One question I hear continuously from my students is “Why do we have to learn about a bunch of dead guys, and what does this have to do with my life today?” One of my main goals in teaching history is to show how what happened in the past shapes what we do today, and that everything about our modern world from politics to technological advances has a link to the past. However, learning about history doesn’t have to be about memorizing a bunch of dates and outcomes of events. Debating why decisions were made, thinking about how our world would be different had certain people made different choices or had events ended in another way makes learning history much more meaningful.