How to Teach College: Inspiring Diverse Students in Challenging Times

by James W. Loewen, Nicholas Loewen (Editor), Michael Dawson (Editor)

Overview

A posthumous book by the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, sharing the strategies and secrets of an award-winning, fifty-year career as a college professor

“Not a few professors teach solely because they have to, to hold a position that lets them do what they really want to do, which is ‘their work’—their research, their writing. . . . Those professors miss the joys of teaching.” —from the introduction to How to Teach College

Widely known as the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen, who passed away in 2021, was a leading sociologist of race relations and a prizewinning college educator. With a teaching career spanning over half a century at Tougaloo College, Harvard University, University of Vermont, and Catholic University, Loewen taught the way he wrote: with creativity, humor, and a high expectation that students can handle the truth.

How to Teach College is an invaluable resource for professors teaching in increasingly fraught American classrooms. With a special emphasis on teaching students from diverse backgrounds and potentially controversial subjects, this posthumously published book comes to us in Loewen’s vibrant, original, and inimitable voice. In it, he offers advice from the epic (how to convey a love of one’s topic and motivate students to become lifelong learners) to the technical (how to design a syllabus, manage the classroom, testing and grading)—all drawing on firsthand anecdotes from his own courses on sociology and race relations.

Edited by Loewen’s son, Nicholas Loewen, a longtime high school teacher, and sociology professor Michael Dawson, How to Teach College is sure to inspire generations of teachers to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620979204
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/22/2025
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

James W. Loewen (1942–2021) was the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition (all from The New Press). He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. 

Nicholas Loewen teaches high school English in Washington, DC. He is the co-editor (with Michael Dawson) of James W. Loewen’s How to Teach College.

Michael Dawson is an independent sociologist who has taught a wide variety of courses at Portland Community College, Lewis & Clark College, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life and the co-editor (with Nick Loewen) of James W. Loewen’s How to Teach College. He lives in Portland, OR.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for How to Teach College:

"This insightful volume by one of this nation’s greatest teachers reminds us that ‘learning how to learn’ is the most important lesson. Never afraid to speak truth to power, Professor Loewen taught our history the way it really happened and inspired countless students to do the same. While answers are important, sometimes asking the right questions is even more important."
—Donzell Lee, PhD, president, Tougaloo College

 

"James Loewen is a legend among educators because of his lifelong defense of the right to teach, the right to learn, and the right to think at all—which is often in doubt, and is now under serious and sustained assault. A model truth-teller in the classroom, Loewen’s How to Teach College offers a dazzling profusion of practical teaching ideas built upon rock-solid ethical principles. He shows teachers at every level how to create a culture of curiosity, creativity, and courage, how to reduce the distance between content and experience, and how to challenge and nourish learners in the same gesture. James Loewen left us several years ago, but in this posthumously published text Nicholas Loewen and Michael Dawson have brilliantly captured his voice and simultaneously reanimated his essential wisdom. This is an urgent and necessary book for these times. James Loewen presente!"
—William Ayers, retired Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior UniversityScholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago

 

"How to Teach College is a 'cookbook' of over one hundred (I counted!) practical lessons, techniques, tricks, and gimmicks that Jim learned in his fifty-year career as a college teacher. It provides a clear road map that will make teaching easier, more effective, and more rewarding for students and professors alike. While it speaks directly to teachers, I hope that educational leaders at every level will read—and absorb—this brilliant, eminently sensible, and highly readable book."
—John Merrow, former PBS Education correspondent

 

"While most of us know Jim Loewen for unearthing important yet hidden aspects of history and culture so that we can have more robust content, in this volume he unearths the real challenge of what happens in classrooms . . . ensuring good teaching. He reminds us that content cannot teach itself. Outstanding college teachers make the content come alive and ensure that students are engaged. This volume is a real treasure!"
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison

From the Publisher