What advice would you give to a high school student
considering becoming a teacher?
My advice to any person considering education as a career
path is to work with children of different ages consistently
throughout your time in high school and college. Finding
your specific age group is a very important aspect to
teaching. I knew middle school was the age division that I
felt passion for because I was able to work at summer camps,
learning centers and coached volleyball. The students feed
off of your energy and excitement for your content. If you
don’t feel passion for your subject, your students won’t
either.
In what ways did UK prepare you for your first year as a
teacher?
One of the best aspects of my time spent at UK was the
amount of time I was able to be within the classroom with
supportive and knowledgeable cooperating teachers. UK has
amazing connections with the surrounding counties, which
allows their students to learn and teach with experienced
and dedicated teachers. I was able to enter my first year
of teaching with a sound knowledge of my content and
teaching practices and a confidence in my abilities instilled in
me by the support of my professors.
Any particular classes or professors that made a
difference/impact for you?
One professor that made a huge impact on my time
at UK was Dr. Margaret Rintamaa. Not only is she the
coordinator of the Middle School Program, she also teaches
you and mentors you throughout your entire time within the
program. She challenged me during my observed lessons to
show my personality within my classroom, and to not only
see myself as a teacher, but also as someone who invests in
and motivates children and their interests.
How do you hope to use your career to make an impact?
My hope for my career is that I will teach students to not
only enjoy their education, but to push themselves further
than they thought they could achieve. I also hope to pursue
a Master’s in Educational Administration and continue to
support and mentor students as an associate principal within
a middle school.
Levstik contributes to prestigious books
Over the course of her career, Dr. Linda S.
Levstik’s research has focused on students’ historical
thinking in national and international contexts,
leading to invitations to review research in her field.
Most recently, she contributed chapters to the
prestigious “Handbook of Research on Learning
and Instruction” and the “International Handbook
of History Education” (co-authored with Stephen J.
Thornton). Levstik is a professor in the Department Levstik
of Curriculum and Instruction and recipient of
the Jean Dresden Grambs Distinguished Career
Research Award from the National Council for the Social
Studies (2007).
Levstik’s research has been published in a number of
journals in the United States and internationally and has
been translated into several different languages. One of her
books, “Doing History,” (Routledge, 2015), coauthored with
professor Keith C. Barton, is now in its fifth edition.
In addition to invited publications, Levstik continues to
pursue two strands of research related to history education:
archaeology education and children’s literature as social
education.
“The rise of a literature specifically targeting child readers
is a significant if often overlooked piece of a larger historical
pattern in which contending cultural groups attempt to
control the words and worlds available to different groups
within and between societies,” Levstik said.
She has examined the work of Olive Beaupré Miller,
author/editor from 1919-1954 of “My Book House for
Children,” a mass-marketed series of books offering
children’s classic literature graded from infancy to secondary
school.
COE COMMUNICATOR | APRIL 2016
“The books encapsulate a struggle that persists to
the present regarding the extent to which children
should be exposed to the history of a deeply divided
world or offered a literary refuge from cultural
storms,” Levstik said. “These books illuminate the
challenges of envisioning a tolerant, cosmopolitan
world for children in an increasingly pluralist
democracy, then and now.”
For more than a decade, Levstik has collaborated
with Dr. A. Gwynn Henderson (Kentucky
Archaeological Survey) to analyze the impact of
archeological inquiry on students’ historical thinking. Their
two most recent publications argue for the importance of
material culture/artifacts in helping correct misconceptions
regarding the power of human intelligence, innovation and
agency over time.
“In the context of archaeological inquiry, students moved
from dismissing people in the past as ignorant and largely
powerless in the world to recognizing the intelligence,
innovation and agency that allowed them to survive and
adapt to massive change over time,” Levstik said.
Reports of this research have been presented and
published internationally as well as in the U.S. Edutopia, a
website run by the Lucas Foundation, published a portion of
this work in 2014.
Most recently one study has appeared internationally
in the book “New Avenues for Research and Practice in
History, Geography, and Civics,” edited by M.A. Ethier
and E. Mottet, as well as another in press in the U.S., in the
journal of Advances in Archaeological Practice.
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