#349 Teaching History Roundtable

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Teaching history to a middle schooler is a very different task than teaching a university student, but those doing the teaching have a lot in common (and could probably learn a lot from each other). In this episode, recorded as part of a live event sponsored by the Tennessee Council for History Education, Ben is joined by his MTSU colleague (and friend of the show) Andy Polk, 6^th grade teacher Rupa Charles, and high school teacher Brandon Eldridge, for a conversation about what it's like to teach history in 2025, the highs and lows of the profession, and what we wish those in our communities knew about the work we do to better our students' lives.

A special thanks to Kira Duke at TNCHE for organizing this event and to Will Ackerman at Metro Nashville Public Schools for handling the a/v.

If you enjoy this episode, make sure to check out our conversation with Andy Polk about his book, Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion in RTN episode number 216.

This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now.
0:08.0	Today we have a special live show.
0:12.0	We are here at the Tennessee Council for History Education, a meeting here of teachers of all grade levels from across Tennessee who all share this love for history and have decided
0:21.1	to dedicate their professional lives to teaching it to sharing it with our students and playing a
0:26.1	vital role if I may and in taking care of this democracy we've got by letting people understand
0:31.9	the giants whose shoulders we stand on. And I'm very grateful to all of you guys for being here.
0:36.3	As someone who has a fifth grader right now,
0:39.0	I will need you soon, high school teachers and middle school teachers. So thank you. We got three
0:44.2	great guests here. And since we are speaking in this conversation about educators at different levels,
0:50.2	we've got folks who teach in different, I guess geographically we're not too far away, but the age
0:56.0	groups we teach are different. And I think this is an important conversation to have. I feel like
1:00.5	I constantly find myself in the classroom knowing that I could do a better job of understanding
1:05.2	what my students are coming in with. And I think this dialogue right here, you guys fostering this,
1:10.1	is going to be helpful for all of us. Just to know for me, what are they learning in the classrooms before? And for you guys what to prepare them for when they come into the college classroom. So let's introduce our guests and we'll go left to right here. Brandon Eldridge, welcome to the show. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. That's great. Could you tell everybody who you are, what you do and all that?
1:30.4	Yeah, my name is Brandon Eldridge. I teach at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro.
1:35.1	I teach APUS history as well as pre-law. I'm very involved in the National History Day Project.
1:43.1	We do a lot with the Tennessee State Mock Trial
1:45.7	through the Tennessee Bar Association, as well as a lot of other activities nationally through
1:52.5	University of Virginia. I'm working on something right now with the Martin Van Buren Project
1:57.0	at Cumberland University. I also worked with the Jack Miller Center. There's a lot that I've
2:02.5	been involved with nationally and with the state of Tennessee. That's, that's amazing, Brian. It sounds like you do all the jobs. Do you guys do anything? Does anyone here do anything? Brennan's doing them all. That's amazing. Our second guest for tonight, Rupert Charles, welcome to the show. How are you doing. Good, but I have to follow it out of. So, yeah, good luck. I am a second year teacher at Wright Middle School. I teach sixth grade.
2:23.9	That's ancient world history. So I'm just glad to be here. Excellent. And our third guest,
	...

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