Most teachers will endorse "standards" of authentic instruction, including deep knowledge, higher order thinking, substantive conversation, and connections to the world beyond the classroom. When it comes to putting such endorsements into practice, however, they too often accept a standardized view of content that is dull and doctrinaire and settle for approaches to teaching and assessment that are superficial and sterile. In this article, the author explains how the teaching of social studies can be made authentic by making it more poetic and more personal. He identifies the three ways in digging poetic postholes in the social studies curriculum. He also introduces examples that allow students to relate with history more intimately. (Contains 12 notes.)