Jasmine Jade Toledo '18
Jasmine Jade Toledo '18
High School Social Studies Teacher
In what ways do you feel your major in history helped to prepare you for your current career? Are there any skills that you developed as an undergraduate history major that are essential to your work? And can you give us an example (or examples) of this?
My major in history helped me prepare for my current career immensely. I teach history to teenagers for a living, so it is imperative that I am an expert in my content area. The more I know about different subjects in history, the more my students find my lessons more interesting and engaging. There are many skills that I developed as an undergraduate history major that are essential to my work. The most important skill I’ve learned is how to think like a historian. By being able to source documents, identify bias, interpret a text and analyze change over time, allows not only me to be a better teacher but my students to be more informed citizens. For example, when I taught a lesson on Christopher Columbus, I had my students read an excerpt from his own diary and a text that an indigenous person wrote. They were astonished when they read the two very different accounts of the interactions Columbus had with indigenous groups. They realized history is told differently by different people and they were better able to identify bias in texts by analyzing multiple perspectives.
Are there any other reflections on your history major or time in the History Department that you'd like us to include in your spotlight?
What impacted me the most at Brooklyn College was that being a history major allowed me to explore my own culture. In every single history class I took, I was allowed to do some type of research paper or project based on a topic of my choice. I took this opportunity to explore my own Latino heritage. I called it my culture journey. I completed a one-year research project with Professor Wills. Together we explored the lives of undocumented Latinos in the workforce. I interviewed many different undocumented people from all over Latin America and read many different texts about the contributions this population has on the United States. This project changed my life because I learned so much about myself as a Latina and about my people. The student population at the school I currently work at is nearly 70 percent Latino. They all know about my project and they appreciate the love I have for history and Latino culture. My passion encourages them to be passionate about history and their own culture. I really do believe it inspires them to go on a culture journey of their own one day. I thank Brooklyn College and Professor Wills for giving me this opportunity and allowing me to be able to inspire these teenagers.
