Teacher brings history lessons to life

Near the end of the day at North Hills Middle School, as buses began to gather in front of the building, social studies teacher Joe Welch was in the midst of a dizzying display of academic pyrotechnics, enough to keep 14 eighthgraders not just on the edge of their seats but standing up out of them.

In a lesson that explored local aspects of the French and Indian War, Mr. Welch led students through an improvised historical skit and fired off enough comparisons, quips and questions to make them relate to the plight of a 21year-old colonial major named George Washington and those who crossed his path.

In September, Mr. Welch, 33, was named National History Teacher of the Year, the youngest winner ever. The award, administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, comes with a $10,000 prize. He will be honored at a ceremony at the Yale Club in New York City this month.

“He’s such a cool guy,” eighth-grader Ryan Nolan said. “Sometimes he’ll say an analogy or tell a story for the entire class period. He explains how it relates to what we’re learning. Without that, we can’t really get into their shoes that much.”

On Thursday afternoon, students doodled iPad interpretations of the war that launched the military career of America’s first president. Then they brought it to life.

At the back of the room, Mr. Welch unfurled three rolls of blue construction paper, each representing a different Pittsburgh river.

“If you live in North Hills, which side would you be on?” he asked, gesturing toward the Allegheny River.

He assigned students roles of historical figures involved in Britain’s push to drive France from what was known as the Ohio country. Mr. Welch pointed to the student playing Robert Dinwiddie, the colonial lieutenant governor who escalated the land dispute that led to the war.

“Gov. Dinwiddie,” Mr. Welch said. “What do you want to tell them to go tell the French up at Fort LeBoeuf?”

Like, go away? the student answered.

“Yes, to go away,” Mr. Welch confirmed. “To shoo. This is British land.”

As he guided them through the lesson Thursday, Mr. Welch alternated between a commanding voice and whisper, taking the occasional stab at a French accent. Then he pulled out an analogy to describe the frustrations of a Native American chief who teamed up with the British to stave off French expansion.

“You embarrassed him,” Mr. Welch told the students playing the French leaders. “You made him looking really bad. That’s like if somebody at home starts yelling at you in public.”

Ohh, several students groaned. That’s so embarrassing, one student said.

Mr. Welch, the son of a retired North Hills teacher, cut his teeth as a storyteller in the South Fayette High School theater department, where he performed in plays and musicals as a teen. The key, he said, is making students feel like they “have some skin in the game.”

“It all comes down to, ‘How can I make a kid part of a story?’” he said. “If a kid is learning about Jamestown, they need to see themselves there and see what’s in it for them. If they can’t connect with the emotion or landscape, it’s really tough to make them learn.”

He regularly workshops potential lessons with colleagues. One that reliably riles students is a simulation of the lead-up to the Boston Tea Party. Mr. Welch tells students the district is going to start taxing their paper usage to compensate for an unexpected funding setback.

‘”I tell them, ‘We had no choice. Our school needs money. It is what it is,’” he said. “But at the end of it, I ask them, ‘How do you feel about this?’ Well, this is how the colonists felt.”

Mr. Welch has long felt drawn to history. His 97year-old grandmother, who served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, told stories that captivated him as a kid.

“That’s when you can make that emotional connection,” he said. “I realized, ‘You didn’t just live this. You were part of the effort.’”

Student Parker Lang said Mr. Welch’s class invokes the same feeling.

“Most teachers will just give us something to read,” he said. “He relates it to what we would do in their shoes. It gets the message across.”

A bold-lettered Abigail Adams quotation spans nearly the entire width of Mr. Welch’s classroom above the chalkboard: “A person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously.”

Mr. Welch’s students say that pursuit is what makes his class stand out.