Well, I suppose I should actually introduce myself. As you can see by the title, I am Jessica Johnson (Davis). My grandfather was a teacher for many years at a college in upstate New York. I remember that from almost as early as third grade, I kept telling everyone I wanted to be a history teacher. I had some great experiences with recreating scenarios when I was younger in my social studies classes. I will admit part of that was because I was living on the east coast where a lot of the early American history took place and it was often easy to get to those spots for school. My whole family tends to be a bit historically oriented. Growing up, whenever my sisters and I were on summer break, our family vacations usually had us driving to historical sites and camping nearby. Since my father was in the Navy, we often had new spots available to us although we never made it out of the country. I suppose you could say that history and teaching are family traits for me. I am primarily hoping to teach middle school social studies however I am looking into the possibility of being able to teach all grade levels.
There are some interesting things about me that at first glance don't really have anything to do with my career path, but upon deeper examination can still circle round to my first passion. I love music (of course I don't know anyone who doesn't love at least some type of music), and will listen to most kinds although I admit I'm not really fond of country music. Strangely enough, I enjoy Celtic folk music. I also like a lot of types of music you don't ever hear on the radio unless that particular group is popular locally. Some of the bands I love include Nightwish, Blackmores Night, Abney Park, Cruxshadows, Emerald Rose and Voltaire. The fascinating part is that several of these groups, upon listening to their lyrics, have taken information from history or historical mindsets or notions and created music from them. Blackmores Night in particular is well known for their medieval and renaissance themed (and sometimes recreated) music. I also love sci-fi/fantasy. Books, movies and TV shows. While I'm not always up to date on the TV shows (too many years without access to cable has left me woefully behind and always trying to catch up), I do have some particular favorites. I've loved Star Wars since I was about seven years old and discovered Doctor Who as I got a little bit older (something else I share with my grandfather). I have discovered that part of the reason I love sci-fi/fantasy is because there is so much history in it!! Watch any science fiction show or read a book (or fantasy for that matter) and you will be able to connect it to something from human history. The phrase "those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it" ( I apologize that I don't know where that phrase comes from and I think it's not an accurate quote) is so true!! I've been seeing it for so long in the way we are evolving as a country.
I plan on focusing on the history content for K-12 standards since I'm hoping that by creating an interesting recreation of most historical events for the students to experience online, they will become more engaged and not think of it as something that happened "way back then" without any bearing on the present or future.
