It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
One of the hardest and most exciting things to do as a young sessional is to create new syllabuses. Finally, you get to decide what your students will learn! Yours will be the most awesome syllabus ever! But as soon as you sit down to actually write the syllabus, selecting which topics you will teach and which readings you will use can quickly make you feel overwhelmed. Did I pick the right one? Will the students find this boring? What about this other reading – which one is better? Which topics do I need to include and which can I leave out? But what about this topic?
While there are lots of resources out there for building syllabuses in general, I’m going to focus on the topics and readings for introductory level Canadian history surveys. There is no escaping them; if you do Canadian history, you will teach at least one survey class. They are often the first courses anyone ever teaches despite being notoriously hard to teach. They are also the bread-and-butter courses for sessionals across the country.
So in this blog post, I’m going to provide a detailed guide to writing syllabuses for Canadian history surveys, from course design, course content, topics and readings, course outlines, and the nuts and bolts of syllabuses. Hopefully, this blog post will make the whole process a little less nerve-wracking.