The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History presented the 2011 National History Teacher of the Year Award to Stacy Hoeflich, a teacher at John Adams Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia. Hoeflich received the $10,000 award on October 18, 2011 at the Frederick Douglass Academy, a public Gilder Lehrman flagship school in New York City. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg congratulated Ms. Hoeflich at the ceremony.
As she teaches the history of Virginia to her fourth-grade students, Stacy Hoeflich introduces them to primary sources and their importance in the study of the past. Following a summer institute that she attended on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ms. Hoeflich helped her students write, produce, and perform three operas on George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and Virginia’s Indians. Her students participate in "Colonial Day" fairs, receive visits from historical reenactors, and take field trips to local historic sites including Jamestown, Monticello, and Mount Vernon.
Ms. Hoeflich shares her knowledge and experience in the use of primary sources with colleagues in her community and across the country. She serves as an Educational Consultant for the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University where she creates and models lesson plans that use documents ranging from John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia to a pair of 1950s political cartoons on Virginia’s "Massive Resistance" to school desegregation. She has also participated and served as a leader in her district’s Teaching American History Grant and has presented at the national conferences of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association and the National Council for the Social Studies.