About
About me
I have taught history and other humanities subjects in various capacities for 15 years—including at US universities, at an international school in Switzerland, and at state secondary schools in the UK. I hold a PhD in Modern European History with a PhD minor in Political Theory from Indiana University Bloomington in the United States and a Swiss federal upper secondary teaching diploma. I have Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in England.
About michaelanklin.net
The purpose of this website is to share thoughts, ideas, and resources with secondary history and humanities teachers around the world and anyone else who might be interested. To that end, I post downloadable resources I have created in the section titled “Exercises & Worksheets”. Additionally, two sections—“Student Testimonials” and “Extra and Co-Curricular Activities”—provide information about my teaching career thus far.
The other sections include my thoughts and theories about history and history teaching; my opinions about the significance of philosophy in history teaching and the importance of addressing racial and social justice in the history classroom; and my recommendations for using books, films, and music in history class. Since the aim is to exchage ideas with history teachers globally, the materials on the site do for the most part not cater to any particular national curriculum.
Two sections also provide information about my teaching career thus far.
I upload content that I have found useful in my own teaching and that might augment established teaching and learning practices. In other words, there are already many excellent history pedagogy articles, books, and websites out there from which teacher training courses in many countries can draw. The point of my website is not to repeat pedagogical content that—at least to my knowledge—already exists elsewhere, but to add to those resources.
However, I do not claim that any of my thoughts, theories, or resources are entirely original or are based on my own structured pedagogical research. I have developed most of my own history teaching strategies during my many years of classroom teaching. I also learned how to teach history from outstanding professors at three US universities; from many wonderful fellow graduate students; from other secondary history teachers; in my teacher training; and from my own excellent history teachers who taught me many years ago when I was in secondary school myself.
All the opinions expressed on this website are my own. This website is not affiliated with any school or teaching agency.
I am the author of all the texts on this website, unless otherwise noted.
All images are either my own, in the public domain, or otherwise freely available online. For more information about the slider and tab images, please see the bottom of this page.
Contact: manklin@gmail.com
Please note
If any of my writings on this website refer to, make use of, or include a published pedagogical theory or any other relevant published material, and I fail to cite it, it is because I was either not aware of the existence of this material, or it was one among many theories I have encountered during my studies, my teaching, and my training, and I therefore simply did not remember it as a distinct argument or school of thought that needed to be cited separately.
The same applies to worksheets, handouts, and exercises, and to book, music, and film recommendations. If you have written or created something similar, but I have not cited you, and you believe you deserve credit, please let me know, and I will cite your work.
Using downloadable materials from this website
Please note further that the downloadable exercises, worksheets, and handouts are freely available to anyone who might find them useful.
If you do find anything in that section helpful and would like to use it in your own teaching, all I ask is that you please cite michaelanklin.net as the source. Most of the exercises, worksheets, etc. will already have a michaelanklin.net label. Please do not remove it, if you use one of these documents.
Below are the different categories that link to the same pages as the tabs on the homepage do.
I try to add material to this website on a regular basis but, as all teachers know, spare time to do such things is a precious commodity.
Thank you for visiting my site.
Kind regards,
Michael Anklin
Thoughts and Resources:
Exercises, Worksheets, and Handouts
Testimonials from former students
Extra and Co-Curricular Activities
Slider images
The Marseille Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral and a national monument of France built in Byzantine-Roman Revival style from 1852 to 1896. 
The Pontalba Buildings make up two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. They were built in the late 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba. 
The Jewry Wall is the remainder of a large second-century Roman wall of a public building in Leicester, England. 
A fishing boat at a beach in Sabah, Malaysia 
The Sri Mariamman Temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore.
Tab images
A view across the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland, of the sun setting over the roofs of Huningue, France, close to the Three Countries’ Corner, where the borders of Switzerland, France, and Germany meet in the middle of the river. 
The bronze sculpture La Pensadora (The Female Thinker; made in 1968, inaugurated in 1999) by the Spanish artist José Luis Fernández in Oviedo, Spain. Source: Wikimedia Commons 
A scene from an anti-racism protest in London on March 16, 2019, in which tens of thousands participated. 
American jazz singer Billie Holiday at the Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. Feb. 1947. Source: Wikimedia Commons 
The Australian War Memorial and museum in Canberra, Australia, opened in 1941.