History ‘everywhere around,’ teacher tells youths
A bookshelf in the back of Rebecca Lacquey’s classroom is filled with years of accumulated dictionaries, atlases and history textbooks.
They aren’t, however, Lacquey’s only teaching tools for the five Advanced Placement and dual-credit U.S. history courses she instructs at Katy High School.
Rather, on a recent November day, Lacquey showed some of her students a short video about Andrew Jackson. They discussed his viewpoints on the national bank, the tariff and the removal of American Indians. Then, the students read a personal account of the Trail of Tears, an event in which Indians were forcemarched from their ancestral lands.
“History is a lot more than just what’s on a page in a textbook,” Lacquey says.
Recognized for her efforts to engage students with exercises like these, Lacquey this month received an Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award.
She was one of 12 Texas teachers to be given the recognition. It is bestowed by Humanities Texas, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to honor teachers who promote the humanities at their schools in innovative and creative ways.
“The best moments come when we give Outstanding Teacher Awards,” Humanities Texas board member Chase Untermeyer said during a small ceremony honoring Lacquey. “And there can be no more outstanding teacher than your teacher.”
An idealist
Lacquey, 41, says she has always wanted to help people.
Though the CypressFairbanks native recalled playing school with her neighbors when she was young, she didn’t always realize she wanted to be a teacher.
Lacquey, who lives in the Cy-Fair Independent School District in Bear Creek, studied criminal justice, business and international relations at the University of Tulsa and Sam Houston State University, where she transferred, with an eye on attending law school. But her desire to teach resurfaced after graduating during an internship with the Children’s Assessment Center.
The child abuse advocacy center involves collaboration with local children’s advocates, law enforcement officers and prosecutors. The experience opened Lacquey’s eyes to a more complicated justice system than she’d anticipated — one that she felt might make her hardened and cynical.
Lacquey, an idealist, wanted to get back in the classroom. A few years later, in 1999, she became a history teacher at Katy High School.
Near the bookshelf and above a white board, laminated signs of author Stephen Covey’s seven habits decorate the wall: “Put First Things First,” “Think Win-Win,” “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood,” several read.
The messages suggest ways to succeed in the classroom and beyond. In the same way, Lacquey hopes to show her students that, while history is something learned at school, it also exists outside the boundaries of classroom walls, requiring skills like knowing how to question and evaluate.
“It’s everywhere around them,” she says.