Jenn Androsky Voted Senior Division Teacher of the Year for Minnesota History Day
February 10, 2025
Social Studies teacher Jenn Androsky was named the Senior Division Teacher of the Year for Minnesota History Day. Now in her 17th year at CDH, Androsky has been coordinating History Day for a decade. She was honored to be selected from all the high school History Day teachers in Minnesota and expressed gratitude that the program’s leaders recognized her work. Her colleagues at CDH all agreed the award was well-deserved, with Ms. Rosen saying, “You are PURE MAGIC during the HD Workshops.” The award will be formally presented on April 27 at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
This year's History Day projects are under review to determine which will advance to Regionals. Once selected, Ms. Androsky will meet with the students to discuss next steps and ways to refine their projects for competition.
Androsky agreed to answer a few questions about her experiences with History Day at CDH and why she thinks so highly of the program:
1. You’ve been involved with Minnesota History Day for years—what keeps you coming back to this program?
What I love about History Day is the focus on student centered and skill-based learning. Students get to pick a topic they want to research and they get to pick how they create a final project; either Exhibit, Documentary, Website, Research Paper or Performance and with so much choice students can really excel. It is so great to work with a student on a project that has a topic they care about and are interested in and how they begin to see learning history and doing history in a different way.
2. How have you seen students grow—academically and personally—through participating in History Day?
One of my first couple of years doing History Day, during conferences I had a mom sit down to talk to me about her student who had struggled with learning difficulties over the years and not having a lot of success academically and the mom started to cry and said how great this project was for her child because they had success and their project was chosen to represent CDH at regionals and their child was so proud to be able to show it off to others and so proud to be recognized for their academic performance in such a positive way. This experience early on even more convinced me of the value of doing this project.
3. What advice would you give to other teachers who are looking to engage their students in hands-on historical research?
One, it is worth it to take the time from focusing on content to do a project like this. Students can always look up information and learn some content about history if they want to, but this project teaches students valuable skills that they can apply to many classes in the future. For example, doing academic research, creating a bibliography, creating an argument, using supporting evidence both written and visual to support that argument and how to see different perspectives of an event. They also gain a lot of content knowledge and insight into a specific topic.
Two, you do not need to know everything about a topic. With letting students pick their own topics sometimes students do choose a topic I know very little about, but in reviewing projects and giving feedback I might say to them, your short term impact is unclear or missing, what do you see as the impact of your topic. If they don’t know then I send them to do more research to go find out.
Three, create a clear pacing guide for students so they know what to have done and when. They are less likely to put the project off and throw it together last minute. Also, by having the pacing guide with clear deadlines for different parts they can better help and see if students are falling behind or are in need of more help. You can also see the students who are moving ahead and need more challenge.
4. What’s next for you and your work with Minnesota History Day?
Right now we are in the process of deciding which projects will represent CDH at the Regional Competition. Once the projects are selected I will be contacting students about the requirements for the Regional Competition and helping them meet those requirements. After the Regional Competition I will be working with any student who’s project was selected to go on to the State Competition on April 27th to make revisions and improvements based on the judges feedback from Regionals.
5. The award comes with a $500 prize—do you have any plans for how you’ll use it?
Not sure yet, but likely put it towards traveling somewhere fun this summer.