This year’s annual AHA meeting offered numerous thought-provoking panels with some of the best and brightest minds in the discipline. In fact the weekend threw me into a sort of intellectual stimulation overload.

My background is English. My passion is history. However, it seems to me that much of the challenges historians face, English scholars face as well. Professional writers and public historians alike deal with the challenge of preparing themselves at a university level for non-academic careers. English teachers grapple with ways to make the discipline exciting and inspiring, just like history teachers who want to break the mold of reading, lecturing, and issuing tests.

Listed below is a series of posts on six different sessions that explored everything from finding history jobs to funding history projects to teaching history effectively in the classroom. Each write-up explains how panelists reflected on the past, discussed the present, hypothesized about the future, and similarly surfaced challenges and suggested resolutions. Read the first write-up later on the blog today, and stay tuned for the rest of the series.

1. Teaching and Learning through a Teaching American History Grant
   Sponsored by the AHA Teaching Division, the National History Education Clearinghouse, and the Organization of History Teachers
   Chaired by Michelle D. DenBeste, California Sate University at Fresno
2. A Historical Conundrum: The Work of Historians Versus the Expectations of Secondary Education
   Chaired by Sarah D. Brown, Ball State University
3. Perspectives on Public History: What knowledge, Skills, and Experiences are Essential for the Public History Professional?
   Chaired by Spencer R. Crew, George Mason University
4. Innovations in Collaboration: Building University-School Partnerships
   Chaired by David Ferriero from the New York Public Library
5. The History Job Market: Opportunities, Problems, and Fixes
   Chaired by David J. Weber, Southern Methodist University and vice president, AHA Professional Division
6. Integrating Global Perspectives and World History into Teaching American History Grant Projects
   Sponsored by the AHA Teaching Division and the National History Education Clearinghouse

This post first appeared on AHA Today.