As an 11th grade U.S. history teacher, I tell my students that “doing” good history is all about asking thoughtful questions, debating ideas, and engaging our peers in discussion. My students must know the content but they must also challenge its premise. I want them to deliberate over what democracy should look like, regardless of what they have been told to think in the past. I want my students to evaluate the impact of an historical event without taking for granted the interpretations they have already heard. In essence, I want my students to demand excellence, not just in what we ask them to learn, but more importantly, in how we ask them to learn it. By learning to ask discerning questions about history, my students will develop broader perspectives and a more comprehensive understanding of the world around them.

A large part of who I am as an educator has been shaped by the questions I asked and the broader perspectives I gained as an international exchange student and young professional abroad. As an AFS high school exchange student in Denmark, I learned that in many countries in the world, knowing three languages fluently is the norm; that to interact with and understand those around us, we must develop the tools that enable us to communicate more effectively. As an undergraduate student at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, I spent my junior year in Italy studying international politics. There I learned the importance of developing real-time oral arguments – an essential skill when debating different points of view. As a stringer with United Press International, I covered the establishment of the International Criminal Court, where I learned how to tailor the precision and depth of my questions to gain crucial access to hard-to-reach stories. Finally, as a graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, I studied the program evaluation piece for a non-profit that uses the ideas of Paolo Freire to rehabilitate street children in Brazil. There I learned about educating young people through raising their critical consciousness. We used strategic questions to ask them about their answers instead of giving them the answers to their questions.

After having lived abroad for several years, I have had the opportunity to make important comparisons among education systems in different parts of the world. I am able to re-examine not just what we learn at the secondary and post-secondary levels of education in the United States, but to re-examine the different processes we go through in learning it. Now, as a high school social studies teacher, I ask: Are we successfully teaching our students to interact and communicate with other cultures? Do our students openly debate ideas and willingly challenge assumptions? Above all, are they asking the questions that need to be asked?

In 2003, I began teaching with Teach For America on the Zuni Indian Reservation in western New Mexico and for the last five years, I have been teaching social studies at South Valley Academy, an innovative charter high school in a low-income neighborhood of Albuquerque. Not a day goes by when I don’t bring my experiences from abroad into the classroom. As I have focused on teaching history through inquiry and debate using the communication tools I learned in Denmark, Italy, and Brazil, students in both settings have continued to teach me different points of view, and new ways to communicate ideas and challenge assumptions.

As a 2011-2012 Teaching Ambassador Fellow, I bring an unusually broad perspective on education. More importantly, however, I bring the high expectations of my students and colleagues to ask the big questions that need to be asked, to tackle the tough policy discussions that need to happen, and to raise the level of debate in their honor.