If you’ve taken AP World History or you plan to take it in the future, chances are you will have Ms. Kosch as a teacher. As a social studies teacher at CHS, she teaches several history courses and works to help students see the connections between the past and the world today.
Ms. Kosch explained that she didn’t originally plan on becoming a teacher. “I did not know that I wanted to be a teacher. Like, I wasn’t someone who just always from a young age knew I wanted to teach,” she said. “I honestly really didn’t even think about it.”
In college, she chose to major in international relations instead of history, even though she loved the subject. “It was funny, I wanted to major in history in college, but I thought, you know, if I major in history in college, really the only thing I can do with that is teach history, and I didn’t think I wanted to do that,” she said.
After graduating, she moved to Washington, D.C. and began working at a consulting firm. “I actually moved there and started as an intern and then got hired full-time working at a mergers and acquisitions consulting firm,” she said.
While the job taught her a lot, it wasn’t what she wanted long-term. “It was a great job. I learned a ton, but I just was not interested in it at all. I found it kind of boring,” Kosch said. Eventually, she began thinking about what she actually enjoyed. “What could be better than to have a career where I just get to learn more about history every day and share it with students?”
Now in her eighth year at CHS, Kosch teaches several different classes. “This year I’m teaching U.S. History 2A,” she said, explaining that the class is mostly tenth graders. “I also teach AP World History Modern for juniors, and, for the first time this year, AP European History, which is a senior year elective.”
Although she enjoys teaching all of them, certain topics stand out as favorites. “If I had to pick my favorite topic to teach about, it probably would either be the French Revolution, with a close second, the Protestant Reformation,” she said.
According to Kosch, one of the biggest challenges students face when studying history today is technology. “I think the very current problem of AI,” she said. “If you just kind of put a question into AI and it spits out an answer, people just accept that answer rather than kind of diving into primary sources.”
She believes the process of working with real sources is valuable, even if it’s harder. “Obviously, that takes a lot longer. It’s a lot harder. It’s more challenging, more frustrating,” she said. Still, she believes that deeper engagement is an important part of learning.
Another challenge, she explained, is that history is rarely simple. “History is so not black and white,” Kosch said. “Students always want an answer, where sometimes it’s not a simple answer. It’s complex. It’s nuanced.”
Despite the challenges, Ms. Kosch makes her classes interactive and engaging. One activity that students especially enjoy is a simulation game called Guns or Butter. “It’s a game that we play right before we start learning about the Cold War,” she explained.
In the simulation, students represent fictional countries and manage diplomacy, trade, and military decisions. “They engage in trade and diplomacy and defense alliances, and they’re able to buy nuclear weapons and declare war on each other, but then figure out how to negotiate off the brink of war,” Kosch said.
Students take on leadership roles within their countries. “People on the team will get to be the Prime Minister of their country, and you have a Defense Minister and an Economics Minister,” she said. “It is always my favorite time of year because the students really get into it.”
Recently, one of her most rewarding experiences as a teacher has come from a discussion format she introduced in AP European History. The activity is based on a Harkness discussion model, where students run the conversation themselves.
“They totally lead the discussion on their own after reading the chapter in the textbook,” Kosch said. “They bring their own commentary. They bring questions to ask each other. I’m really not involved at all.”
Instead, she simply observes while students take the lead. “I just kind of sit on the windowsill and watch as they discuss whatever topic they’ve read about,” she said. “It has been my favorite thing to watch. It feels like they’re in a college class, and it’s really, really cool to watch,” she said.
Over time, Kosch says her teaching style has also changed. When she first started teaching, she worried about making every lesson perfect. “I was so worried about everything and nervous about how everything was going to go,” she said. But now, she’s more comfortable letting lessons evolve naturally. “Some of the best lessons and days have come when the lesson doesn’t go according to plan or we go off on a tangent talking about something that maybe wasn’t in the plan for the day,” she explained.
Ultimately, Kosch hopes that students leave her classes with a broader perspective. “My hope is that their horizons are expanded,” she said, especially since many of her courses focus on global history. She also wants students to think critically about information. “Whenever you read a news article or even watch a TikTok video, you kind of have that moment to pause and say, ‘Okay, who made this? Why did they make it? What is their perspective?’”
For students struggling with history, Kosch recommends focusing less on memorization and more on connections. “Try not to get so caught up in the details of memorizing the date that something happened,” she said. Instead, students should “look for the big picture, look for connections. Where do you see similarities, differences? Where do you see changes and continuities?” she said. “See how events fit into a bigger picture.”
Like many teachers, Kosch says one of the biggest challenges of her job is timing. “Just not having enough time is a huge challenge,” she said, explaining that teachers often have to make difficult choices about what topics to include. “Whether it’s U.S. history, European history, world history, how do we decide what to cover and what not to cover?”
Outside of the classroom, Kosch has several hobbies that students might not know about. “I really like to cook,” she said. She also loves reading and watching TV. “I’m a big reader. I love to read. That’s my favorite thing to do outside of school.”
Ms. Kosch’s goal has always been the same: helping students see history in a new way. As she put it, “What could be better than getting to spend every day engaging with history?”
