Events

Honour Specialist History AQ (Queen’s, Fall 2023, Online)

October 2, 2023 to December 8, 2023

  • Category: AQ, Online
  • Region: Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, GTA, Northern Ontario, Outside Ontario, Southern Ontario
  • Topic: Canadian and World Studies
  • Grades: Intermediate (grades 7-10), Senior (grades 11-12)

Welcome to our journey through time. Never has history played a greater role on the world stage, although Herodotus might debate this observation. If we are the memory bearers for our society, then we have a challenging duty. Neil Postman remarks in Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979) that every teacher must be a history teacher. “To teach about the atom without Democritus, to teach political science without Aristotle or Machiavelli, to teach about music without Haydn, is to refuse our students access to The Great Conversation.” Will we play the judge or simply record what actually happened? Given Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, can we ever really know an event or personality?

In this Honour Specialist History course, candidates will explore leadership issues in various ways including independent reading and reflection. Candidates will work with colleagues in the class and participate in projects including a course culminating activity which is designed to synthesize learning from the course for application to teaching practice. The course is designed to promote strategies that support students’ conceptual development and enduring understandings.

This leadership course has been developed for teachers who already have a deep level of learning about subject content and pedagogy gained from practical teaching experience, professional reading and previous course work.

Topics in this course include:

  • Emerging historical research
  • Professional development opportunities
  • Technology and the learner
  • Effective leadershipWorking with and on teams
  • Communication skills
  • A culminating activity that asks you to imagine how high school history teaching might be reshaped.