By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

As we all know, teachers look forward to summer vacation just as much (if not more!) than most students. Each year the Society helps teachers relax and recharge their batteries through our workshop offerings and fellowship opportunities. The Society has awarded more than sixty-five fellowships to K-12 teachers over the past fourteen years, and this summer we will welcome four more very talented educators to the MHS. Our fellows are a diverse lot, coming from public and private schools across Massachusetts and the United States. Over the years they have explored topics such as eighteenth-century medicine, John Brown’s abolitionist network, Massachusetts and the Anti-Imperialist League, and Massachusetts women in World War I. This summer’s fellows have chosen equally intriguing topics, and we look forward to learning more about how they will use MHS collections related to these subjects in their classroom. 

• • Kass Fellow Sara Belk is the Lead Enrichment Teacher and Drama Specialist at the Park Street School in Boston. She will explore different periods in American history, including King Philip’s War and John Eliot and the Praying Indians, as well as the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. She will ultimately write a series of history plays for classroom use based on her research at MHS.

  • Swensrud Fellow Kelly Benestad teaches U.S. and World History at St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. She will investigate the rise of the American party (also known as the Know-Nothing Party) in Massachusetts, considering both the local and the national social and political conditions that led to the Party’s popularity in the antebellum era.

  • Swensrud Fellow Emmitt Glynn, III, teaches history to high school students at the Port Hudson Career Academy in Zachary, Louisiana. He will examine resources related to the Civil War, in particular letters and diaries that reveal the war experience in the South. Many Massachusetts soldiers served in Louisiana and participated in the 1863 Battle of Port Hudson!

  • Swensrud Fellow Michelle Hubenschmidt teaches at Mulberry High School in Polk County, Florida. She will analyze ten to twelve significant land and sea battles from the War of 1812. Her students will then make connections between propaganda from this era and the emerging sense of nationalism that occurred during and after the war.

Although each teacher creates a different type of project based on his or her needs, our teacher fellows ultimately help to make interesting materials from the Society’s collection available to teachers and students who could not necessarily visit the Library themselves. In their own classrooms, schools, school districts and beyond, our teacher fellows are wonderful ambassadors for the MHS. If you would like to become part of this esteemed group of educators, visit our education page to learn more about how the fellowship program works, or contact the education department for more information.