Dr. Bob Cooper: Making History 'Come Alive' for 44 Years

Although widely viewed as a consummate academic and born teacher, Dr. Bob Cooper did not always view himself as such. Indeed, in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he sometimes felt like an odd duck. “I often felt like I didn’t fit,” he recalls. “I had a much stronger Brooklyn accent back then, and everyone else sounded so well-educated.”

A product of public education, Dr. Cooper did not expect to make a career at a place like Springs. Having grown up in Queens, he worked at his father’s gas station from a young age, continuing to do so 30-40 hours per week to support himself in college. “I grew up two miles from Donald Trump, but it was a different world,” Dr. Cooper explains. He lived in a state-built cooperative for veterans of World War II, where “if you made enough money you had to leave.” He was the only member of his extended family to leave New York.

A few years after earning his Ph.D., he arrived at Springs, where his AP European History classes have earned a reputation for their demand and reward. Each August, he tells students that he wants them “to be better students by the end of the year, in particular to develop critical thinking skills.” Though he hopes that students appreciate the subject, “the great success is not that they’ve learned more European history, but that they can appreciate that history is crucial for critical thinking.”

Dr. Cooper considers writing the primary tool to achieve such growth. “I tell them the essay is like being an attorney before a jury. They must have specific evidence and it must be developed logically. Critical thinking needs to be disciplined. You have to organize your thoughts. Writing, you have to think about.”

Interactions with Springs alums have shown him that critical thinking and writing continue to serve his students long after they have graduated: “This is the great thing about Indian Springs. I actually get to see those former students. They come back.”

In terms of advice he would offer to new teachers, he encourages them to capitalize on their strengths. “I think you need to be yourself,” he says. “Try to do the things that you do well. Teachers are different. You have to have a certain amount of faith in yourself.” He insists that teachers must offer a consistently rigorous learning experience because “students appreciate being challenged. You should challenge them.”

This fall, his hallmark emphasis on critical thinking and writing will reach a younger audience as he passes the torch of AP European History and moves from full-time to part-time teaching.  As he plans to teach 8th grade history, he looks forward to fostering meaningful conversations that require active, critical listening beyond traditional lecture. “Debate, role-playing, seminar discussions: These types of activities are valuable and make the learning come alive.”

While Dr. Cooper does have some plans for taking advantage of the extra time a reduced course load will afford him, he does not envision major changes in the near future. Asked for specifics, he smiles, answering, “Go to the Y, go swimming more, nothing all that exciting.

“When I was 40, I had cancer. The doctor told me I had 50 percent chance of dying,” he says. “The doctor recommended that if there was anything I wanted to do, I should do it then. So, I thought what I wanted to do was to continue what I was doing, which is a really great thing to discover.”