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Skriven 2006-10-05 23:32:16 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (061005b) for Thu, 2006 Oct 5
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Mrs. Bush's Remarks at the Presentation of the Preserve America History
Teacher of the Year Award
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For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
October 5, 2006

Mrs. Bush's Remarks at the Presentation of the Preserve America History
Teacher of the Year Award
The Union League Club
New York, New York



12:40 P.M. EDT

MRS. BUSH: Thank you, Dr. Basker. Thank you for the great work that you're
doing as President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. I
also want to recognize Richard Gilder, the Co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman
Institute; Lynn Scarlett, the Deputy Secretary of the Interior; my friend
John Nau, the Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and
the Co-chairman of Preserve America Steering Committee; and Roseanne
Lichatin, the 2005 winner. And I was looking over to -- there she is. Very
good to see you. Thanks so much for being a judge of this year's History
Teacher of the Year. And to all the state coordinators who are out here, of
the History Teacher of the Year program around our country, thank you all
very, very much for being here.

The renowned historian David McCullough once wrote, "History is who we are,
and why we are the way we are." For young Americans to appreciate how we
live today, they should understand how Americans lived in the past -- which
requires great teachers of American history.

Great history teachers take required coursework and then they turn it into
a thrilling personal experience. They encourage students to discover our
country's heritage, through artifacts and primary sources.

They introduce students to the personal letters of generals, presidents,
and pioneers -- individual Americans who gave voice to the concerns of
whole generations. Through photographs of tired soldiers on a Civil War
battlefield, or of determined students asserting their equality at a
soda-shop counter, great teachers illustrate the sacrifices of other
generations to uphold our national ideas of justice and freedom.

Today, we're honoring one educator who's done an exceptional job of making
history thrilling for her students: Gerry Kohler, the 2006 Preserve America
National History Teacher of the Year. (Applause.)

Mrs. Kohler has loved teaching for 27 years, but her love of history goes
back even further. Gerry's fascination with the past began when she read
Gone With the Wind in sixth grade. On her first trip to the South, Gerry
recalls, she longed to see and touch the things that Scarlett O'Hara would
have seen or touched. This may or may not include Rhett. (Laughter.) "I
think I wanted to go to an antique store more than I wanted to see the
ocean," she says. "From the beginning, history was personal to me."

For the last nine years, Mrs. Kohler has made history personal to her
students at VanDevender Junior High School, where she's taught World
Geography and History, West Virginia Studies, and U.S. History. At first,
Mrs. Kohler had reservations about teaching junior high students, because
she'd always taught in elementary school. But Mrs. Kohler said she "loved
history so much, that the idea of teaching it all day was worth facing a
room of adolescents." (Laughter.)

Mrs. Kohler now delights in teaching those adolescents -- and they love
learning history from her. Gerry keeps history exciting by teaching with
primary sources. When she attended a Gilder Lehrman Institute on President
Lincoln, this teacher of West Virginia history made it her mission to learn
about the man who signed West Virginia's statehood bill.

She researched Lincoln's letter to his Cabinet seeking their advice about
establishing a new state. Gerry pored over the Cabinet's replies, and read
Lincoln's own reasoning behind allowing western Virginians to create a new
state loyal to the Union -- knowledge Gerry now passes on to her West
Virginian students.

Using primary sources is just one way Gerry encourages her students to put
themselves in the place of the people they're studying -- to see the things
that they saw, to think what they thought, and to learn what those people
thought. When Mrs. Kohler says she wants to bring historical figures to
life, she really means it. Gerry will role-play historic Supreme Court
deliberations, or portray historical figures like labor activist Mother
Jones or abolitionist John Brown. Students who graduated years ago will
stop her in the shopping mall and say, "I remember when you were John Brown
and I almost believed it!" (Laughter.) Gerry's acting is apparently so
convincing that after the first time she tried her John Brown alter-ego on
her junior high students, she returned to a classroom that was unusually
quiet -- before one student finally said, "Mrs. Kohler, you scared us!"

Mrs. Kohler also encourages her students to preserve our country's heritage
for their children. Gerry is Vice President of the Wood County Historical
Preservation Society, and she organized a Junior Historical Society for her
students. They work to maintain two of their community's historical
cemeteries, where students reassemble pieces of old tombstones, and where
these budding historians and archeologists have even discovered medals from
the Civil War.

Mrs. Kohler remains an eager student of history herself. She travels
widely, and at workshops with historians and other teachers, she brushes up
on topics from Constitutional History to the French and Indian War. And she
gives back to her fellow educators by serving as a master teacher at an
institute in New Hampshire, and mentoring other teachers of history in West
Virginia.

Gerry's creativity, enthusiasm, and dedication have won her many honors,
including today's. But the greatest accolades are those she receives from
her students. At the end of every school year, Mrs. Kohler reverses roles,
and has her students evaluate her. She loves to hear from young people who
say they never liked history until they entered her classroom. But Gerry's
favorite feedback came on an anonymous evaluation last year, when one
student wrote: "Dear Mrs. Kohler, I've always hated history, and I still
don't like it very much. But I can tell you like it a whole lot."
(Laughter.)

Thank you, Gerry, for your enthusiasm and your terrific work, and
congratulations on being named the Preserve America History Teacher of the
Year. (Applause.)

Now, to tell you more about Mrs. Kohler, I'd like to introduce two of her
students at VanDevender Junior High School. Ladies and gentlemen, please
welcome Elizabeth Corbitt and Patrick Shahan. (Applause.)

END 12:48 P.M. EDT
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