Teacher Wins Honors For History Skills
Source: Hartford Courant ()
NEW YORK — - To appreciate what Maureen Festi has accomplished as an elementary school teacher in Stafford, look no further than her students.
“It’s exciting to be in her class,” said Morgan Bagley, who was in Festi’s fifth-grade class last year when she had her children undertake a history project.
“I loved having Miss Festi as a teacher,” said Tyler Whaley, who was in the same class. “She gets her students involved and really excited about learning.”
Little did Festi or her students realize that the history project they were working on would attract the attention of educators outside their classroom and outside Connecticut.
Little did they realize that the project would help them become a part of history Friday, when first lady Laura Bush honored Festi as the Preserve America National History Teacher of the Year, with Festi’s two students at her side.
Festi, whose class project on a Colonial-era ironworks in Stafford turned up documents dating to the Revolutionary War, received the award from Bush, a former teacher, during a ceremony at the Museum of the City of New York.
“I never thought I would become a part of history because of the project,” Festi, a 30-year teacher, said. “When I started it with Dan Coughlin [a project coordinator] at EastConn, I got very excited about teaching history because he was teaching it in a way that we become historians. So I wanted my kids to become historians.
“He suggested I apply for the Connecticut history teacher of the year and I did. I won the state award, but I never thought I would get this. When I found out I was one of the five finalists I was very happy and I couldn’t believe it. I cried,” she said.
The national award is given jointly by Preserve America, a federal initiative to protect the country’s natural and resources, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, a nonprofit organization that promotes American history …