Gabe Atkinson

Interview 1 Transcript and Reflection

January 31, 2020

Professor Kane

Notes from the Interview with Patrick Kellam, a professor of American History at Appalachian State

University

General Notes About Professor Kellam

He studies primarily post-WWII American history

He generally studies the politics of post WWII America

He is a political historian as opposed to a cultural or a social historian

He finds that military history is the biggest facet of history that is studied

Communication in the Discourse Community

Face to face is better because it allows you to express your ideas and your thoughts clearer

Email is becoming more and more prevalent due to the efficiency and the convenience

He has seen a change in the discourse as email becomes bigger and bigger

More and more people and archives are shifting away from physical copies of texts

This is forcing archives to go online, where you can access anything you want at a minutes notice

Professor Kellam’s Experience in the Educational Field

There is no such thing as too many questions as long as they stay on topic

Uses silence as a means to motivate higher level students to be quiet when they get out of control

“Silence is an excellent motivator”

This forces the students to take responsibility for their noise and to quiet down

However, this would never work in anything younger than a high school as the students aren’t

mature enough for this

 Myths in US History

When correcting the myths, don’t alienate the person spreading the myth

Provide reasoning for why they could be thinking this way and then correct them

If you alienate them, then they won’t want to learn from you

Leave room for different interpretations of history, as it is too big to simply prove

The phrase “prove it” has a lot of power when it comes to fact checking someone

Specify, don’t generalize

Reflection

My interview with Professor Kellam went very smoothly and organically. I had been in his

American History class the prior semester, so I already knew who he was and we had a pretty decent

relationship. When I walked into his office we had a minute of small talk and then launched right into the

interview, where I first explained the project and then let him answer some questions. He gave me some

very good examples and some very good things to think about as I go forward in my pursuit to becoming

a history teacher, but the one that stuck with me the most was about letting students have responsibility.

He let me know that giving students some responsibility in the classroom was the best way to lead them

and to have a mutual respect between the teacher and the students. I learned a lot from Professor Kellam

and will definitely take a lot fo what he said to heart as I forge ahead in the path to becoming a teacher.