TeenTigerTV: All Moments Are History A Message For Every Generatiom

Recorded Dec 29th 2025

Welcome

Q1: When you were in the classroom, how did you help fourth graders understand why history matters to them? 

Q2: You've been a teacher, a principal, and now the former Secretary of Education. How has your view of the fourth-grade history curriculum changed along the way? 

Q3: Was there a moment in your own life when you realized history isn't just about the past, but how we understand ourselves in the present?

Q4: Do you have any suggestions for how we can move from memorization to the discovery of history in schools?

Transcript

Today, we welcome Miguel Cardona to a conversation about teaching and learning history. Thanks for joining Teen Tiger TV and our C-SPAN student camp project about our country's birth 250 years ago. It's great to be here with you, Isabella. 

Thank you for making some time to have a great conversation about a topic that I love, education and history. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, happy to be here.

So the first question I have for you is, when you were in the classroom, how did you help fourth graders understand why history matters to them? When you're looking at history books, you're seeing all these old people who are dressed differently and you kind of try to make a connection with students. And sometimes it's hard to connect if you're just looking at the pictures or if you're just reading. But when you reenact what they were doing, whether it was the Boston Tea Party or seeking independence, you try to connect it to what the students are experiencing in the classroom and make comparisons to what our forefathers were experiencing or what they were trying to do and what our students value, like independence, freedom, the ability to speak, the ability to pick a career that they want.

You know, those types of things. So you try to make it relevant to what they're experiencing in their lives. I love that. 

That's awesome. Sometimes we would have debates and the students would have to make a case why certain things in history were right or wrong. And it's just through the articulation of their values and what they think, it really comes to life.

That's amazing. I love the idea about debates. I never really did those until further on in middle school and especially high school.

My second question for you is you've been a teacher, a principal, and now the former Secretary of Education. How has your view of the fourth-grade history curriculum changed along the way? Well, you know, I've been in schools pretty much since I was five. So that was way back in the 1900s, you know.

And my experience as a fourth grade teacher, as I shared earlier, was great because we got to make it come to life. And then I was a school principal. It would be fascinating to see how teachers got creative to make history come to life.

And then I was a district leader and then a commissioner of education for Connecticut. And we worked with lawmakers to try to provide curriculum opportunities for students to learn things that they maybe would not have learned. And then give districts the opportunity to implement it in a way that they can to make it come to life for students.

And then at the federal level, to be honest with you, when I was serving in Washington, D.C., our job was really to promote the state and local district teaching based on the standards that they created. Our job was to make sure that all students had access to good education and funding to make sure that all schools have the tools that they need to be successful. Wow. 

I mean, how much of a difference was there from going from just state to federal? It was a pretty big difference because as a commissioner of education in Connecticut, I had more control of curriculum. In the role of secretary of education in Washington, D.C., those decisions are left to the states. And I think that's the way it should be, where states can decide how they implement curriculum.

And that was one of the things that as secretary, I made sure that I could have my opinions as a former teacher, but it's more important that the local folks decide what students are learning. In the education section that you were working in for the federal level, were there a lot of former teaching in that education area, or was it more from different areas? You're saying working with me or previous secretaries? Working with you at the time. It's funny because when I got to Washington, D.C., I wanted to make sure that we became a service agency.

When I was a classroom teacher or school principal, the last thing I wanted was somebody in Washington, D.C. telling me how to do my job, especially if they never taught. So when I became secretary, it was really important to me to make sure that my team had people that really understood how to work the White House. I had people that really understood how to work Congress, that knew the agency.

I had over 4,000 employees there, so I needed people that knew how to work that agency. But it was really important for me that I hired teachers, school principals, superintendents, and commissioners of education, because I wanted the people in Washington, D.C. to have a good understanding of what's actually happening in our classrooms. We even brought students in to give us their perspective on how we could do better.

Wow, really? What ages did you bring in? Well, high school and college-level students, we had them regularly. We had a youth summit, and we had hundreds of youth from high school and college from all over the country talking to us about the things that we should be thinking about, kind of like what we were talking about before when you were in student council in middle school. It's really important that we never lose sight of the voice of our students as we're thinking about policy and education.

I think that's so important. That's amazing. I love that you guys had the students come in and speak.

I think that's such an important key. They brought a lot of good energy, too, and better music than what we listened to. My third question, was there a moment in your own life when you realized history isn't just about the past, but how we understand ourselves in the present? Absolutely. 

They say if you're not paying attention, history repeats itself. I try to think about looking at history as valuable lessons. When this country was formed, it was formed on ideals.

We've always tried to make a more perfect union. This is the greatest country in the world. It is.

I think what makes it special, it's an idea. Unlike most other countries, you can have people from different walks of life come together and chase that ideal. Looking back at our history, you could see where decisions were made to protect democracy.

Democracy is more important than any one person leading any president, the democracy that we're all under. Looking at our history, we can remind ourselves how no matter what's happening in our current time, we should be striving for that ideal, that democracy that's going to outlast all of us. Looking back at history, we also see some of the mistakes and sins that we've made as a country.

By looking at those things, slavery being one of them, we can say we have to do better. We have to make sure that we chase those ideals for a more perfect union very intentionally and very openly. Teaching our students the good and the bad of our history helps make this country stronger.

It sounds so funny, but there's always more than one perspective to everything. Absolutely. I think it's so important that you have to teach both sides of that.

Absolutely. The victory and the losses. They always say history is written by the victors.

There's always another perspective. There's a perspective that oftentimes was silenced for many years. Seeking all different perspectives helps round out our history better, I think.

Yeah, for sure. I hear that all the time. It's written by one person, and then you see these other perspectives from it.

It's so interesting. For my fourth question, do you have any suggestions for how we can move from memorization to discovery from history in schools? I think that's a good question. While I do think memorization has its place in some subjects, such as math and even history, I do think application of concepts really are what shapes students' growth and development.

I mentioned earlier debates, right? Yes. What if we were to have our students look at a perspective and argue both sides of the coin so that the students can make a better decision? What if we reenacted what it was like to live? You asked me about my experience when I was a fourth-grade teacher, but I'm going to tell you my experience when I was a fourth-grade student, way back. I think it was in the 80s.

I remember we visited Sturbridge Village. Do you remember that place? I do. Have you ever been there? I've never been there, but I've heard quite a bit about it.

It really forced us to experience what it was like to live back then and to understand that there was no electricity. There was no refrigeration. The medicine that we take for granted today wasn't around back then, so people died much earlier.

You get to experience that. Through experiencing that, you get to understand what history was like, and it really comes to life. Another thing that I remember when I was a student, I was a fifth-grader at this time.

We were studying colonial America, and we were asked to bring in projects, right? I remember doing a project where I was recreating a wagon where they traveled. We were studying Native American culture as well, and the teacher asked us to bring in things that might lend themselves to that time period. I asked my mother to make rice and beans or rice and corn.

She cooks really well, and I remember bringing that in with such pride and saying, Look, this is connected to our stories. I think when we bring the topic to life or when we make it touch more of the senses, smell, taste, the experience, the feeling, history becomes much more enjoyable to learn and to experience. I think that comes from being creative as educators.

That comes from district curriculum, allowing for good pedagogy around teaching and learning versus just rote memorization of facts, which you forget after the test in many cases. It just brings it to life. You said that you did a lot of art when you were younger, and they were really into it.

When you were with your students, did you do a lot of artsy projects? I did. I did. Whether it was having them do what I did in fifth grade, create dioramas or PowerPoint presentations at the time that was out there, or even having them write poetry or write songs or do an acting thing about what they were learning.

We were learning a little bit about the Iditarod. Do you remember? Have you ever heard of the Iditarod? I've heard of it, but I haven't really learned much. When I was teaching fourth grade, we read a book called Wood Song by Gary Paulson.

In teaching fourth grade, the book was written at a seventh grade level, so it was really challenging for a lot of the students. But it was the story of the Iditarod, which is a sled race, a dog sled race in Alaska. You have mushers that have a sled, and they have maybe eight to ten dogs that are pulling the sled.

I'm teaching in Meriden, and a lot of the students that I was teaching lived in Meriden their whole lives. They've never been to Alaska, but the book was bringing it to life. I was so fortunate that we were able to bring in an actual sled dog team to bring my students around the backyard of the school.

There were actual sled dogs in an actual sled that would be used in the Iditarod. For a lot of these kids, that brought that book to life. That made the reading enjoyable.

When we can do that as educators, it makes the learning more hands-on, more fun, more enjoyable. They're more motivated to do writing. They're more motivated to put on a show or a play about that.

I definitely like to involve the arts. I think our students are very creative, and they enjoy learning through multi-modal approaches. The sled dogs, that's incredible. 

How did you guys manage to do that? I remember meeting a firefighter in Meriden. He would do sled dog racing, too. I knew him, and I asked him about it.

He said, I know this lady that brings the dogs to the school. Do you want me to contact her? We made that connection, and for about two to three years, every time I would finish that book, we would bring the sled dogs in. The students loved it. 

I have pictures of that. To this day, it's some of the best experiences I've had as an educator my whole career. I'd be pretty excited if my teacher brought in a group of sled dogs.

For my fifth question, is there a particular message you wish to share with people my age? I do. There's a lot of opportunities for your generation to reinvent what education looks like. I was proud to hear that you were a part of the student council.

I am. I think you probably don't even realize the power that you have to shape what education looks like, not only in Wallingford, not only in Connecticut, but across the country. I have so much confidence that better days are coming because of your generation.

Really? I do. I really do. And it's because I believe that our youth have so much to say.

I often feel that our systems are not always designed to listen, but I do feel you have a lot to say. And quite frankly, I have more confidence in your generation than even my own. I do. 

I do. There's no movement, Isabella, in this country that was successful without youth leading it. Now, if you look at history in our country, whatever, civil rights movement, even after some of the gun violence in our schools, we saw a movement made up of students that were in the school where there was gun violence, talking about safety in our schools.

I wear a bracelet that was given to me by a third grader, and it says, good trouble. What does that mean? Good trouble was a term that was used by the late great Congressman John Lewis. He was a congressman for 17 terms, and he was a very important figure in the civil rights movement when Dr. Martin Luther King was alive and when they were fighting for equality, right? Congressman John Lewis was 25 years old when he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in order to get freedom and equality for black people in Selma, Alabama.

And he was young, 25, which might feel old to you, but that's young. He was young, and they carried on the ideals of democracy in a way that is inspiring. I wear this because he said sometimes you have to get into good trouble.

And he meant you have to do good things, right? But he was young. He was 25 when that happened. And I really feel that there's so much promise in this country, so much opportunity, and I think we can maximize it to the extent that we listen and we engage our youth.

You're the ones that are going to be leading us, not only today but in the future. My message to youth, to answer your question, is to take advantage of opportunities to lead, to have your voice heard, to engage and be a part of the system if you want it to improve. Wow, that's so much insight.

Just, wow. It just reminds me some rules are meant to be broken. I don't want you to get in trouble.

Dr. Cardona told me. But you create your future. Remember I was telling you I liked art in high school? Yes.

So my teacher's name was Linda Ransom, Mrs. Ransom. I was fixing cars at Wilcox. Loved it.

Great experience. But I loved the arts. And I was painting a painting, like a little watercolor painting.

And it was, I was like maybe, how old are you? 15. Okay, I was like 16. So there was like different people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities.

I had someone from the United States, someone that was black. I had someone that was from like Middle Eastern, someone from Asia. And then on the top I said we are all one race, the human race.

That was my way of communicating the importance of celebrating differences and coming together despite having differences, right? As a 16-year-old, I would paint that. And Mrs. Ransom said to me, you know Miguel, would you consider making that a bulletin board in the cafeteria? She saw something in my artwork that I was trying to say something. I was so proud to have that put in the cafeteria.

And then the newspaper did a story about that. I was so excited, yeah. And that same teacher, six months later, asked me to consider becoming a teacher.

And I guess my story is not special. I'm not special. There are millions of students in this country with so much potential to do good things that just need a little tap on the shoulder.

Linda Ransom gave me a tap. And that's why when I'm getting interviewed by you, you're 15. At 15, I wouldn't interview anyone.

I'd be scared. I would be nervous to do this. So what I'm saying is the potential is limitless, Isabella.

And I'm excited to see what you do and what your peers do to chase a more perfect union. The ideals of this country. I'm blessed to come from Meriden and be able to make decisions in the White House.

But that's the American story. That's the American story. Every child in this country has that opportunity.

And I think we're fortunate to live in the United States. We're fortunate to have public education where every child has access to education, unlike some countries. Wealthy to get education.

Because I had an education system, and it was giving me the opportunity to dream big. I had teachers that made me dream big. And the education you're getting at Lyman Hall is great.

And you have the opportunity to flex that leadership muscle and continue to grow and chase your dreams. Thank you so much for coming out here and doing this interview with me. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

I wish you well. Thank you to Team Tiger TV. And I look forward to seeing the final product.

Thank you so much. Thanks.