Through my work with the Missouri Council for History Education and NCHE,  I have often heard history teachers lament that they rarely receive content specific professional development.  Meeting that need is difficult because teachers have so little time to pursue the types of professional development they desire.  

Although I have been retired for eight years, I remember my district PD days being filled with presentations on the educational fad of the day, often led by a consultant who seemed to think my colleagues and I had next to no teaching experience.   What I craved was PD that treated me like a professional and exposed me to new historical content or new methods for teaching historical thinking.   While I knew there were plenty of books available that could provide me with that type of information, the challenge remained that I had little time to pursue new learning while also planning lessons, grading papers, and doing all of the “other duties as needed” that come with being a teacher.

I shared that challenge with my friend, colleague, and now fellow podcaster, Eric Hahn, over coffee one afternoon.  He responded that he once met a scholar of Latin American history who, in just ten minutes, was able to identify three core concepts about neocolonialism in the region that all teachers should consider.  It was a light bulb moment!  Could we provide a podcast that allowed teachers to learn from leading historians in a short period of time?  Could we provide free, downloadable lessons aligned to the historian’s discussion?  The answer to both questions is yes.  

And so our podcast was born.  Our slightly irreverent title, S**t I Have to Teach in Twenty Minutes, emerged from an off-the-cuff suggestion at the same meeting.  It was just a working title until we shared it with teachers who responded with an emphatic “YES!”  Clearly, the title hit a nerve with their lived reality.

Each episode of the podcast features a short (15 minutes or so) interview with an historian who shares up to three important concepts about a specific topic or time period.  Connected to each episode are free, downloadable learning activities which Eric and I create to help teachers introduce those concepts in their classrooms.  We talk about those lessons in the last five minutes of the podcast.  Our first episode with Dr. Lorri Glover, a professor of colonial American history at St. Louis University,  provides a great example of how we try to bring important ideas to teachers in this short podcast format.  In just 15 minutes she brilliantly emphasized the need to carefully consider where to start a unit on colonial American history, the importance of multiple perspectives, and how primary sources can be used to learn more about the lives of people who often are not featured in traditional historical accounts. Eric and I developed lessons tailored to her suggestions:  one on where to start a unit on colonial America and one that uses fugitive slave ads to explore the lives of enslaved people in the colonial era.  We give a brief explanation of those lessons following the interview.

So, if you have 20 minutes and are interested in a conversation with a historian who wants to share their wisdom with you, we hope you will check out our podcast.  If you like it, please share it with others and send us an email at historyintwenty@gmail.com.