Jacksonville Elementary Teacher Anna Meunier and Dr. Susan Inman from the Oregon Dept. of Education

Jacksonville Elementary Teacher Anna Meunier and Dr. Susan Inman from the Oregon Dept. of Education

Jacksonville Elementary’s Anna Meunier Wins State Teaching Award – by Cristie Fairbanks

Fourth grade teacher at Jacksonville Elementary School, Anna Meunier, was awarded the 2013 Oregon State History Teacher of the Year in a ceremony on Friday, November 8, 2013. Mrs. Meunier is no stranger to winning excellence in teaching awards. In 2011, Anna and her colleague, Sarah Flora, won the Oregon Outstanding Elementary Social Studies Educators of the Year award, which was given by the Oregon Council for Social Studies. Regarding her most recent accomplishment, she was selected by a panel of judges comprised of the previous national winner, renowned historians, professors, and teachers from all over the country. State History Teachers of the Year receive a prize package including a certificate of recognition, a $1,000 award, a collection of classroom resources to be presented in their honor to their school library, and the opportunity to participate in a Gilder Lehrman Institute summer seminar. The winner’s school becomes a Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School. In addition, each state winner is also a finalist for the National History Teacher of the Year Award.

Anna has taught for 22 years, 18 of which have been spent in a straight fourth grade classroom. She has said that she thinks fourth grade is the best kept secret because the primary teachers send her amazing kids that can read and write and still love coming to school. She loves that her students are so excited about learning. She very much enjoys the curriculum that fourth graders learn throughout the year, especially the history piece. “When I first started teaching 22 years ago I was handed a text book titled Oregon and inherited a legacy of great curriculum from the fourth grade teachers at Lone Pine Elementary. I have spent the last 22 years writing lessons, integrating curriculum, and building units around Oregon History.”

Several years ago, she was on a social studies text book adoption committee and shared with the text book representative the materials she used in her classroom. The representatives comment was, “You are sitting on a gold mine, and you have to share this with other teachers.” This led Anna, along with her teaching partner at the time, to spend two years writing seven complete units on Oregon History for the Medford School District. Since then, Medford School District has been sharing the curriculum with other schools around the state, at no cost. Schools from all over Oregon, Washington and Maine are now using the curriculum.

What’s next for Anna? After spending two years researching and writing the social studies curriculum, she realized just how much amazing, rich history there is about Oregon that nobody knows about. She feels that there are amazing stories about our state’s history that just beg to be told. So, she has spent the last two years writing her first historical fiction novel for young adults. The book is about a family who travels to Oregon during the great migration, but instead of taking the Oregon Trail, they travel the sea route, cross the Isthmus of Panama by foot, and then finish the sea travel on the Pacific Ocean side. The family finally lands in Jacksonville! It is just the type of story that she uses in her classroom to help students understand history through someone else’s firsthand experiences. She is just about finished with that book and has many more planned, all based on Oregon history. It is her current plan to use the $1,000 prize money to see her first book published.

Way to go Mrs. Meunier!

Posted November 8, 2013