United States History Colonial Times to 1877 – Professor Kyle Meadows
Yet another history class I took, but since I kind of love love history, it was still one of my favorite classes!
Professor Meadows, the professor for the course, was extremely passionate about the subject area. He is someone who for sure loves history. I wasn’t excited about having a class at 3 pm, but he was able to keep energy up and added different tangents at least twice a class about different topics during the lectures. He had so many fun facts that would turn into long stories that would get us a little off track, but they still provided lots of information that gave historical context.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of how U.S. History was taught in my AP US History class, mainly because my teacher just had us read the textbook then he would assign projects and reading quizzes without exactly teaching us anything. I was afraid it would be the same for this class, but Professor Meadows made sure to give us the most accurate and detailed information in order to have us succeed and remember the information.
He assigned biweekly reading quizzes, a midterm, and of course the final. He was very flexible with all, and if we felt something wasn’t entirely correct, we could show him notes or examples from the lecture, then present our case on our answer for a question.
He also liked using a DBQ format for different essay and short answer assignments, either discussing different historical events or topics not generally mentioned throughout history. One of my favorites was an essay that talked about appeal of freedom through Free Blacks, and how that’s interpreted between the Free Blacks and slaves. There were three documents to be analyzed and dissected, which helped to understand if there was a true appeal to freedom for Free Blacks and slaves.