Increasingly, Ph.D. graduates are pursuing careers outside the academy–in the federal government, at museums and public history sites, in university administration, and at higher education consulting firms. Still, Ph.D. graduates rarely become high school teachers. According to one study, only two of the nearly 500 doctoral recipients surveyed taught at the secondary level. Joshua Hevert, who received his doctorate from the Department in 2016, is in this minority. He teaches history at Cotton Valley Early College High School outside of El Paso, Texas.
Hevert believes that many Ph.D. recipients would be a perfect fit for a high school history classroom. “No one can teach primary source analysis better than someone who has been through the rigor of a Ph.D. program,” Hevert said. “It’s really a natural transition to translate your experience as a teaching assistant into the K-12 classroom. You just have to accept that the way you teach the class will be radically different.”
When it comes to curriculum development, Hevert’s public school offers more flexibility than most. As an early college high school, Cotton Valley works in partnership with the local community college, where Hevert also adjuncts to supplement his public school teacher’s salary. Students at Cotton Valley pursue a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in parallel, which means that some of the courses Hevert teaches earn his students both high school and college credit.
Unlike many historians who work at colleges or universities, Hevert has few opportunities to engage his own field of study in the classroom. A former advisee of Brett Whalen, Hevert wrote a dissertation entitled “Orthodoxy Abroad: John XXII and Global Christendom,” in which he examined fourteenth-century Christian missionaries’ efforts to spread their faith beyond Europe. Today, he teaches introductory United States and world history.
The content of these dual-credit classes is similar to the introductory history classes that students take at UNC, according to Hevert. While Hevert’s high school students are prepared for the intellectual rigor of a college course, Hevert incorporates different approaches in the classroom. “High schools want you to be more a facilitator of learning than the sage on the stage, imparting lecture knowledge,” Hevert said. “When I started teaching I was told to run my courses like a college class. But a college class often consists of lecture, a couple of papers, and a test. In high school you need to do things that are student-driven, rather than teacher-driven. There’s a lot more support that you have to give the students.”
According to Hevert, higher education has much to learn from K-12 pedagogy. One example is the flipped classroom model that has become popular at colleges and universities in recent years. According to this model, students learn the historical context through assignments, and they spend their time in the classroom working on primary source analysis. In a K-12 classroom, this approach is “just everyday,” Hevert explained. “Outside of education schools, higher education is playing catch-up in some ways.”
To account for the differences in K-12 and higher education pedagogy, Hevert suggests that Ph.D. graduates pursuing careers in secondary education go through a state credentialing process, even if it’s not required. For example, when Hevert first entered a high school classroom, he didn’t realize that students would need help learning literacy, not just history. “Especially if you are in an area of low socio-economic status, you have to be a literacy teacher. There are gaps–big gaps–and learning how to teach literacy pays dividends.” He has completed the state credentialing process and has been reading books in literacy pedagogy.
Having the tools to teach literacy is especially important in Hevert’s school district, which is located near the border between the United States and Mexico. Many of Hevert’s students are not native English speakers, and 30-40% are DACA recipients, he estimates.
For Hevert, learning how to teach literacy has paid off. “It’s so rewarding that way, and you get those lightbulb moments more often, too. They’re learning words. They’re learning how to discuss complex ideas. They’re learning the historical context.”