Today’s Project 100 memory from John Forte.  He was born and raised in Pitman, New Jersey.  He went to public schools and graduated from Pitman High School in 2007.  His mother was a librarian, and she now owns a ceramics studio in downtown Pitman.  While he was growing up, his father worked various blue-collar jobs, and he is now a facilities director at home for disabled individuals.  After graduating with degrees in history and secondary education in 2012, he was a substitute teacher for the Spring of 2013.  For the 2013-2014 academic year, he worked as a teacher’s aide.  In the Fall of 2014, he landed a full-time teaching position at Trenton Central High School, teaching mostly United States history.  He has been there for the last nine years.  In addition to his work at Trenton Central, he also works for a variety of schools, helping with their marching bands, teaching percussion, and giving individual lessons.  He is also heavily involved with the Trenton Education Association, and he has been on the executive committee for the past two years.  Later this year, he will complete an online Master’s degree in history run by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History at Gettysburg College.

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My father gave me no choice about where to attend college.  The fact that I could commute, combined with the in-state tuition, made it affordable for my family.  I did apply to Rutgers-Camden as well, but I never really considered attending any other place than Rowan.

I began as a history major.  There were several reasons for this.  First, my grandmother got me interested in history from a very early age, as she has been born in France and lived throughout the Nazi occupation.  Second, I had a high school class that I took on the history of the Holocaust, which opened my eyes to the full scope of what studying history could be.  Third, I also was influenced by my father who told me that being a teacher was a good job.  Finally, I always enjoyed history as a subject in school.  It is true that I also loved music, and I did briefly consider attempting to become a music teacher, but I ended up staying with history.

I remember feeling unprepared for college.  The history department helped me become a much better student.  Dr. Blake taught Historical Methods, and it was that course that really pushed me to become better organized and to become a deeper thinker.  I also took some great College Composition classes, and I had a wonderful adjunct professor who gave me a list of books to read after the class ended. That was the beginning of my really becoming a serious reader, someone who read engaging and interesting things even when they weren’t required. 

Dr. Applebaum pushed this part of my development to the next level.  I loved the books that he assigned.  Dr. Applebaum was an unorthodox instructor, who did many things that we might have thought were a bit goofy at the time.  Yet, those activities, such as forming a human time line and collaboratively building a statue outside, stayed in my mind long after they were done, in a way that other assignments did not.  I had been a really quiet student, but I found that I really enjoyed the discussion in his classes and in my other upper-level history classes.  I found myself wanting to do the reading very carefully so I could get the greatest benefit out of those discussions.  I also remember Dr. Applebaum showing a documentary film called the “War at Home,” which was about anti-war protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 1960s.  Dr. Applebaum had been part of those protests and watching that film and talking to Dr. Applebaum about it led me to become more politically engaged in the present.

Another very influential professor for me was Dr. Chanelle Rose.  She was so passionate about African American history.  That is the subject that I fell in love with at Rowan, and I continue to be fascinated by it to this day.  Dr. Rose was also very demanding on writing, forcing us to be concise and accurate.  This was incredibly helpful to me.  Dr. Rose also had students engage in various debates in her class.  One of the ones that I remember was Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois.  Those debates were great learning experiences.

I had a difficult time with student teaching.  My first attempt ended abruptly after I had taught “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.  The administration was not happy with this topic and asked me not to return.  This was a hard experience, and I can imagine that it might have ended my dream of becoming a teacher. But the faculty at Rowan were very supportive of me and explained that I should not let that experience stop me. They helped me get a second student teaching experience the next semester. That one went well.  I ended up becoming a social studies teacher, and I still love my job.

I remember winning the Best Paper prize in my senior year.  The paper was on United States support for the military coup in Argentina in 1978.  Winning that award meant a lot to me, and it furthered my passion for history.

Looking back at my time at Rowan, I received great training in history and was well-prepared upon graduating.  The passion of the Rowan history faculty played such an important role in shaping me intellectually.  They taught me not only to see history analytically but to see how much fun it could be to debate history. Today, I love historiography, something that I would never have predicted at an earlier age.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/