Brittany Mercado addresses a room full of ninth graders taking her World History I class: “Alright, friends. You have a marker, you have an assigned spot to create a visual representation of the social structure, and you have three minutes.”

Students cluster around whiteboards and classroom windows, drawing pyramids that represent the population of France before the French Revolution in 1789. They then explain their diagrams to their peers. One group gains the room’s admiration for the specificity of their choices depicting workers in the third estate: a blacksmith, a jester, and a gravedigger.

Mercado keeps the class moving from one activity to the next; like a Peloton instructor of the mind, she keeps an eye on the clock and makes sure the students don’t slack on the pace. She distributes a packet of ten primary sources — text and political cartoons — and gives the class 15 minutes to mine them for causes of the revolution. She walks around the room, offering advice and answering questions; students work in small groups and, amongst themselves, discuss questions of economic inequality and the divine right of kings.

Her students have grown accustomed to doing these investigations with minimal guidance. Mercado tells them they can write “French Revolution: Long Term Causes” at the top of their notes—but they fill up blank pages with their own observations, not her commentary.

Watching them, Mercado grins and says quietly, “They’re capable of more than they realize.”

What’s the experience of ninth graders in your classes?

The freshman World History class is very research heavy. Sometimes they complain, “We do more writing in this class than we do in English,” and I tell them that’s probably true. Within the first few weeks of the year, they write a really big research-based paper on empires; it spans two to three weeks and they think it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done in their life. They do another paper on art in February and they do an annotated bibliography in May, but they always say “That empire paper was way harder than anything else.” In reality, the assignments in February and May aren’t any easier: the students have just gotten better. They’re more comfortable with the process of research and writing.

You’ve been at Charlotte Latin four years — how has your teaching approach changed in that time?

I would say “evolved” rather than “changed.” I feel very lucky that I came in and stood immediately on the shoulders of Amy Zinn and Whitney Duquette: they were doing great student-centered work in their classrooms and they immediately welcomed me. In the summer before my first school year, we had planning sessions about how to implement a standards-based grading system.

What does that entail?

We identified four standards that we wanted our students to work on throughout the year. The first standard is writing a claim. The second is using evidence to support the claim. The third is attribution of sources, while the fourth is delivery of a product. Those standards are intentionally vague enough to work for a paper or a presentation or a discussion. I think students, especially in ninth and tenth grade, really benefit from it, even if they don’t realize it immediately. I don’t like the idea that you get a different project each unit and expectations keep shifting: the rubric should stay the same. This way, when they look back at the year, they can track their progress.

What were you like in high school?

I was on student council and I played soccer. I’ve got eldest daughter syndrome: I was a rule follower and I worked really hard. I took some AP classes, but I wasn’t knocking it out of the park. In a lot of ways, I feel like that makes me a better teacher now. And I had some great teachers along the way who still inspire me. One of them was a math teacher and math is still not my thing — but I remember how I felt in her classroom.

Did history always speak to you?

In college, all my friends were changing majors every other week, but I knew that I was majoring in history and then I would get my master’s degree in education. And I loved my classes. I took almost exclusively American history, including a bunch of military history classes, because my favorite professor was an adjunct professor who specialized in military history — I believe he was a retired Air Force colonel. I didn’t fall in love with world history until I had to teach it as part of my first teaching job, part of a program at Columbia. From that moment on, I’ve taught only world history.

Is there a period of world history you particularly enjoy teaching?

I like the lesser-known aspects and I like stepping away from European history. We have one unit called Dark Age State Building. Historians coined the term Dark Ages because it was a bad time in western Europe, but it’s a golden age for the Baghdad House of Wisdom, the Tang and the Song dynasties in China, and the Aksum empire in Africa. There’s innovations in astronomy and agriculture that wouldn’t reach Europe for centuries.

How do you set up your syllabus?

The lesson date is on the left; agenda and homework on the right. At the top, there are important dates for the unit and important resources that are hyperlinked. If you’re not in class, you can access the syllabus and look at all the documents we read. And I have a strict way I have students organize their binders: they have a divider for each of the 12 units, and they keep each unit in the chronological order that we do the readings and assignments. Some of my colleagues who teach mostly sophomores have told me, “At the beginning of the year, I know which students were Mercado people because they come in with their binders.” I’ve even had students email me from college and tell me, “I’m setting up my notes the way you taught me.” Executive functioning is a hot mess for a lot of ninth graders, so I want them to acquire skills that transcend the history classroom.

What’s something you're personally curious about right now?

One of my favorite podcasts is Real Dictators: each season, it tells the story of a different dictator from world history. So I’ve recently become fascinated with Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who took over the Central African Republic in a coup in 1966, but in the 1970s crowned himself emperor in a Napoleon-style $20 million ceremony. Apparently he didn’t pay attention in history class, because he tried to do economic reforms through Maoist privatization of land, which failed for him the same way the Five Year Plans failed in China.

What haven’t you done yet that you would like to?

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher and a wife and a mom, and I’m so happy with my life. I’ve never been to the Netherlands, so I’m excited about this trip that Matt Cosper and I are leading this summer, taking students to Belgium and the Netherlands to study peace, memory, and justice, and how they relate to World War I and World War II. And the school is affording me the opportunity to go to the Institute for Teaching World Religions in New York City this summer. I love teaching world religions and culture — I’m excited to come back with new resources.

Where do you want your students to be at the end of the year?

I don’t have a destination — I just want them to be able to identify a way that they’ve grown. That’s why the standards help: students can see how far they’ve come. They don’t need to remember the intricacies of the fast-ripening rice process of the Tang Dynasty, but if they can use supporting evidence to argue a point, that’s always going to help them.

What has teaching taught you about yourself?

I’m going to flip the question a little bit: I have kids of my own now and I didn’t when I started teaching ten years ago. My kids are four and six; my son Brian is in Kindergarten and my daughter Frances is in the Nest. I’ve always loved my students, but now sometimes I look at them and think, “This is someone’s Brian,” and that makes me want to cry. I appreciate that my class may not be for everyone and some students don’t love history the way I do. At the end of the year, I want those students to say, “She didn’t lower expectations for me, but she still loved me and saw me outside the room.”