Answering Questions That Matter to Me: Primary Sources in the Community College Classroom

I structure my classes around a series of case studies and, over the term, I ask students to build insights about how history is written, debated, and understood through these case studies. I want them to see that history is not a collection of facts, but rather an approach to interpreting and understanding the past. In this presentation, I will discuss primary source selection. I will focus on my work helping students find material that is interesting, not because it answers questions that others have about history, but because it will help them answer questions they have about the world.