A Higher Standard: Burlington Teacher Makes a Difference

Katie Bercury, a Burlington High School social studies teacher,was no stranger to Primary Source when she enrolled in a seminar on the history of religion in America last fall. She had interacted with the organization several times, having taken seminars on China, the Industrial Revolution and participated in a biography discussion on Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. But God's Country, said Katie, "was by far the most challenging."

During the seminar, "passion pulsed through the room," she recalls, "because religion is so central, but such a difficult, issue for teachers." The seminar helped Katie teach her freshman U.S. history course more effectively as well as her courses on sociology and economics. "Religion is deeply related to politics and current events, and the seminar helped me and my students to make new connections," Katie says. She notes that many Muslims and Hindus populate Burlington schools.

Katie, whose study is sponsored by a formal Primary Source district partnership, also had the opportunity to take Immigration, Emigration, and Migration this winter. This seminar broadened her cultural understanding of today's students, including Burlington's significant Asian population. She particularly enjoyed a lecture by Columbia University Professor Farah Griffin which chronicled the Great Migration through the narrative paintings of Jacob Lawrence.

Katie had never taught history through art and found herself more confident doing so after the immigration course. "When I give kids written stuff, they think they must find the 'right' answer," she says. But when recently using a painting by William Ranney in her presentation on the Westward Expansion, Katie found it "evoked a different sort of inquiry."

Katie looks forward to participating in more professional development programs because "Primary Source consistently calls me and other teachers to a higher standard."