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Personal information: RAQ's
(Rarely Asked Questions)*
Why did you become an historian?
Because my first math teacher in college was a disaster, because I love checking my imagination and intuition against new documents, and because I discovered I am good at this stuff. Being able to complete graduate school without serious debt helped, as did going through grad school without illness, latching onto a doable topic, and so forth, as well as working hard.
What do you read in your spare time?
Spare time? Ha! I read a daily paper. When I do manage to grab more than a few minutes, I enjoy SF and nonfiction outside my field.
Does having children shape your work as an educational historian?
I have recently discovered that I, like most parents, have to balance the desire to protect my child and critique my child's teachers against treating teachers like professionals and not wanting to rock the boat unless I see a really obvious hole in the hull. This dilemma has helped me understand, at a very personal level, why most parents of children in special education do not criticize the teachers much, especially with regard to instructional methods. Even though both of my children are TABs (temporarily able-bodied, nondisabled), I hadn't come up against this hesitation to criticize public school teachers until this year.
* - Raphael Carter has noted that most FAQs are, in fact, RAQs, and I agree, in principle, with truth-in-advertising.