Meade County teacher selected as history teacher of the year

Stephanie Kaufman teaches government and history at Sturgis Brown High School

By Journal staff | Saturday, October 25, 2008

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Stephanie Kaufman, a government and history teacher at Sturgis Brown High School, has been selected as the Preserve America History Teacher of the Year for South Dakota.

The educator was honored at the October meeting of the Meade School Board, where she was presented a plaque and a $1,000 prize. The high school received an archive of educational resources, named in Kaufman's honor, for use in the school library.

Kaufman was selected because of her commitment to teaching American history, her creativity and imagination in the classroom and her close attention to primary documents, artifacts, historic sites and other primary material of history, including oral history.

She has been a history teacher since 1996, eight years at Crazy Horse School in Wanblee and the last five in Sturgis. During that time, she has been selected to participate in numerous institutes including The American Judiciary, with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., this past summer.

She has served as a curriculum consultant for the Bill of Rights Institute in Arlington, Va., and was on the education advisory committee for the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Kaufman is a member of the National Council for Social Studies, South Dakota Historical Society and National Constitution Center. She is a board member of Black Hills State University Chiesman Foundation for Democracy and coordinates the Chiesman Foundation's Kids Voting South Dakota program in Sturgis.

Kaufman will now compete against the other state winners for the National History Teacher of the Year award. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America are sponsors of the award.