like, yeah, right, okay, so there's a sense often when I teach this, the kids are saying, yeah, I would say that too. I could do that. And if you do not, said Philip, what will you pay for your pride? So you begin to question and talk about the whole idea of pride, the vice and virtues of self confidence. I will pay, answered Alexander, the whole price of the horse. And of course at this point you can say, yeah, with your, you know, with the little money that dad gives you each week, you're going to pay for this horse. I don't think so. Alexander immediately ran to the horse and taking hold of the bridle, turned Bucephalus towards the sun, having observed that he was afraid of his own shadow. Have you ever walked or been outside with a group of kids along a sidewalk or out at the playground and shadows become a thing, right? And they're all trying to step on each other's shadows. I mean, what I have found with the kids is at this point too, when they're talking about Bucephalus, this ox headed horse, being afraid of his own shadow, you know, that catches their attention as well. Then letting the horse go forward a little, still keeping the reins in his hands and stroking him gently. And with one nimble leap, Alexander securely mounted him. And when he was seated little by little, drew in the bridle and controlled Brucephalus. Presently, when Alexander found him free from all rebelliousness, he let Bucephalus go at full speed. Philip and his friends looked on at first in silence. And I often at that point will get students talk about movies like Black Beauty, where you've got these horses just going at full speed and how amazing that looks and how beautiful that looks, and ask them, have you ever seen a horse run at full speed like that? And you know, most of them haven't in reality, but they have probably seen that in the movies and are happy to talk about that. He let Bucephalus go at full speed. Philip and his friends looked on at first in silence, till seeing Alexander turn at the end of his run and come back rejoicing and triumphing for what he had performed. They all burst out into applause. And his father, shedding tears for joy, kissed Alexander as he came down from his horse and said, O my son, look for a kingdom equal to and not and worthy of yourself, for Macedonia is too small for you. All right. And so Philip, having this response to Alexander, and we learn all kinds of things about Alexander in this. His confidence or maybe his overconfidence, his sense of being able to accomplish something and to the point of being prideful. If there's one thing at the end of Alexander's great campaigns that ruins him, it's his pride. I mean, there are all kinds of things you can draw from this story about a horse and about Alexander racing this horse down to the end of the field and back about his relationship with his father, Philip. All of this, I think, can be done and can be useful in the context of an elementary classroom. It has for me in the third and fourth grade. Now, I made reference to this a little bit earlier on. I once had a third and fourth grade teacher ask me if I would teach the Greek philosophers to the third and fourth grade. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. They like Plato and Aristotle, but would I teach these philosophers to these children? And I said, I've never done that, but I might be able to do a little bit of that. They also had me teach the idea of covenant because they were doing some Old Testament work to third and fourth grade students. And so I did that as well. But as I began to think about it and what I understood about third and fourth graders, and when I came in to teach this, and I've taught this a couple of times now, it's interesting that I said that children are naturally lawyers. I think children, too, are naturally philosophers. I think there's an element to the child where they want to. They desire to think about things. You know, they don't always express it and they act it out. But there is this element in which I really feel that each one of them does in some way relate to these philosophers. And I certainly found this out when I taught these to. When I have taught these philosophers to the third and fourth graders, for instance, Socrates, a soldier, a stonemason, and a philosopher. And I point out to them, we often think of philosophers as only intellectuals. All right. Socrates was a soldier, and he was a decorated veteran. He had saved the life of one of his fellow citizens in war and had received a laurel for that. So he was known as someone who was willing to serve Athens, serve his city state. All right, now, it's important to understand, and I don't really go into the trials of. Of Socrates and into why he was put on trial, but it is important that his love of his city, if you read Plato's credo, the reason why he chooses to drink the poison is because he accepts the judgment of his fellow citizens. He loves Athens. He accepts the judgment of his fellow citizens, even if that judgment was wrong. So, I mean, this is something you might work into a discussion of Socrates, that he is a soldier, he's a stonemason, he has worked with his hands. We don't know exactly what it meant. Was he sculpting marble statues or was he laying bricks? I like to think of Socrates as a man who was laying bricks. That's how I like to think about him. Because when he talks about whether or not. And among these philosophers, whether or not you actually know something, quite often and particularly with Socrates, it comes down to, do you know how to do something? And if you know how to do something, then you actually have some genuine knowledge, right? And that is important to understand about Socrates. And then he is a philosopher. And this is where you have students like, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a philosopher? And I think it's wonderful to introduce this idea at a young age. Wonderful to introduce this idea to third and fourth grade. And again, these are the grades I've worked with. So what is a philosopher? A philosopher. The word philosopher means to be a lover of wisdom. And you ask them, would you like to be someone who loves wisdom? Would you like to be someone who loves to seek and pursue and understand what it means to be good and to do the good? You know, these kids, I find so many times are like, yeah, that's a great idea. I'd like to do that, right? And I don't think that it's too far above them to introduce this idea to them, to ask them, do you want to be a lover of wisdom? Of course, you have to talk about what wisdom means. You have to talk about what the good is, what virtue and vice are. But like with my friend Simeon Jackson, you know, when we were talking about these things, you know, I asked, okay, if you apply wisdom and if you seek the good, will you be in my office getting a detention? Well, probably not, right? Because what I'm doing is. Is finding ways to wisely treat others well, to wisely live in a community of human beings, wisely and justly approach my studies, finish my studies when I'm supposed to, right? Don't cheat. What you're doing when cheating is perpetuating injustice, you're. You're stealing from someone their property by cheating, right? I mean, these ideas are all ideas that these kids in elementary school, as they're approaching different points of tension and times when they might be tempted to do something wrong, they can understand this. So to be the lover of wisdom to someone who Loves to do what is good and right and just this is a good time to be teaching that. And where do we get that? We get that from these philosophers, because that's what they're talking about. That's what they're hoping people will think about. And Socrates said, examine your life, right? The unexamined life is not worth living. Think about how you do things. Do we view children, third and fourth graders or whatever in elementary grade, just human beings that have no concept of self discipline and they just are flying off the handle all the time? It doesn't have to be that way. Right? It doesn't. And to help them understand that not only is it their problem, not only is it their struggle or what they have to learn, it's part of the human condition. And get back to the philosophers and say, you know what? Socrates was asking us to examine our lives and to think about these things and how to do better, how to do the best, how to do the good. Plato, student OF Socrates Plato is an interesting guy because his teacher is executed by Athens, by his state. Socrates is kind of a guy here after the end of the Peloponnesian wars and Athens has lost. He has a not entirely positive view of human nature and of the human ability to know. And there is this idea that we get through Socrates, that we're not living in the ideal world. We're living in a shadowy world, a world of problems and of struggles. And I know for sure that in every one of your classrooms, even though I've never visited the school and never looked at the list, that there are kids in those classrooms who are really struggling with one thing or another, right? And do we say to them, oh, you poor child, you're struggling. Okay, we're just going to let you be there, right? That's not in my mind what Plato would want us to do. It's not in my mind the right approach. I had a wonderful conversation with a mother at the beginning of this year with her son in the ninth grade who has a number of learning tensions, learning struggles, okay? And I ask my students to write essays, two page essays, handwritten. I'd like it in cursive. If they haven't learned cursive, they may print it, but most of them write it in cursive. I really encourage that because cursive is an art form and it helps them to become serious about writing. Okay? Cursive is an art form. That's why it's so essential. And we can talk about that later. But here's the thing. The mother Said, well, you know, he wants to do these things, but he can't. He's got this, that, and the other thing. And, you know, I believe it, and I understand that. And I said to her, you know, we live in a world that is very difficult and quite often unjust, and we live in a world that is difficult. And quite often those who have greater struggles are struggling and maybe unjustly so more than their fellow students. I said, but what do you want for your son, Will? Do you want him to be stuck there, or do you want to learn how to fight his way out of these things or to deal with them? To learn how to be the kind of person he wants to be, the kind of person he should be. Right. And my advice to these parents is never let Will off the hook. Yes. It's going to be unfair, and he's going to complain about that. Okay. And it's going to be harder for him than for the guy Connor, who sits next to him, who gets everything like that. In my history as headmaster and as a teacher, I've been far, far more proud of the students who have made it through and reached heights that they never thought they could reach and that their parents have never thought they could reach. And by the way, in my experience, it's most often the parents who keep them from reaching those heights. What I want is for them to understand. And I say this, you know, bring up this question of Plato. Plato is talking about us living in a world of shadows. This is a difficult world. We're not going to make it perfect. We're not going to make it utopian. And the best thing we can do for these kids is to teach them with confidence, to teach them through encouragement to reach those highest levels that they can reach. One of our fundraisers up at the college always tells me that the best donors at Hillsdale College are the alumni, are C students. Because the students who went through Hillsdale College and graduated with a C are the ones who fought tooth and nail to get that C. But the ones who got it like that, A plus students, all the time, they don't appreciate Hillsdale like the C students. And I believe that in my heart that, again, I am more proud of those students who suffered and fought their way through than those who got it so easily. When I was headmaster for 16 years, what, we had about a dozen young men who were autistic. We were not able to deal with the autism that was extreme, okay? But on the upper more, you know, the autism that allowed us and these students to function we always made it work. They love those students, tended to love the math and science and hate the humanities and philosophy. Too messy, right? But we always made it work. And just so proud of those people. Yes, we live in a world of shadows. Plato also said that the object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. Okay? To rise to love what is beautiful, what is good. We have this quote in our school at Hillsdale Academy of Plutarch's quote, that education is to teach what is beautiful. And then a moral and virtuous question. You should not honor men more than truth. If something is true, if something is right and good, follow that, okay? If someone puts pressure on you not to. If someone tells you, well, you should do this bad thing, because I know better. Don't honor men more than you should honor the truth. And then finally, as with Socrates, Plato encourages these young people to seek the good. And all of these things, I'm telling you, I've talked with them about them, with third and fourth graders, and they get it, they understand it, they're not ignorant, okay? Very important. Aristotle, Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great. And of course you can go back to the biography and say, look, Alexander the Great had probably the most famous philosopher and teacher of the age, Aristotle. Now there's also a story in Plutarch that Aristotle poisoned Alexander. I'm not going to get into that. You can read that when you read Plutarch. Alexander studied bio, excuse me. Aristotle studied biology, music, poetry, politics, all of these things that we're introducing, introducing to the students. And he said, the high minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. Another great message to give to kids, to stand by that which is good and true and beautiful and not necessarily what people think. And then finally to seek the good. Also I tell these third and fourth graders that Aristotle is the one who gave us the foundations for the study of science, the study of particular things. That is what Aristotle gave and laid the foundations for the scientific method. And third and fourth graders are a little more struggling to wrap their heads around that. But we have to, of course, do more than just the trivium. We have to approach the quadrivium. And Aristotle helps us to get after that. Politics. I talked a lot about politics this morning earlier, but this is also from Polybius and again related to the Roman Republic. It is the people who bestow office on the deserving, the noblest regard of virtue in a state. The people have the power of approving or rejecting laws. And what is most Important of all, they deliberate on the question of war and peace. Further, in the case of alliances, terms of peace and treaties, it is the people who ratify all these or the reverse. Thus, here again, one might plausibly say that the people's share in the government is the greatest and that the Constitution is a democratic one. If I ask the third and fourth grader, should they have a say in whether or not a group goes to war? Should they have a say in how the government operates? Of course they're going to say, yeah, I should be able to say something like that. I should be able to vote on that. And so beginning to help them to begin to. To understand citizenship, and then relate that to the philosophers and the idea of being a wise, a good citizen in the way that you operate in your society, the way you treat other people, what you vote for or don't vote for, the kind of leaders that you want. You know, I ask the question, when we talk about politics to these young people, why should people have the vote? And quite often they'll say, well, because I'm a human being and I should be able to vote. It's like, right, okay, natural rights. The rights of the human person to be a citizen and to participate in society. Finally, I mentioned maps, and I didn't give any examples to maps. I love maps. Always use maps in history and in teaching young people. And when we're talking about Western civilization, I think it's really important for them, in their mind, to have an understanding of where on earth these things happened. When I was at Harvard University back in the day, and this was in the day of the Iraq wars, there was a survey on campus, some guy going around with a map, trying to get people to show him on that map where the Persian Gulf was at. Less than 40% of the Harvard students could identify the Persian Gulf on a map. And those are the most educated, apparently. Believe me, I've been there. It's not true, but I guess I'm an example. But it is important, I think, for them spatially and in terms of learning geography, an understanding of where is Greece, where is Italy, where are these places? And if we're talking about Western civilization, of course Europe and England and the United States, but all of the world. One thing I like to show students is the age of what we call European imperialism. You hear all about colonialism and stuff today, right? What you have to understand is that there were many empires. There was an empire in India. There was an empire in China. There was the Ottoman Empire in the Middle east, against which the Europeans were competing. So it's not like the Europeans invented colonialism and empires. A map, just one good look at a map, say, in the 16th century A.D. teaches you all of that, that this is a worldwide competition. Now, the Europeans happened to win it, and we could talk about the good or the evil of that, right? I have some very strong opinions about that. But it is important to understand that I think maps can give you that geography, that space, that understanding of where in history these things are happening and where are they living. Wait a minute. You mean that Hillsdale, Michigan, wasn't part of all this history? Sorry. Well, then why should I be concerned about it? Right. If it's not my neighborhood, why should I be concerned about it? Because you are influenced, affected by all of this history that has gone before and all of this geography that's gone before. I had a young lady, Ms. Jigelski, very smart, very smart, very opinionated, and it was always great. She used to sit with me and have lunch, and we'd have great conversations. And she said, you teach history, right? I said, yeah. And she said, I don't like history if it's not about me. I said, okay. I said, first of all, that's really honest, and thank you for telling me that. That's good. Okay. What about your parents? Oh, well, yeah, I want to know. And I know you love your grandma. What about your grandparents? Well, yeah. Yeah. I said, well, now you're getting into history. And there are people who made them who they are and people who made them who they are, right? On and on and on and on. And so, you know, to really draw them in. And as I think about it, she was in the third grade at that time, so. All right. Thank you. Questions?
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If you enjoyed this lecture, we encourage you to Visit our website, k12hillsdale.edu, for additional information on upcoming Hoagland center events and other free resources for educators.