Focusing on a handful of skills can make history accessible to any student. Foremost is the establishment of a culture of curiosity in my classrooms, which encourages students to challenge the limits of their understandings. Curiosity breeds conversations, and students in my courses are taught the importance of constructing a persuasive and evidence-based argument, and how to include these arguments within the dialogue of (at times) difficult and controversial issues. Accessibility is also dependent on activities and projects that take advantage of each student’s background and — especially in the case of freshman survey courses, where a majority of the students are not declared History majors — major-specific skillsets, highlighting the interdisciplinary methods (and benefits!) of studying history. And perhaps most importantly, accessibility of content relies on a keen sense of historical empathy. 

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Accessibility also informs what I believe is the purpose of all historical inquiry: sharing with wider audiences. Students in my classes not only learn historical content, they learn how to *share* it. Students get into the habit of taking their research and revising it - whether through reformatting or rewriting it - so their family, friends, and wider community can understand both (a) what they've learned in class and in their own individual research and (b) why it's important. Students learn various forms of historical writing, ranging from marginalia and 280-characters tweets to article-length essays, with everything in-between including digital history projects such as website blog posts, digital timelines using programs like StoryMap, and even immersive virtual reality landscapes.