at the royal palace on January 17, 2017 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
How did I get here? What Goldilocks Conditions contributed to me being here, visiting the royal family, the day before getting on a plane to Seattle to exchange ideas with other teachers from around the world? Big History did, of course—and a series of serendipitous circumstances following my initial discovery of the course. I was invited to meet the king, queen, and former queen (now princess) of The Netherlands. For a New Year’s reception. At their palace. Dress code: tenue de ville, which means, step up your standard “teacher outfit” a little. How I got here needs a little more explaining though, so let’s do a little—very little—big history of Big History in The Netherlands.
Early 2012, my colleague Joris Burmeister was faced with an almost impossible task: to search for ways to continue a course we started in the lower grades and make this course more exciting for tenth- and eleventh-graders. I didn’t know Joris very well yet, but really wanted to help him in this quest. In February, I stumbled upon David Christian’s TED Talk (“The History of the World in 18 Minutes”), which got me so excited that I immediately ran to Joris, almost screaming: “THIS IS IT! We should do Big History. It’s perfect!” Joris was quickly infected by my enthusiasm and we decided to explore this great opportunity. And so we crossed our first mini-threshold: deciding to teach BHP.
The thing was that the course website in those days was in “pilot mode,” meaning you couldn’t access it yet. So we decided to just boldly write an email to the developers asking them to please, please, please let us in on this terrific source of knowledge-still-under-development. After a long (and difficult, because my iPhone was getting really hot and the reception was not great) conference call, we got in. With that, we crossed our second mini-threshold: getting access to the knowledge we needed.
Ok. Now we had this great website with videos and articles about Big History, a few books, and lots of enthusiasm… great ingredients, but we were still total Big History newbies. The next step, then, to becoming able and confident to teach it was to become Big History students ourselves! Today, Big History offers online professional development (“Teaching Big History”) to prepare teachers for the course, but back in 2012 there was no such thing. Thankfully, we got the whole summer to prepare ourselves, and also prepare some lessons and student materials in Dutch. No holidays for me, but the travel through time and space I accomplished in my head with Big History really was worth it! And so, another mini-threshold was crossed: feeling confident enough to teach the course—or at least, confident enough to be the “lead learner” in my classroom as I prepared to take students on a journey through content that was still new to me.
And that’s how we became a pilot Big History school. The first in Europe, we were told. David Christian was so delighted BHP had set foot on the old continent, he decided to come visit our school for the big kick-off we planned for our students. That was on September 6, 2012. The threshold we wanted to cross? Getting the students excited. Well, leave that to David: the auditorium was packed with students, managers, teachers, parents—even the janitors attended. David talked about Big History and his TED talk, and then held a Q&A. The students’ questions kept coming and coming. Thanks to David, this threshold was easy to cross: the students were excited, all right.
And since they’re so excited, we’ve been doing our best to spread BHP in The Netherlands. We feel that every high school student should have access to this great course. Joris and I have spoken at a lot of conferences and have made classroom visits. We’ve spoken to the minister of education, administrators , educators-who-educate-teachers, more administrators , the secretary of state, professors, science committees, and of course teachers, a lot of them. I even wrote a book (a Dutch student handbook), which got published, intended to make it easier for teachers to jump in and start teaching BHP. Today, about 35 schools in Holland are teaching Big History. I guess we crossed another mini-threshold: getting the word out about BHP. But we’re not there yet. Joris and I continue to make an effort to spread the word by hosting classroom observations, visiting other teachers in their clasrooms, and offering coaching and help where needed.
I don’t travel much, normally, and I’m certainly not often invited to palaces. I never thought Big History would change all that. At the reception, while having drinks with the royal family, former queen Beatrix said to me: “You’re from the Big Bang!” I wanted to answer: “We all are, your royal highness,” but of course she meant she knew I’m a Big History teacher. And I was proud to say I am, and that Big History is growing rapidly in The Netherlands. Cheers to that!
About the author: Constance van Hall has been teaching Big History since 2012 in Noord-Holland in the Netherlands. She co-teaches the course with Joris Burmeister; they were two of the original teachers of the course in Europe!