History teacher Amy Page, who earned her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at WNMU in 2016, is well familiar with awards. Serving at Moriarty High School, she has been named New Mexico’s National History Day Teacher of the Year multiple times, and she attended WNMU as a James Madison Memorial Foundation Fellow, the most prestigious fellowship in the country for secondary teachers in constitutional history and government. Most recently, she spent a week as a fellow at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in Kansas, which allowed her to work with the organization’s staff as well as other nationally celebrated teachers to explore new approaches in project-based learning.
This kind of experiential, project-based learning is what Page is passionate about, and her success in applying this approach in the classroom has earned her national acclaim. Over the years, she has taken over 80 teams of students to the National History Day competition, and they have won numerous awards for their work, including first-, second-, and third-place prizes.
Out of all her awards and recognitions, however, the one that stands out the most to Page is being named the Senior Division National Patricia Behring National History Day Teacher of the Year in 2022. National History Day is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the teaching and learning of history. It promotes a student-centered approach to learning history, in which students in grades 6-12 delve deeply into an historical topic by conducting their own research and then presenting their conclusions through a hands-on project that might take the form of an essay, website, documentary or performance, among other creative possibilities. Page said that the project each student works on is like a “mini-thesis. They present their work [and] they defend it in front of panels of judges, making improvements at each stage of the competition.”
For Page, though, participating in National History Day is not all about winning. Her goal, she said, is to practice a “holistic educational approach that is really thoughtful and respective of student needs, and that is going to make sure 100% of [my] students grow. . . History Day is an incredible avenue for that.” Page indicated that she has witnessed tremendous growth in her students’ communication and collaboration skills in addition to their critical thinking ability.
Page’s expertise in this kind of holistic, project-based learning has led her to become one the authors of a forthcoming Library of Congress publication, Finding, Analyzing and Constructing History: A Research Guide for Students. The guide is meant to help students navigate the vast resources available in the Library of Congress as well as in other repositories of historic materials. Page’s chapter in the book focuses on oral histories.
Page’s own research skills were honed during her time at WNMU. “WNMU has been a really big part of my story as an academic,” she said, “I have been a big proponent of the rigor and quality of WNMU’s programs.”
One of her former advisors in the graduate program at WNMU, Professor of History Andy Hernandez, speaks equally highly of Page. “New Mexico is fortunate to have several teachers who are doing excellent work with National History Day,” said Hernandez, “and the performance that Amy is able to cultivate in her students has been truly remarkable. We’re all the more fortunate not just in being able to count her as an alumna but to have continued to work together in various projects for students, including our institution’s most recent movement towards providing dual credit [for] students in Moriarty.” This latter collaboration has been exciting for Page. “I think those dual-credit, in-person classes are critically important,” she said, “particularly for kids in rural New Mexico who don’t have the same access” to higher education that a student in an urban environment might have.
Despite her many accomplishments, Page remains humble about her teaching. “The kids make me look really good,” she said, “They are the core of this; I can’t do any of this without them.”