Mr. McGann is a teacher of Iselin Middle School who teaches in World History and coaches in JFK football for seven years at this current moment. He was interviewed about his career in teaching and his thoughts on the necessity of World History as a whole.
McGann wasn’t always a main teacher of World History, or any subject at all, as he started off as a substitute teacher for most of his years in teaching.
“I was a substitute teacher for about 5 years, and I wasn’t exactly nervous when I started teaching my own class. I was more excited, in fact,” McGann said.
Over the years, he gained a lot more new knowledge from his own students. His students taught him many new things, whether it was related to his teachings or certain humor of the student’s generation.
With his understanding of his student’s likes and interests, he uses it to spice up his strategies in teaching to catch his student’s attention. “I understand that my students sometimes do not like to listen to an old man speaking too much, so I utilize their different strategies to make World History more fun.”
McGann also taught American History for 6th grade and Civics for 7th, but he found World History the most interesting of the three. He believes that American History and Civics are limited to a few centuries back, while World History extends to tens of thousands of years back in time.
He finds World History fascinating from its variety and its development.
“World History gives you a good opportunity to learn about the world and a zoom out view of how other cultures were before and are today. With how many topics there are in this subject, you can easily find at least one that you enjoy learning about.”
Although he likes teaching every topic in World History, his favorite topic overall out of all of them is Greece. However, what interested him the most in its western society was Socrates. The topics that he likes most that come right after Greece are archaeology and Mesopotamia.
McGann states that, “I don’t exactly have all the known information about all the topics. In fact, no one knows everything about World History. We all learn new things every now and then. Sometimes the students know more than I do, and they help me learn more things that I previously didn’t know. We all learn more about the past the more we try.”
