Stefanie Fuchs, a Rigby High School history teacher, was named Idaho History Teacher of the Year from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Fuchs has taught for 21 years with 14 of them in Rigby. She plans her lessons a little different from your normal lesson. While most teachers plan PowerPoints and lectures, Fuchs plans bingo lessons, debates and simulations.
“We do a Jamestown simulation, and they get to choose their own adventure of what they would have done in Jamestown,” Fuchs said.
She likes to mix it up so it’s not the same thing every time. Instead of lectures, she plans more interactive activities for the students, to get them involved.
Because of shortened attention spans, she changes things throughout the hour each class.
“I like to start introducing the topic, talking to them about it. So, a mini lecture - about ten minutes, followed up by some videos for the visual learners and then I like to have them delve into it like an activity.”
She highlighted an activity where her class built trenches from World War I. They used paper balls to throw back and forth where they also built a no man’s land. She says at one point the class fell into a stalemate where she took that opportunity to teach about trench warfare.
Fuchs started her teaching career with lectures. She says it worked well, but over the years students changed.
“When TikTok and Instagram came out, the brains changed for the kids and they couldn’t sustain that amount and so I was like this is not reaching them like it used to,” Fuchs said.
That’s when she had to get more creative with her lessons.
She noticed students start to check out, so she started brainstorming ways to make her teaching come alive. She noticed the more interactive her lessons were, the more responsive the students became.
Fuchs teaches history because she loves the stories history tells. She feels it’s the story of humanity. It’s the people who made important decisions.
“The story of the founding fathers – these were ordinary men who made extraordinary choices that led us to 250 years later here we have this wonderful/beautiful country,” Fuchs said.
Out of all the time periods of history, she feels the Revolutionary War and the 60s are the most important.
“It’s the founding principles of things that we still have today but also the 1960s because the 1960s is what actually shaped modern America to what we have today.”
When teaching a large group of students, it’s hard to make it personal and genuine. Fuchs have one-on-ones with each of their students to get to know them.
How is Fuchs genuine?
“You just have to love them. You just have to love the kids. And I do, I just genuinely love to teach.”
Now that Fuchs won the Idaho History Teacher of the Year award, she’s placed in a national competition for National History Teacher of the Year.