Jenny Staysniak was named a finalist for History Teacher of the Year. She teaches at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. (Photo/Jenny Staysniak)
HUDSON — For Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School history teacher Jenny Stasniak, teaching doesn’t end with what students learn in the classroom.
She believes it’s important to look outside the classroom and into the community at large to “bring history to life.”
Stasniak, who has lived in Hudson for five years, has taught at Lincoln-Sudbury High School for the past four years, where she has taught ninth-grade modern world history and 10th-grade 20th-century U.S. history.
This year, she was named a finalist for the 2024 History Teacher of the Year award by the Department of Education and the Gilder Lehman Institute of American History.
“We feel like being a finalist validates how valuable community-based learning is,” Stasniak said.
She believed it was her community work that made her stand out among other applicants.
“Though time-consuming and sometimes resource-dependent, creating projects that bring history to life through collecting oral histories, conversations with various community members and reflective activities that students can participate in can create dynamic learning opportunities outside of the classroom,” she said.
Stasniak was honored as a finalist for History Teacher of the Year during a ceremony May 7. (Photo/Jenny Stasniak)
award
According to Jacqueline Reis, communications director for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, “Teacher recognition has been going on for many years, long before I arrived in the department, and involves several different awards.”
The Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year award recognizes “outstanding K-12 teachers who have found creative ways to bring history to life in their classrooms and communities,” according to the department’s website. The award has been presented since 2004, and all winners are listed online.
Stasniak was recognized along with 29 other finalists and winners during the school’s annual celebration of excellence in education, held May 7 at the Devens Conference Center.
“The atmosphere was just so positive and celebratory overall and I really enjoyed meeting the other teachers and hearing about the great work others are doing,” she said.
She said she was inspired by the job because it allows teachers to do the “daily grunt work” that is more mundane, like grading papers, copying materials, etc. She said the job grounded her in why she wanted to become a teacher – to make a difference in students’ lives.
Jenny Staysniak at the First Armenian Church in Belmont, Massachusetts, where work for the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Interview Project took place. (Photo/Jenny Staysniak)
The journey to becoming a teacher
Ms. Stasniak tried to find her way in the professional world while working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, then became a teacher, before moving to Boston with her boyfriend, whom she later married, to complete a master’s degree at Boston College.
She said, “I just really fell in love with teaching. I didn’t realize it until I chose my next step, but teaching was truly my calling.”
She has no regrets about changing career paths and has incorporated her passion for oral history collecting into her classes.
One such project is her two-year-old interview project on Armenian Genocide memory, in which she and her students conducted interviews with around 60 people of Armenian descent, focusing on their family histories and connections to the Armenian Genocide.
After compiling the interviews, the students wrote reflections on the project, and she said she hopes to compile all of their stories into a book if she can find a publisher.
Her love of history dates back to her school days, when she says history is always moving forward and helping students understand the community and world they live in “is really important to me because our experiences are rooted in events that happened before us.”
She teaches her students that the expression “history always repeats itself” is not entirely accurate because it means “things always change.” While there are patterns in history, she believes it is her job to lay the groundwork for discussing the differences in people’s reactions then and now.
She said part of her classes is why political systems have changed and why things have been challenged throughout history, which is why the theme of colonial politics reflects what’s going on in the country today.
“It’s a really important subject to help students feel like they are informed citizens,” she said.
Students today are surrounded by so much information, and Stasniak said they must critically engage with all the information available to them.
“As a history teacher, I’m really proud to be a part of that journey for them,” she said.
Stasniak said her goal is for her students to be able to connect what they learned in class to today’s events, and she hopes they learn to follow through to find answers to things they don’t understand.
She said, “If we’re studying history, it’s my job as a teacher to at least give my students a chance to discuss that history.”
Her students teach her through their desire to learn in a world that is “so different” technologically than the one she grew up in. She noted how vibrant their generation is.
Stasniak believed they were inspiring older generations to think “really deeply” about issues like gender and human rights, and she praised their youth and their ability to move the conversation forward toward achieving social change.
“We have a lot to learn from them, just their ability to talk to each other and hold society accountable,” she said.
A teacher’s role is to make sure students are safe and able to learn, she said. The mother of three children, two of whom attend Farley Elementary, said she is “so impressed with the education in Hudson Public Schools” and emphasized the level of support and care her children receive.
She said: “Teachers are not just people who help students learn, they are also guardians and safety nets.”
