I'm a prospective teacher and have hopefully by the end of this week landed a substitute teaching position. I graduated with a history degree as well as being certified to teach social sciences and have my education minor.

I just graduated and I'm applying to teaching jobs. I had one potential teaching job ask me in an interview how I could cater to the predominantly African American (AA) student population through teaching history. I expressed both sympathy and distaste that AA history should not solely be discussed and taught during Black History Month. That said the question really stumped me. So my questions are a couple fold:

My questions are as follows with additional information below:

1. It'd be a dream to be able to teach a challenging high school course surrounding race, delving into medicine, discussing possible privilege or maybe even race in film and music (the movie Airplane "Do you speak jive?"). Would you have any thoughts or tips to doing so? Any recommended sources on the matter?

2. Though I had some experience taking AA history courses (see at the very end), I didn't think my experience equated with me being comfortable teaching a full on course emphasizing AA history for a student population made up almost entirely of African American youth. How could I go about structuring either coursework, future coursework, or even filling in the gaps of my knowledge or increasing it to reach a point to when/if approached again surrounding the topic that I can confidently be up for the challenge? (fuck that's a long ass question) The only initial thought I have is that I'd at least like to use parts of or the whole book Black Boy by Richard Wright (one of my favorite books I read in college).

3. Finally in being a white male, are there things I should be aware of either through my learning or through teaching that would be different or cause me to be taken less seriously than say an African American teacher teaching the course? How should I appropriately handle let's say maybe touchy yet interesting topics? (ex: I have the book The N Word by Jabari Asim on my shelf, might delve into the Black Panther Party, eugenics, the Tuskegee Experiment, Henrietta Lacks, etc)

Any help or guidance and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Info about coursework:

As for my course work in University, it varied though I took 3 courses on African American history specifically. One was on the history of race, another was a course on the History of Race and Medicine (fascinating course and professor, small class and a bit over my head at times but loved it), and finally for my capstone course I took a course with a graduate student teaching through his research about the history of West African or East African (can't remember) slavery and slave trade.

Or is it that the class system of the knighted class in Europe was entirely different from the samurai class in Japan?

Was the fall of Russia from a Tsarist autocracy into a so-called communist(socialist) state, which would become the USSR, entirely down to Tsar Nicholas ii being a poor leader and/or an incredibly wealthy autocrat in a lesser developed country(at the time)?

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For time frame, let's say during the reign of Louis XIV. Did every room have a fireplace? Were there other methods? Did they use insulating building materials?

Did the knights of medieval Europe study the battle techniques of other cultures? Either ancient such as the Romans, Greeks or Persians; or concurrent at the time such as Chinese, Arabian or African.

In addition, and pretty specifically I suppose, I am wondering whether 17th century Dutch playwrights such as Joost van den Vondel (who has been called the Dutch Shakespeare) and Jan Six would have been aware of Shakespeare and his body of work so soon after Shakespeare's death.

Saw a mention of it in a museum and was wondering if someone knew more

Were they paid? How were they equipped? Any info is helpful!

I want to understand both the mortality (were many people likely to survive that length of combat) and the likelihood (were many people actually enlisted for that long?)

Understand it may differ Western front v Eastern front.

Thanks :)

I read an article about the historicity of Jesus which concluded that there is very strong evidence that he did in fact live. It didn't seem to have a religious agenda (it was in the Guardian) and it seemed to me like a trustworthy article.

In that article it presented the fact that sources wrote about him only 25 years after he died as good evidence for him existing.

I'm not a historian, but to my lay instinct, it seems weird that someone so famous wasn't written about earlier - perhaps even when he was still alive.

So my question is this: are there other figures in history who are uncontrovertially accepted as real, who we have no evidence of apart from writings long after they died? Without getting into the religious side of things, from a historian's perspective, why does the evidence point to Jesus being a true historic figure? Finally, why could it be that there are no sources closer to his supposed lifetime?

So I'm having a hard time formulating this question properly, but basically what I'm trying to get at is why have indigenous people of the arctic never moved south? I realize most have traditional lifestyles which lend themselves to the environment and climate, but I mean more historically-why did more people not leave the relatively difficult lifestyle of the north and go south to farm or herd in better climates?

It was very shortlived

This guy is another Holocaust denier, but I don't see much mention of him as David Irving. There isn't also much critiques about him and his works. I'm curious to know if there is any truth to any of his works?

in 1494, only two years after columbus, Spain and Portugal (with help from the pope) signed a treaty dividing the world into two zones of colonization, but at this time the new world was still thought to be part of Asia.

It seems odd to me, if they actually though that this was the trade route they where looking for i would have thought that trading would be the firsts thing own their mind not colonization. after all a fast trade route with china is immensely valuable and pays off quickly, but a colony is risky and is unlikely to bring back profits for years.

how could it be that they originally wanted a trade, but in two years they had shifted completely to colonization?

maybe i am missing something here, could someone explain?

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Before the possibility of getting pictures from a high altitude, people were drawing maps pretty accurately (at least in terms of shape). How did they achieve that accuracy; what methods could they use, and what instruments/tools were available?

A cursory look at Cambodian history describes Cambodia as virtually disappearing from the historical record in the aftermath of the collapse of the Khmer Empire. What was going on there?

I read a theory a few years ago that Reza Shah, the leader of Iran in WW2 era, changed the name of Persia to Iran because it means "Land of the Aryans" and would therefore keep Hitler from invading. Since there was a Semite population in Iran at the time, it could have ended up on Hitler's chopping block.

The Wikipedia article says he changed the name because western countries called them Persia/Persians but they called themselves Iran/Iranians.

If true, it would be s hilarious point of conversation with certain Iranians who are holocaust deniers.