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Reflections on teaching for NIAHD
from Jenna Hardin, Summer 2025
Teaching for NIAHD over the last several years has been the most fulfilling experience of my educational career.
It is profoundly rewarding to watch students learn while they’re here with us in Williamsburg, and then to watch them prosper after they leave us. I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed working with fellow instructors to plan courses, readings, and site visits, and I know that I’m a better educator and public historian because of their brilliance and support. As a scholar, I even find myself interacting with historic sites in new and generative ways in the "off-season" because of my time working with NIAHD.
I typically struggle with finding adequate words when I try to describe this work to new acquaintances and fellow educators who haven’t had the privilege of teaching for NIAHD. I usually arrive at “there’s really nothing like it,” which is true. But if I could try to sum the opportunity up now, I would say that there is some magical quality to NIAHD’s Pre-College Program that is made up from a combination of enthusiastic and inquisitive students, top-notch staff and teachers, and the geographic specificity of Williamsburg and this part of Virginia. The wealth of resources available to educators who are working in public history within driving distance makes it unparalleled for discussing the topics covered in Pre-Coll classes. In HIST219: American Independence, for example, Dr. Schroeder and I are able to explain the conflict of the American Revolution by contextualizing Anglo-America from start (Jamestown) to finish (Yorktown and Montpelier).
There are incomparable experiential learning opportunities provided for our students through their interaction with historical sites, archives and museums and their staff, and historical interpreters. These advantages allow students to generate extraordinary insights in their class discussions, and to understand their assignments and readings in a way they would not have been able to had they not seen the architecture of a colonial Anglican church with their own eyes, for instance, or touched a printing press with their own hands. It is deeply gratifying and affirming as an instructor when you witness one of your NIAHD students make connections from their site visits, to their class discussions, and finally in their written assignments. Often this happens just as you intended and expected, but sometimes more brilliantly and perceptively than you ever could have anticipated. In other words, when you're an Instructor for NIAHD's Pre-College Program, you will wind up learning from your students, too.
I’m endlessly thankful to have had the honor to teach for NIAHD’s Pre-College Program. Every year, I find myself looking forward to summer not only because of the sunshine, but because of the opportunity to teach for NIAHD.
