This blog was originally posted on May 5, 2022. We rerun it today to spotlight teacher Ginny Boles!<\/em><\/p>\n Ginny Boles needed to build her content knowledge in American history. Paradoxically, her love of this history had led her to major in classics as an undergraduate at UCLA, so as to read the Latin and Greek texts the Founding Fathers read as they formulated their plans for self-government. Now, having taught social studies for two years at\u00a0Oakcrest School<\/a>\u00a0in Vienna, Virginia\u2014an independent girls\u2019 school in the Catholic tradition\u2014she knew what she didn\u2019t know. She needed more knowledge to answer students\u2019 questions. She hoped to study part-time while continuing to teach.<\/p>\n Living in Northern Virginia, she thought she had options. George Washington University, Georgetown, American University, and even the University of Virginia offer Masters programs on campuses in the District of Columbia. Investigating them, she discovered what is true of most MA programs in history: the courses were scheduled during her teaching day, and the curriculum emphasized methodology, to prepare students for PhD research.<\/p>\n Boles had hoped for in-depth seminar discussions on the eras of history she\u2019d never studied. Discouraged, she almost enrolled in Gilder Lehrman\u2019s program, which is built primarily around recorded online lectures by prominent scholars. \u201cBut they paused the program, right when I was ready to start, so I was left without any good option.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, in the same week, two different people told her about the\u00a0Master of Arts in American History and Government program (MAHG)<\/a>. A teacher friend in Pittsburgh came back from a week in the summer residential MAHG program, having audited a course on Lincoln. \u201cThis seminar I just took was amazing,\u201d the friend said. \u201cIt\u2019s at Ashland University, and they offer a Masters.\u201d Next, her father called. After a busy career in law, he had reduced his practice and taken up teaching history at the high school Boles graduated from in Pasadena, California. He\u2019d just returned\u00a0 from a multi-day Teaching American History seminar at the Reagan Library, led by Professor John Moser. \u201cThis organization offers amazing professional development!\u201d he said. \u201cThey also offer a Masters, at Ashland University.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen I got on Ashland\u2019s website,\u201d Boles said. \u201cAs soon as I read about MAHG, I realized, \u2018This is designed for me! And it\u2019s been the best experience ever. I recommend it to any history teacher I know who\u2019s looking for a Masters.\u201d<\/p>\n She has enjoyed both the online and on-campus experience. \u201cMAHG\u2019s WebEx seminars pretty well simulate in-person seminar classes. But I loved going to Ashland and seeing people I had \u2018met\u2019 on the screen. You could bond over having been with someone for those WebEx sessions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She has also enjoyed the hours of private study. \u201cI love being able to say: \u2018Oh, sorry. I have to go do my reading right now.\u2019\u201d The readings fascinate her, and they have changed her teaching.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first two years teaching American history were fun, but a little bit rough. I was like every new teacher tackling a new course, barely learning enough at night to teach it the next day. Then one of my high school juniors would raise a hand and ask a good question. I had to say: \u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019ll check and get back to you.\u201d But there was never time to research extra things!\u201d<\/p>\n After several MAHG courses, she found she had answers. \u201cLast year, my students were asking questions about the daily experience of enslaved people and the attitudes of slaveholders. I could say, \u2018I\u2019ve read these letters and memoirs. I think I can answer that.\u2019 I became a lot more knowledgeable and more confident.\u201d<\/p>\n Beginning the program, she lacked the content knowledge of many of her classmates, who had taught for years in public schools. These veteran teachers \u201care inspiring me to learn more and teach better.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Boles used primary source documents to a limited extent. This was not for lack of a model in teaching students how to read and discuss texts carefully. She began her teaching career at the Geneva School in Manhattan, where she taught the \u201cgreat books\u201d of Latin using a simple but effective approach called \u201cShared Inquiry\u201d (The method was pioneered at St. John\u2019s University and elaborated by the University of Chicago). She found that most MAHG professors applied a similar approach to primary documents.\u00a0\u201cMAHG classes are discussions grounded in texts.\u201d\u00a0The professor poses a question based on a document all have read. Teachers respond, using the text as evidence. Anyone offering an opinion based on their own experience or prior beliefs is reminded, \u201cwhere in the text do you find support for that?\u201d<\/p>\n Seminars conducted in this way teach \u201chow to disagree with others civilly.\u201d Since everyone shares the same piece of evidence, there are no arguments about unverifiable claims. Reading speeches, essays and letters on contrasting sides of a political issue of the past, MAHG students think through the logic of each perspective together. Students learn to \u201clisten closely, responding in their comments to what the person before them said.\u201d MAHG professors clarify confusing points\u2014but \u201ctheir own politics doesn\u2019t enter the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years into the MAHG program, Boles began to add more primary source documents to her courses. She now understood which documents illuminated the themes in history she most wanted to teach.<\/p>\n By then, the MAHG program had helped Boles define her teaching priorities.\u00a0MAHG faculty, drawn from universities across the country<\/a>, are about equally divided between historians and political theorists. The dual perspectives benefit both history and government teachers. \u201cI didn\u2019t really know the difference between the two when I began MAHG,\u201d Boles said. I asked my professors, and they explained it to me.\u201d While she took some \u201csuper helpful\u201d courses from historians who emphasized social history, she discovered that she was most drawn to political theory.<\/p>\n In Boles\u2019 judgement, all Americans need to ponder two questions: \u201c\u2018What is the role of government? And, \u2018What is required to create\u2014and then sustain\u2014a free republican government?\u2019 This has become my \u2018essential question\u2019 for all the courses I teach, whether it\u2019s sixth grade Ancient History, 11th grade American History or 12th grade Government and Modern World History.\u201d<\/p>\n Boles does not teach AP courses at Oakcrest; she teaches students more inclined to take AP courses in math and science. Without the pressure to cover everything that might appear on the AP exam, she can choose events and topics centered on her theme. The first part of her American history course covers the development of self-governing traditions in the colonial period; the Revolution; the first framework for national government, the Articles of Confederation; and the lasting framework developed at the Constitutional Convention.<\/p>\n Then she moves to the controversy over \u201cnullification.\u201d Americans rebelled against the tyranny of George III, and after winning independence worked to create a government that would not fall back into tyranny. But by 1830, some complained that a tyrannous northern majority were imposing tariffs on a southern minority. Boles assigns excerpts of the\u00a0debates between Senator Daniel Webster (MA) and Senator Robert Hayne (SC)<\/a>;\u00a0Andrew Jackson\u2019s 1832 proclamation repudiating South Carolina\u2019s Ordinance of Nullification<\/a>; and an exchange of letters between Hayne and the elderly James Madison, who\u2019d written the 1798 Virginia Resolutions in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Madison had claimed the right of a state to \u201cinterpose\u201d when Congress overstepped its Constitutional authority.<\/p>\n \u201cHayne sent his speeches to Madison,\u201d asking him to confirm his arguments in favor of states\u2019 rights. \u201cMadison\u2019s letter back says, \u2018You\u2019re completely wrong.\u2019\u201d Students discuss whether Madison\u2019s thinking on state sovereignty and federal authority changed, or Haynes\u2019 and John C. Calhoun\u2019s opinions diverged from the founder\u2019s position. \u201cI love this exchange\u2014and I learned of it through MAHG,\u201d Boles says.<\/p>\n Having considered \u201cthe nature of the union\u201d apart from \u201cthe obvious moral element of slavery,\u201d Boles\u2019 students see the states\u2019 rights claims made by slave-holding secessionists at the outset of the Civil War with greater clarity. \u201cLincoln\u2019s First Inaugural<\/a>\u00a0takes on\u201d\u2014and demolishes, Boles says, \u201cevery single argument the secessionists make.\u201d Later, she presents the Progressive challenge to constitutional provisions \u201cthat the founders saw as protections against tyranny. The Progressives had a completely different view of government\u2019s role.\u201d<\/p>\n To complete her degree requirements for MAHG, Boles is writing a thesis. (Many MAHG students opt instead to take four more course credits, for a total of thirty-two, and a cumulative exam.) The MAHG program invites teachers to write on the questions they most need to answer. Boles will write on the Progressive critique of the founding. \u201cDid the founders establish a government that protects only individualism? Or did they see their limited government taking care of the common good?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEverything we\u2019re asked to do in MAHG can be transferred to my teaching,\u201d Boles says. \u201cIt\u2019s demanding but doable for someone teaching full time. It is also really fun!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nA Program Designed for Working Teachers<\/h2>\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nHow MAHG Builds Content Knowledge and Confidence<\/h2>\n
Learning through Text-Based Discussions<\/h2>\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nMAHG Helps Teachers Define Their Priorities<\/h2>\n
Little-Known Documents that Illuminate Big Issues<\/h2>\n
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Thesis Work that Answers Important Questions<\/h2>\n