Castleton educator named Vt. History Teacher of the Year
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By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: June 29, 2009
CASTLETON — David Marr covered his face as his students applauded him.
The third-grade teacher at Castleton Elementary School did not know, until he was presented with the award June 15, that he was Vermont History Teacher of the Year. He said he had even forgotten he'd been nominated.
"We kept this a secret for a long time and you haven't made it very easy," Principal Carole Pickett said.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History gives the award each year to a teacher in each state who shows creativity in the classroom and a deep commitment to the subject. The institute gives the winning teacher $1,000 and his school an archive of historical materials.
Marr, 57, a 15-year classroom veteran, said teaching history at the third-grade level has become more of a challenge in recent years because standardized tests at that level don't look for it.
"With all the testing, there's an emphasis on reading, science and math," he said. "The only way to really get history in is through language arts."
Marr said he uses a lot of age-appropriate historical fiction for his reading comprehension units. A "Teaching American History" grant paid for many of the books.
"We're not doing Amelia Bedelia," he said. "It's got some meat to it."
The class recently completed one book on an Irish immigrant girl. Earlier in the year, the class read "Number the Stars," about Christians helping Jews escape German-occupied Denmark during World War II.
"Third graders love it because it's all about fairness," he said. "They want everything to be fair."
The Holocaust unit left an impression on several of Marr's 16 students.
"The book was really good because it had a happy ending and a lot of action," 9-year-old Ella Kearns said.
The class also read about Anne Frank, according to Kearns, but that ending was not so happy.
Megan Randall, 9, recalled making a quilt during a unit on slavery, and described how slaves were chained down for their trip across the Atlantic.
"The biggest thing is he makes history come alive for the students," Pickett said. "He does a lot of out-of-the-box things to get them thinking."
An example Pickett described was having students look at the labels on their clothes to see where they were made, then find that location on a world map.
Marr's class also does a unit on immigration, in which the students research when their ancestors arrived in America. This culminates in a December event where students dress as their immigrant ancestors would have and bring in dishes from their ancestral country.
With the Irish and Welsh origins of many in town, Marr said that event sees a lot of potato dishes.
"It's like doing local history, too, when we do the immigration unit," he said.
Michael Austin, a history professor at Castleton State College and the state coordinator for Gilder Lehrman, said the immigration unit was a prime example of the sort of teaching the organization wants to encourage.
"Teaching is not just dispensing facts," Austin said. "That's not what a teacher is. A teacher is involved in a life-changing process."
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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