An Interview With Mr. Miskimon
What do you teach?
I mainly teach Honors Modern World History, and I’m also one of the Advanced Placement United States History teachers.
Why do you think it’s important to teach students about history?
When you study the past, you tend to get a feel for kind of an understanding of what’s going on today. You know often times things will happen and students will know that it’s big and that it’s important but they won’t necessarily understand like what’s going on without kind of the context of history.
What is your favorite era to teach?
I mostly teach Honors Modern World History and actually what I find to be the most interesting to teach is some of the current issues. Second half of the year we’re looking at different parts of the world and we’re kind of exploring current events, so I really enjoy that. The students, you know it’s not just something that happened hundreds of years ago or thousands of years ago. They see it and they say “oh yeah I saw that in the news” or “I heard about that”.
If you could change anything about history what would you change? Why would you change that?
That’s a tough question. I don’t know if I would change anything. Obviously there’s a lot of things that have happened in the past that are horrible. But you know you have the age old sci-fi elite that you change one thing and it ruins everything. But there’s always gonna be bad things in history, I think it’s more important just to kind of study them and learn from them, so that they don’t repeat and happen again.
What historical figure inspires you the most? Why?
I think often times that the key figures in history, the celebrities they’re important but what I’ve found actually in my studies of history but also in teaching it is that the people that you don’t know, the common people. When you get a chance to look at primary source material from them and to get a feel for the fact that they experienced these events even though they weren’t in a prominent position, they weren’t presidents or generals, but they were kind of key figures. That that offers sometimes, the most inspiration because they’re regular people but they’re a big part of why things happened in the past.
What made you want to teach history? Please explain.
I always loved the subject. Going back to my childhood, I remember going to civil war battlefields with my grandfather. I also grew up overseas in Germany cause my dad was in the military. So I actually lived for a good nine years of my childhood in Europe. So I got a chance with my family to kind of travel all across Europe and to experience that history as well. So I think that probably shaped my interest in the subject and as I was going to college I knew I was gonna major in that and I had to figure what I could do to make a living for it so I then decided to go into education as well.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Most my free time’s taken up with my own children. I have a ten year old and an eight year old. I’m usually helping them out with their schoolwork or coaching basketball or soccer or doing things with them, traveling with them and my wife.
What is a message you would like to tell the readers?
Give history a chance. It’s an exciting subject if you get a teacher that tries to make it interesting and tries to make it relevant. Really pay attention because of all of the stuff that’s happening in the world right now, the crazy things that are happening, especially in our country. Those are things that are gonna be in the history books in the future. When the readers grow up and have their own children, they’re gonna be able to say “hey I remember when I was in high school and all this stuff was going on.”
