ABSTRACT
“Urn, Mrs. Litrel ... what's that underneath the horse?” It was early October, and my tenth-grade advanced placement (AP) students were still overly polite and hesitant. This would never do. Not in a course with a curriculum as vast as world history, where the students really have to wade into material, wrestle with it, and emerge by early May, muddy and grinning. They needed to get down and dirty. There are no neat formulas or clear answers when it comes to—as national award-winning teacher Michele Forman once called it—“the study of our humanity.” Life is not neat, and it is often unpredictable.
