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 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. Youtube, Jimmy Fallon
To make her lessons more engaging and fun, images, YouTube clips and songs often feature in her lesson plans. Perhaps a song called “James K. Polk” by the band They Might Be Giants. A video clip of Jimmy Fallon discussing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A trip to the George H.W. Bush’s presidential library in College Station.
“Whether it makes them question it, or makes them laugh at it ... they tend to remember it better, I find,” Lacquey said.
The mantra has proven true in her own life. Lacquey remembers how, as a high school student, her world history teacher taught her and classmates calligraphy to help them better understand Chinese culture.
Lacquey hasn’t always known to incorporate such lessons.
The wife and mother earned her alternative certification to teach, which involved on-the-job training, and would later receive a master’s degree in education with an emphasis on history as a James Madison Fellow at the University of Houston. But it was a summer program early in her career, which involved the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the University of Houston, that changed her perspective on how teaching could be done. It showed her “that teaching history can and should go beyond just the textbook,” Lacquey wrote in material for her Humanities Texas award application.
The program provided Lacquey with material to use in class.
“The payoff was fairly immediate,” she wrote, “but most rewarding was having a classroom full of students that appreciated and remembered the activities long after they were done.”
One student, Keaton Bell, 17, recalled how Lacquey’s course had shown him another side to the often idolized Christopher Columbus. (Lacquey hosts a seminar in which they read different historical viewpoints on Columbus and discuss whether Columbus Day should be celebrated.)
Another student, Payton Srack, 17, who sits front and center in Lacquey’s dual-credit course, said he appreciated his teacher’s passion.
“I like learning about history and learning about how we can improve the future by looking at the past,” Srack said. Value of humanities
At 8 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, District 28 state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, and Untermeyer, the board member and a former ambassador to Qatar visited Lacquey’s classroom to present her with the distinction.
Lacquey received a $5,000 award along with a framed certificate. Katy High School was also awarded $500 for instructional materials.
More than 450 people had been nominated for the prize, according to a news release.
“It’s a highly competitive award that is given for people that have demonstrated unique skills in the humanities,” Zerwas said. “Sometimes we discount the role and the value of the humanities, but I’m going to tell you it’s a tremendously important thing.”
Zerwas, who chairs the Texas House of Representatives’ higher education committee, praised Lacquey’s unique ability to capture her students’ attention and prepare them to integrate what they learned with the lessons they will be presented with in college.
“You may not remember sitting in this classroom every day, but you will remember Ms. Lacquey and the impact that she had on your learning and on your education,” said Liz James, educational programs coordinator for Humanities Texas. “So, don’t take it for granted.”