Eleven years ago, I was a nervous graduate teaching assistant on my way to one of my first discussion sections of “Global History Since 1500” at the College of William and Mary. As I sat down in front of the students who I had only known a short time, I could feel in the pit of my stomach that they would not understand the point I wanted them to take away as we compared impressionist art to the changes of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. I felt certain they would not see what I had excitedly noted in my own work—that the attention to brushstrokes and the obvious evidence of the work of the painter in the paintings reflected the interest in “process” and “production” of the new world of the factory. Yet, I was surprised to find that when presented with the evidence (and gentle Socratic questioning), I watched each of them make and share the connection. The sense of excitement and reward I felt in that moment is what has called me back to teaching ever since.

Nine years ago, I was PhD ABD, had passed all my comprehensive exams and was afforded the opportunity to take a year off from my teaching at William and Mary to head into the warm and dusty archives to work on my dissertation. Yet, I felt the pull of the classroom. Where the idea of being paid simply to think and research had once appealed to me, I now found that I wanted more than anything to keep talking with those students and keep helping them make those visible and wonderful connections in their thinking. I petitioned the Dean of Graduate Studies to take a year off and applied to full-time teaching jobs at high schools across the Mid-Atlantic. A year later, after a year at Oldfields School, I was able to confidently write to my advisors at William and Mary to tell them that I had found the work I needed to do and I would not be returning to graduate school.

Now that I have spent the last several years teaching everything from US History to International Politics to students from the 8th through the 12th grade, I can confidently say that this is the work I want to spend the rest of my life doing. As I have continued in this work, I have always been guided by the feeling I had in that discussion session on the impressionists. I continue to believe strongly that students are capable of more than we think. If we present them with the content and give them a gentle push in a carefully-constructed environment that encourages taking risks, they will bring insights that I continue to find surprising. My work in the classroom is therefore dedicated to creating the scaffolding that helps students take those risks. When students first enter my classroom, they might be quiet and unsure; discussion might be halting. Yet, with patience, my greatest pride is seeing students step off from the background knowledge they have carefully built to do the mental gymnastics they never thought they could.