Haas Hall teacher earns history award

FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ history teacher of the year appreciates that every class offers students history to be explored.

“Math has history. Physics has history. Everything has history,” said Rebecca Moll, who’s in her 13th year at Haas Hall Academy. “So it makes it enjoyable to show those interconnections of how there’s a story to be told in every subject, no matter what subject it is.”

Moll won this year’s Gilder Lehrman History Teacher of the Year Award, given annually to one K-12 American history teacher in each state. State winners receive $1,000, a collection of classroom resources to be presented in their name to the school library and an invitation to participate in a Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminar, according to a Haas Hall news release.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994, is a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting knowledge and understanding of U.S. history.

Haas Hall students and staff gathered outside the school Tuesday to celebrate Moll’s achievement. Her husband, daughter, parents and mother-in-law attended. Thomas Coy, a public school program manager at the Arkansas Department of Education, presented the award to her.

Moll is the social sciences department head at Haas Hall. She is also Haas Hall’s athletic director and coaches cross country, swimming and rowing.

She is one of the few Haas

Hall faculty members who can remember the school’s early days, when it was housed in a converted dairy barn in Farmington. Haas Hall opened there in 2004. Since then, the charter school has moved to Fayetteville and opened three other campuses across Northwest Arkansas.

Moll, a Russellville native, comes from a family of educators. Her mother taught for 26 years, and her father was a college professor. Her motherin-law is a teacher, too.

As part of her application for the award, Moll had to submit two lesson plans — one meant for a single day and one that would take up about a week, she said.

“It was fun, and I think it helped me be a better teacher in making plans,” she said.

Committees in each state have selected a state history teacher of the year from nominated teachers since 2004. Moll is the second teacher from Northwest Arkansas to receive the award. Chrissy Hallwachs, a Bentonville teacher, won it in 2013.

Sara Ziemnik, a high school history teacher in Rocky River, Ohio, won this year’s Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year Award. Her prize was $10,000.