Teacher Enthusiasm

I have found from my experience that lots of students dislike history. They find memorizing people, events and dates boring and uninteresting. Being a history major, and possibly a future history teacher, I often wonder what made me love history as much as I do. I was never one of those kids who knew all the presidents, or could name all the generals in the Civil War; history has not always been one of my passions. But looking back on my years in high school, most of my favorite teachers taught social studies. It was in my social studies classes that I enjoyed learning the most and was interested in more than just getting an A. And it was those teachers who I could tell absolutely loved the subject they were teaching. They had so much passion and got so excited every day about what we were learning in class. I remember my AP US history teacher, Mr. Keir who always had history stories that couldn't be found in the textbook. It was obvious that he loved history so much and brought that energy into the classroom. I looked forward to going to his class every day because I knew he was going to make history enjoyable for me. Another class I loved because of the teacher was economics. I had no idea what to expect from economics class, but it ended up being my favorite class senior year of high school. My teacher, Mr. Stanke loved teaching high school economics more than anything in the world. He never stopped learning; he was always taking classes to learn more about economics. Economics class wasn't just about learning the material from the textbook, but we did projects to apply it to real world circumstances. Students can see the passion in teachers. A class cannot be enjoyable unless the teacher absolutely loves what they are teaching, and passes that enthusiasm onto their students.