Ms. Fink is a new addition to Basis Peoria and she teaches history at both the high school and eighth-grade level. So we decided to interview her so we could get to know her better.
Some of the responses have been edited for clarity.
Jyothisree: The first question is what first sparked your interest in history?
Ms. Fink: That’s a very good question, so I will start with the idea that I hated history for almost all of my educational career. Except for when I was in tenth grade and had a world history teacher, Mr. Ryan, and he made it come alive for me. It was less like knowing dates and random boring facts and it was more like here’s the story of the world with people, real stories, and wars. Conflicts over religion, love, etc and it made it feel so much more alive you know. So that started it and it was all uphill from there.
Jyothisree: What made you realize you wanted to teach it (history)?
Ms. Fink: That’s a good one, when I was in school to be a teacher I was in line to go teach second grade: which encompasses all of the subjects you teach from English, science, and history. So I was gearing up to teach all of those things, and in my educational courses they were talking about the psychology of children that young and they had said one of the big things is that you can’t be sarcastic with students since their minds can’t understand it. Honestly, that was it, the change to secondary education so I wanted to teach sixth through twelfth just because of my sense of humor- I mean you know my style of teaching.
Jyothisree: Oh of course.
Ms.Fink: And so I switched and I wanted to pick the subject I loved most thanks to Mr. Ryan was history, so I switched my studies from there.
Jyothisree: So in your opinion what’s the most fascinating aspect of history?
Ms. Fink: This is such a big question but one I’m excited, about so I actually wrote one of my graduate papers on this it was all about sensory-based history and applying the five senses to history. So it is again not just the idea of the revolution and George Washington crossing the Delaware on this date at this time etc. it was about what would be the sights of the revolutionary war the sounds the smells the cannons going off, the explosions, the smell of gunpowder, the smoke filling the air. Hearing the cannons from a distance and trying to evacuate your family and putting yourself in the shoes of the people that experienced those different times and events. Not just the revolution but any event in world history so that’s my favorite part of studying it: empathizing and understanding.
Jyothisree: What do you think is the reason that kids tend to think that history is the most boring subject and in a lot of or most of the time they fail to engage with those classes?
Ms. Fink: That’s a really good question honestly it has a lot to do with the way that it is taught. It takes a lot of energy to teach a historical subject whatever it is um and it needs to be a special cut of person that does just like history but is in love with it and wants to share their passion for it with everyone else. A lot of times teachers who teach history know their subject they’re incredibly smart, they’re incredibly bright but they don’t have the tools to communicate the concept. I try my best to get excited about seemingly mundane things so that my students get excited about it so that when the light bulb goes on in the student’s eyes it’s the most rewarding thing on the planet like they all fall into line together.
Jyothisree: So what do you think is the best way to keep history engaging for students, in line with the paper you mentioned while keeping it standardized?
Ms. Fink: That’s a good question and one that is unfortunately limited by budgets so it’s a little bit unfortunate but I try to take pieces of the past and bring them into the classroom physically if I can. For example, when I was covering work war two with my eighth graders at my last school I was able to bring in, with permission of administration and everybody, a german machine gun bullet that was found on the beaches at Normandy and it had been drained of all of the gun powder and it was never shot. But, it was a remnant so as I’m describing how these people are storming the beaches at Normandy, and they are hearing their friends die next to them you see the hedgehogs next to you and the german snipers’ machine gun bullets you’re trying to just trudge through all this sand with a fifty-pound rucksack and all of it and so I bring in the machine gun bullet as- this is what pierced so many people and this is what killed so many people during that first invasion. Especially on that first invasion on Omaha beach so it’s something tangible, something they can hold it, smell it, they can’t really taste it. I did an exercise a while back where I took a rucksack and I filled it with a bunch of random stuff that roughly equated the weight to what a normal rucksack would have been. For the soldiers that would have been storming the beaches and they had to go through an obstacle course with that on so it was an opportunity for them to think it out like I’m not just walking on the beach on a nice summer day. No, it was- your going through obstacles, your weight down, and you’re trying not to get killed. I try to make it more tangible as much as I can.
Jyothisree: So what do you think of history being thought of as one of the most useless majors out there?
Ms. Fink: I think that is a big misconception, I really do and not just because of my own personal and very obvious bias. I think that history is one of the most important and I’m not negating any other subject I think they all work together flawlessly I do believe that history allows us to learn from so much in the past, not just to learn about. This is cool that these people did this, but to avoid major problems: how major political plans didn’t work. Communism and the spread of that, how the spread of it affected east Asian countries, and where has democracy worked and they tried x y z and learned from our mistakes and um I know that’s entrenched in; I’m sorry engraved in the concentration camps, it still stands in Europe. It still says that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it and it is a fear of mine then that we will eventually forget history and then somebody will try to do something awful again, so it teaches us in so many ways.
Jyothisree: Of course so with that do you think that there should be limitations on the things that are taught in history classrooms or not?
Ms. Fink: I think as far as chronologically goes, yes. Just because it is impossible for us to fit everything into it. But I don’t think it should be limited. I think that everyone should learn the good, the bad, the ugly. I can’t ignore history I can’t ignore the slavery just as much as I can ignore the amazing fights for freedom and fascism and world war two and as much as the bad is bad, the good is good so I think everyone should learn all of it.
Jyothisree: Pick three historical people you would want to sit down with and have dinner?
Ms. Fink: Oh no I think about this all the time. My number one is Alexander the Great since I admire his military tactics a lot so I love to know how he went through all of Europe. Alexander the Great is like my number one. Queen Victoria would be a wonderful one. She’s one of my favorite characters in history. She had a lot to stand up to and I think she handled it with nothing except perhaps grace. And I think maybe a third one I’m starting to think let’s go with Thomas Jefferson. I think he was able to work so well alongside people who would disagree with his political opinion and it sets a wonderful example that we should get along with people despite our differences.
Jyothisree: And that’s the end thank you again
Ms. Fink; Of course.
