I just got done spending hours adding content to the site, so now might be a good time to reintroduce the site. History Anecdotes for Teachers (HAFT) started as a way for me to share all the anecdotes I told in my Social Studies classes over my 39 year career. I actively pursued interesting stories to enliven my classes. History should not be boring! Originally, I started the site by writing all my stories down and organizing them into time periods and courses (American History and World History) for teachers to have access to. I then added my Presidential trivia and anecdotes pages. Since then I have been working through all my anecdotal sources to find additional stories. (You can see the list of these sources on my “Sources” tab on the menu. I have 39 books listed.) I then added the “Today in History” pages in case teachers wanted to share information each day in class or check students’ birthdays. And for the last few months I have been adding posts each day. (These usually take about an hour to produce.) Most of the time the posts are based on something interesting that happened on the day. The posts end up going on an appropriate page on the site.
I need to make some things clear. First, the site is not just for teachers. Anyone who loves History should find something interesting to read about. Second, I wanted to get ads from Google, but I was turned down because I was not “creating new content”. This is true. I am not making up the stories. I am passing them on. I have read the books, done the research, and summarized the stories as short as possible because I know teachers don’t have time to tell long stories in class. And most non-teachers don’t like to read long articles. Third, I make the decisions on what stories make it onto the website. Some of the sources have a lot of anecdotes, but I feel most are boring. I’m very selective. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. But, as you can see, there is plenty of quantity and still a lot more to come.
Enjoy, leave a comment, and pass on the site to others. History is filled with lots of stories that are better than fiction. Let’s pass them on.
My oldest story goes back to elementary school. It is the story of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Thanks, Sister Vivian.
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