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Beth Driehaus

Upper School History Teacher
B.A. History, Ohio University
M.A. Teaching of Social Studies, Columbia University/Teachers College

Teaching Philosophy

Important skills I want to teach my students

The guiding principle of my career has always been this dictate: History matters, and it can inform the impact we make on our world. As a teacher of history, I find that one of the most exciting, and yet most challenging, roles is the task of helping students understand that the past contextualizes the present. Indeed, my foremost responsibility in the classroom is to help students see that the problems and controversies of history present real opportunities to flex their critical thinking muscles and apply their conclusions to the contemporary. I also believe first-rate teaching dances on the knife’s edge of acknowledging that history has powerful connections to today, while also inculcating a love of the intellectual enterprise and ideas for their own sake. Therefore, my role is two-pronged, and it’s the tension between these two considerations that makes my job so much fun.

Teaching methods to reach these goals

While many of my assessments weave the contemporary into the history we study, I believe primary sources aid in the other side of the coin: ideas for their own sake. Primary sources like The Federalist Papers can provide a template for what sound argument looks like, and the issues they address allow kids to play with some of those historical ideas. And that, for me, is the most satisfying part of my job: watching primary documents render for students the very ideas that have propelled us this far.

My favorite projects

In our historical slavery unit, students learned about the different generations of slavery and all that accompanied them. Their tasks were to research and present examples of modern-day slavery, and most importantly, make specific connections to historical slavery. We then extended the learning further by looking at the tactics 19th-century abolitionists used in fighting this entrenched evil, with an eye toward applying those same tactics to protest the modern-day circumstances we learned about in our research. Some students opted for “moral suasion” and investigated websites where citizens could lodge their grievances against companies who employ slave-like conditions as well as websites that allowed students to create their own moral protests with art or commentary; other students decided to go the legalistic route and collect signatures for a petition imploring Congress to pass the 2009 Congo Conflict Minerals Act, a bill aimed at regulating the sale of minerals that contributed to human rights violations, such as child soldiers. My point was to demonstrate that history matters, and that it can inform the impact kids can make on their world.

What I like best about teaching at Seven Hills

There is so much to recommend this place! My students, who are so perceptive and bright, motivate me to bring my A-game to the classroom each day. But my colleagues are as much a reason for my affection toward Seven Hills as my students. My peers are my collaborators, my sounding boards, and my support system, and when I look around during faculty meetings, I can’t believe my good fortune that I’m able to spend my career with these amazing teachers.