Presenting the past in the history classroom:

some reflections on history teaching in the post-pandemic period

Abstract

This text aims to reflect on ways of presenting the past in the history classroom, based on the author's teaching experience in a public school with elementary school classes. The teaching project "Tu? Tu, livre!" covered the life of Maria Firmina dos Reis and one of her literary works, Úrsula, from 1859, considered the first Afro-Brazilian abolitionist novel. The text discusses the meanings of making the past present in the history classroom, relating it to the issue of teaching history. It points out the existence of a new landscape in history teaching, marked by the centrality of ethnic-racial relations education, the emergence of revisionism/negationism and the effects of the pandemic on learning, more particularly on historical literacy. Finally, it argues that the aforementioned project highlighted the possibility of broadening the understanding of the forms of presentification of the past, by recovering historically silenced content, mobilizing forms of reading practiced in the 19th century and the author's experiences as a reader and demands of the contemporary world such as the inclusion of the deaf-mute public, opening up new trenches to make the history class a space for constant construction and revision of meaning.