A Thematic Approach to Teaching History

Teacher: "In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two..."

Students: “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

A typical U.S. history course might begin this way, with the teacher calling out a familiar phrase from the students’ elementary education, and the students responding in rote fashion. As the course progresses, the teacher moves through the content chronologically, often starting with the colonial period and ending with the Cold War, centering presidential elections and wars as pivotal events. In early spring, as the class begins its study of the European and Pacific theaters of World War II, one young student in the front row raises their hand to regale the class with their limitless knowledge of WWII battlefield tactics while the rest of the class sits and wonders, “Why do I need to know this?"

Before each unit exam, students file through stacks of flashcards with terms like Louisiana Purchase, Emancipation Proclamation, the Great Depression, and Mutually Assured Destruction in black marker on the front. History teachers, being the creative, inspiring professionals we are, try to counter this collective ennui by incorporating historical simulations, lively discussions, and provocative debates. These attempts at engagement might temporarily raise the level of student participation, but we are often disheartened to find that our students still struggle to see why the information we are teaching is something they should learn.

We believe a more fundamental shift in the way we teach history needs to occur for our students to be truly engaged and see how U.S. history is relevant to their own lives. A genuine interest in the subject can make students stronger learners—when they engage and see the relevance of events in the past, they think critically about it; their brains are ripe for skill development. Moving from simple rote memorization to requiring students to meaningfully connect historical concepts, people, and events using patterns of comparison, causation, and elements of continuity and change over time is more valuable and useful to them overall.

After years of reflection, we abandoned our traditional, chronological approach in favor of teaching history thematically. We organized the course and each unit around central themes designed to capture students’ interest and ensure our curriculum was inclusive and relevant to all our diverse students, a challenge we found increasingly more difficult to overcome with a chronological approach. We have created this book to help teachers understand why teaching history thematically is beneficial for student learning and to guide you through the process of creating your own thematic history course.

Of course, there are some benefits to teaching history chronologically. Our students learn the arc of U.S. history. Moving from the American Revolution to the Civil War, from the American Industrial Revolution through two world wars, ending with the geopolitical conflicts of the Cold War and the era of globalization allows students to easily anchor events in time and place. Students can see the influence of one historical event on another. Progressing through the 1930s and 1940s chronologically, for example, helps students understand how the United States’ industrial support of the Allied Powers during World War II pulled the United States from the depths of the Great Depression.

Additionally, history textbooks support a chronological approach. We have yet to see a high school–level textbook organized around thematic units. If your school, district, or state has content standards you are required to cover, they are certainly arranged chronologically. Finally, history teachers such as yourselves were likely taught history chronologically. If you are a veteran teacher, you have probably been teaching chronologically your entire career—you have a familiarity and comfort level with this approach and may be nervous to try something new.

Despite these benefits, the traditional chronological approach to teaching history does not always facilitate engagement in the subject matter. History often becomes a string of dates, events, and names that students are required to memorize without much understanding of why they need to know that material or how it may be relevant to their lives today. Most events are given a cursory examination because the teacher feels the need to keep moving through the content to get through the course of study or content standards, leaving little time for the students to dive into topics of interest and explore pieces of history that they connect with. This lack of engagement can make it difficult for a teacher to help students develop skills of critical thinking, reading comprehension, and argumentative writing because the students simply do not have a connection to the material.

Additionally, a chronological approach does not foster a culturally relevant and inclusive classroom. Our students have witnessed a cultural reckoning. Social media, streaming documentaries, TV shows, podcasts, books, and news outlets are creating a greater awareness of the experiences of a much more diverse community. Yet in most history textbooks, the lives, experiences, and contributions of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community are given relatively little coverage, relegating them to the last few pages in each chapter or pulling them out of the dominant narrative entirely, with snippets of their experiences briefly described in separate blue or yellow boxes in the textbook margins.

Textbooks tend to center the experiences of those with formal political power over grassroots activists throughout history, emphasizing the individual contributions of the former and generalizing the latter. But our students are diverse in culture, language, gender, ancestry, and economic background. They want, and deserve, to see themselves reflected in the history they are learning. They want to learn about those who have been left out of history textbooks, uncovering contributions of people like them. Even when current events are brought into the classroom, they are often given short shrift as teachers race through hundreds of years of historical content. Rarely are students able to make connections between past and present events in a chronological history class, resulting in a general lack of awareness of how their lives have been impacted by history.

Teaching history thematically, however, can be a much more engaging way to structure a course. When teachers are no longer confined by chronology, the study of history becomes less about memorizing seemingly random dates and events and more about tracing particular ideas and movements across periods of time. Rather than a brief mention of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in the midst of the WWI unit, leaving students to think women’s suffrage just happened out of the blue, students can trace the roots of the suffrage movement from Abigail Adams’ letters to her husband, John, during the revolutionary era, through the Seneca Falls Convention, the disputes over who had the right to vote after the Civil War, the picketing and hunger strikes in the early 1900s, to the eventual ratification of the amendment in 1920.

Imagine how much more interested students will be when they have a fuller understanding of historical concepts and do not feel like they are just terms they need to memorize for a test. There remains a sense of chronological order here, only more selective and in accordance with a unifying theme. The relevance of this focus on women’s suffrage can readily be engaged through current events as well. Have students consider efforts at voter suppression or the continued fight for economic equality today and how these efforts tie into the movement of women and their allies across the country’s history. In addition, this deeper dive into the content also allows students more opportunities to practice the historical thinking skills we value in our courses: understanding contextualization, recognizing the cause-and-effect relationship between events, and identifying continuity and change over time. Students can think much more critically about the events we teach when they have a broader understanding of their place in history.

We instruct our students at a unique point in their lives, when they are exploring their own political values and beliefs and developing as civic-minded, passionate young adults. They are paying close attention to major world and U.S. events that are unfolding before them. They want to know why things are the way they are and how we got here. Teaching thematically facilitates the connection between past and present events as it gives teachers the flexibility to start in the modern era. Themes can be built around current events, making the present day the foundation for the course where students dive into the past to uncover how we got here, creating a much more relevant experience for our students. They can see how history impacts their world today, giving them a much greater appreciation for the study of history.

Additionally, a thematic approach is much more conducive to creating an inclusive classroom for all students. Rather than following the dominant narrative in the textbook, teachers can create themes that allow students to see themselves represented in the curriculum. If you have been teaching for some time, you have probably heard your students ask questions like: “How come we only learned about immigrants from European countries?” or “Weren’t Native Americans enslaved also?” or “What happened to the people living in the territories the United States colonized?”

Essentially, the “Why haven’t we been taught about [fill in the blank]?” question is one that most history teachers wrangle with, especially if they stick closely to the textbook. The fill-in-the-blank piece usually refers to traditionally marginalized voices that have been left out of the classroom. A thematic approach allows the teacher to center the class around these voices, providing mirrors for students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum and windows through which students can learn about people with backgrounds different from their own.

Not only does a thematic approach benefit students, it also makes our job as a teacher much more enjoyable. Teachers can create themes that draw upon their own interests, as well as their students’ interests: art, economics, social justice, literature, sports. Bringing our own passions into the classroom keeps us engaged and helps bring history to life for our students. Students know when teachers are excited about what they teach, and that excitement is contagious. If we love what we are teaching, our students will be all in, ready to uncover the past with us.

Excerpt from: Teaching Beyond the Timeline: Engaging Students in Thematic History by China Harvey and Lisa Herzig. Copyright © 2024 by China Harvey and Lisa Herzig. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. Reprinted by permission of the Publisher. All rights reserved.