sarah dillard

What High School History Could Be: Delivering on Ambition

What High School History Could Be: Delivering on Ambition

High school history has a yawning gap between its ambition and its execution.

Ask people what the point of history education is, and they will give you big idea answers like understanding the American story, motivating civic participation, and safeguarding our democracy.

But then show up to a typical high school history class, and it's just textbooks, lectures, and temporary memorization. There’s a fundamental mismatch between aims and means.

In this piece we explore what history education is today, what it could be, and how it can change.

Alumni Profile: “I’m currently working full-time at the Sierra Club while attending school full-time."

Alumni Profile: “I’m currently working full-time at the Sierra Club while attending school full-time."

When I met McKenna when she was in high school, she was learning Chinese, building a robotic hand, and working as a mortician’s assistant. Her final Kaleidoscope project examined death rituals across cultures.

She was fascinating then, and she’s fascinating now. I hope you enjoy this profile as much as I enjoyed coffee with McKenna.

5 tips for Teaching Large Classes Online

5 tips for Teaching Large Classes Online

As part of a new partnership with the Rise Fellowship, we’ve recently gone from running classes with a maximum of 10 students to classes four or five times that size. At these sizes, we had to create new ways of interacting, which, honestly, is fun for us! We love innovating on online pedagogy. Today we’re sharing five things that have worked for us as we've supersized our classes: