\u201cI love teaching because I like the challenge,\u201d shares Dr. Phillip Keisman. \u201cIn order to teach something, you have to understand it systematically enough to give it over to a variety of brains in the room\u2014everybody\u2019s learning differently. How am I going to take what I find interesting to you and your classmates? Who\u2019s more a visual learner and more of a kinesthetic learner?\u201d he elaborates. Keisman joined the history department at Fieldston this past fall, beginning his 15th year as an educator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before teaching, Keisman worked as a basketball coach. While studying at Brandeis, he worked as a student manager for their basketball team and eventually got promoted to student coach. \u201cI wanted to be a professional basketball coach when I was in high school,\u201d he remarks. \u201cI spent senior year, into the summer of 2006, coaching at a local high school, and then I worked at a basketball camp in Long Island for a summer. Since then, it\u2019s all been avocational.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keisman began his teaching career in Jewish Studies at The Heschel School. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Lehman College, Queens College, The New School and the Jewish Theological Seminary. In addition, he currently teaches community classes and a summer course for adults at various synagogues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked what drew him to Fieldston, he says, \u201cI grew up in Riverdale. I went to Jewish day schools, and my recollection is that I thought Fieldston kids were cool.\u201d He adds, \u201cI find Felix Adler very interesting as a person, and when I was applying to schools for a job, I was attracted to the extension of that vision and the way you talk about ethics and the way you work ethics into humanities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that Keisman is at Fieldston, he teaches ninth-grade Modern World History and the junior\/senior elective Modern Genocide and Mass Violence. \u201cI have always wanted to teach a class on genocide\u2013I mean always\u2013since I was an undergraduate in college,\u201d explains Keisman. \u201cI feel really grateful that I have the opportunity to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keisman adds, \u201cI think looking at crimes against humanity in general is depressing. I think the 20th century, in general, is really depressing. But I also think some historians are really good at forcing us to take a victim-center approach and to humanize people that were not humanized in their time, and I think that could build empathy when it\u2019s done well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
History has been one of Keisman\u2019s passions for a long time: \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting to me about history is both what we don\u2019t know\u2013like what are the seams that historians debate about\u2013and also how much we do know in a world where there\u2019s misinformation and conspiracy theories. I find a lot of emotional grounding knowing that there are people who have access to actual sources that we can point to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI love teaching because I like the challenge,\u201d shares Dr. Phillip Keisman. \u201cIn order to teach something, you have to understand it systematically enough to give it over to a variety of brains in the room\u2014everybody\u2019s learning differently. How am I going to take what I find interesting to you and your classmates? Who\u2019s more a visual learner and more of a kinesthetic learner?\u201d he elaborates. Keisman joined the history department at Fieldston this past<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":12355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,426,644,318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[655],"class_list":["post-12354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-faculty","category-features","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-03-at-6.50.20-PM-e1762213872453.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12759,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12354\/revisions\/12759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12354"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}