Mrs. Laura Bush smiles at Gerry Kohler, recipient of the 2006 Preserve America History Teacher of the Year award, while delivering remarks during a ceremony at the Union League Club in New York City, Thursday, October 5, 2006. Mrs. Kohler is a teacher at VanDevender Junior High School in West Virginia. Also shown are Dr. James Basker, President, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, left, and Patrick Shahan and Elizabeth Corbit, students of Mrs. Kohler’s. White House photo by Shealah Craighead
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.
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