Rebecca Duda brings history to life, both symbolically and literally, for her students at Lakeview Junior High School in Dracut, MA. When her class studies WWII, Duda brings special guests to her classroom who lived through that era to share their experiences, such as army veterans and holocaust survivors. Her section on the Civil War culminated in a series of student-created Abraham Lincoln stamps, which her students designed and were later publicly displayed by the town. Her class conducted an extensive research project at an 18th century graveyard to research its inhabitants. This is not your run-of-the-mill history class.
Lakeview Junior High School’s principal credits Duda in helping to achieve significant progress in 2009 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores. With only five years of teaching experience, Duda’s enthusiasm for history is strengthened by an educational wisdom that seems beyond her years. In addition to her position with Lakeview Junior High, she also teaches a graduate course at the University of Massachusetts. Duda organizes frequent field trips to historical landmarks so that her students can appreciate significant places firsthand, rather than just in a picture from a textbook. She instructs all of her students how to cite original sources in papers, which is typically emphasized in high school and college. She is already going down in history as a young educator with a bright future.
2019 Endicott College, Ed.D Educational Leadership
2002 Salem State College, B.A.
