PORTSMOUTH – Maureen Finneson doesn’t just teach American history, she loves it. Her fifth grade students at St. Philomena school are the most receptive to learning, she says, when “I get charged up about something, and I get interested in something.”
So far, her own interest in history has paid off for her students and for the school.
Finneson was recently named the Rhode Island history teacher of the year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for her love of American history and her creative ways of presenting lessons.
In addition to a ceremony at St. Philomena School on September 18 and entry into the national contest, Finneson’s triumph also means an archive of historical materials will be donated to her school’s library by the Rhode Island Historical Society in her honor.
The students in Finneson’s fifth grade class don’t learn their history just by reading books. Far from it.
“The more you do hands on activities, the more impression they’re going to make,” she said. The highlight of last year’s history class, and the activity that prompted her school principal,
Donna Bettencourt-Glavin, to nominate her for the award, was a day-long Revolutionary War experience.
To bring the Revolutionary War alive for the students, the teachers and principal wore period costumes and the students wore tricornered hats and bonnets they had made themselves. They listened to two guest speakers, a Revolutionary War reenacter and a member of the Artillery Company of Newport, tell them about Rhode Island during the Revolutionary period and the war. Parents served a traditional snack of hard tack (like a hard cracker) and beer (it was actually root beer).
But that’s not all, the children also experienced the rush of dressing for battle in under a minute, like the minuteman soldiers did, after someone yelled “the Redcoats are coming!” and they marched while carrying a 12- pound weight, to simulate carrying a period musket. The students also signed their own mock Declaration of Independence with traditional quill pens.
The kids thoroughly enjoyed the experience, Finneson said, “they had a great time and it’s probably something they’ll remember.”
Finneson has taught at St. Philomena’s for 30 years, 25 of them in the fifth grade, and previously for about 10 years at different schools. When she started teaching fifth grade, the job of teaching history fell into her lap. The teachers of two fifth grade classes divide and conquer several of the subjects in the curriculum. “It was just part of the curriculum in the 5th grade and the other teacher had a skill in science and I had an interest in history, so it sort of fell on me to be the social studies teacher,” she said.
Last year was the first year she did such an elaborate activity to teach about the Revolutionary War and Finneson said it took several weeks of hard work to prepare, but in the end, “it was fun.”
The key to keeping her kids interested in history, she says, is her own enthusiasm. “I love it, I am really enthusiastic about it and I think that to teach anything you have to impart that enthusiasm to your audience,” she said.
