Through UVA Fellowship, CHS teacher is exploring new ways to teach U.S. history

Posted Date: 07/01/26 (04:00 PM)

Charlottesville High School history teacher Helen Goggins instructs her class.

Through UVA Fellowship, CHS teacher is exploring new ways to teach U.S. history

BY JOHN SHIFFLETT | Charlottesville City Schools

As the United States celebrates a milestone anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Charlottesville High School history teacher Helen Goggins has been hard at work creating new and engaging ways for students to learn about its impact on both the past and the present.

Over this past school year, Goggins has been part of a small cohort of educators from Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County Public Schools participating in the Educating for Democracy Fellowship program at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy.

Supported by the Karsh Institute’s John L. Nau III Lab on the History and Principles of Democracy in collaboration with UVA’s Center for Community Partnerships, the Fellowship explores ways of teaching American democracy in K–12 classrooms based on the national Educating for American Democracy initiative.

“Our goal and mission statement as a cohort is creating lessons and opportunities for students not to be taught, ‘This is the past,’ but how these documents and events are continuing to impact today,” said Goggins.

As part of the fellowship, Goggins and her cohort of fellows have been meeting monthly to discuss curriculum and pedagogy, engage with scholars, and explore ways to foster civic learning and constructive dialogue in the classroom.

“There is so much to learn from the community members and those in the fellowship,” Goggins said. “Seeing the knowledge that so many of them hold, and their thirst for more, not knowledge, but thirst for conversation. It's just really cool that everyone, from many different ages, many different backgrounds, are coming together, saying, ‘I'm still interested. I'm still ready to learn more.’”

The fellowship also included several immersive learning experiences, including attending the Karsh Institute’s Democracy 360 (a three-day exploration of the challenges and opportunities facing democracy), and “Touchstones of Democracy” speaker series, as well as the Southern Pilgrimage Tour (a journey through the Deep South’s civil rights history).

“I got to fully immerse in what Charlottesville has to offer to not just the history of the past, but how it's so pertinent to today and the future,” said Goggins, who grew up in Newport News, not far from Virginia’s Historic Triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown.

That included an opportunity for Goggins to speak with Dr. Jane Kamensky, the President and CEO of Monticello, the historic Charlottesville home of Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. The conversation with Kamensky inspired Goggins to have an active discussion with her students at CHS.

A group of ten people stand together in a circular room with a domed ceiling and round windows.

“I think something that she said that was really meaningful and immediately discussed with the kids in the classroom the next day is this idea of a more perfect union and how people really grapple with ‘are we perfect?’ and ‘becoming more perfect,’” Goggins said. “You can't make 100% become 110%, but, over time, there are movements and actions and decision makers, as communities, becoming more perfect.”

Part of that discussion includes examining the American Revolution and who the founding leaders of the United States were as people, the political and social climate they lived in, and the driving forces behind their actions.

“You have to be able not just to provide one quote from one day of our founding leaders, but look to see their inspirations,” Goggins said. “What was happening prior to the inception of the Declaration of Independence? What does ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’ look like back then and who is being seen in those moments? And then how has ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ evolved?”

One way Goggins is examining the evolution of America from the Revolution to modern time is by looking at how progress has been portrayed in the prose of writers throughout history.

“I'm looking at ‘We, the People,’ and the promises of the preamble (to the U.S. Constitution) and how they are viewed in different poetic structures from history,” Goggins said. “Whether you're looking at Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes or Amanda Gorman, and, over time, how have they been seen and acknowledged in art.”

In her poem “In This Place (An American Lyric)”, Gorman closes with these hopeful lines.

There’s a place where this poem dwells —

it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell

where we write an American lyric

we are just beginning to tell.

A teacher in a red sweater and baseball cap gestures towards a large screen displaying images of the USA, a USPS truck, and a cargo ship.

Goggins is taking a similar approach as she teaches today’s students about how learning lessons from the past and its prominent figures can help guide them as they work to create a brighter future and a more perfect union.

“Sometimes people are looking at the years 1776-2026, and it almost feels like a finale instead of a continuum,” Goggins said. “How can we continue to grow and evolve?”

Working with her fellow educators as part of the Educating for Democracy Fellowship has helped Goggins discover new ways to tackle that deeply nuanced question as both an educator and a lover of history.

“With the fellowship, and the Karsh Institute, and everyone that I've met along the way from it, it makes me more proud to be an American,” Goggins said. “Because I've seen what people have done to help me get my rights, and I think the biggest thing in all of it is that with our country – whether it's our elected officials, whether it's our President or Supreme Court justices – there are many decision makers, but their decisions do not always mean the truth.

“In the past, slavery was legal, but that does not mean it is the truth of our country. Let's look to see how people have pushed forward. There have been discomforts. There have been tumultuous times in history, but, like Mr. Rogers said, look for the helpers. Who is working? And so I think, my goal as an educator is when something was awful in the past, what did people do to rectify it? What are people doing to ensure the safety and prosperity moving forward?”