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If I'm not passionate, if I don't care about what I'm talking about,
and I can't convey that both in body language, my own enthusiasm, then students aren't going to care.
As I already talked to you about, they already come into my class not caring about history.
It has been beaten out of them, they're bored by it.
They're often taking it just as a requirement.
A G.U.R., at Western.
And so they're already expecting that it's going to be a failure for them.
And my job is to convey my enthusiasm, my passion for history, and I tell them right off the bat that history is my faith.
It's my religion; I'm not particularly religious but I think history is about life.
It's understanding your place in life,
why we're born, why we die.
It's all of our collective story.
And I have to let them know that that's the level I think about it and care about it.
It's not nonsense to me, it's not just academic discipline, it's a way to look at life.
And that's why I especially like U.S. history, because I can tell my students,
"This is about you. This is about your parents, this about your grandparents."
And we all are historical actors.
We all have a story to contribute to the larger picture of history.
And I just try to convey that to them.
And I have to care.
Bottom line.
Because if I come in droopy one day, if I come in bored myself, then they won't care either.
One thing I do really believe about the learning process is that everybody has an instinct to learn.
That's what makes us human beings.
After all, the word "homosapien"
it means "the knowing one."
Unlike any other species, we're aware, we're conscious of ourselves, and we have a primal drive to learn,
to know who we are.
And you can get turned off to that,
that can be beaten out of you.
My job as an instructor is to let that process, that natural process, take place.
Not to get in the way of it.
To try to reach the passion that all my students intuitively have.
Inherently have, as human beings, to learn.
They want to learn.
And I can help with that by mostly not getting in the way of it.
By not stifling it.
And by conveying my love of history and my...