Meredith Miller going to Washington

Twenty-seven years ago Meredith Miller was teaching history lessons in the garage of her parent’s home. At the tender age of nine, Miller always knew she wanted to be a history teacher.“I went to a museum when I was eight or nine years old and saw an exhibit of President Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat,” said Miller. That along with a book her mother purchased drove Miller’s desire to learn more about the man and that time period.

One of her first students was her father, who she charged $4 an hour for private lessons. “I actually found a report card I made for him. He did not do his homework so I gave him an F, and told him he still owed me the four dollars,” said a smiling Miller.

Today, Miller is a social studies teacher in the School of Leadership at the Long Branch High School. “I love being able to bring history to life for my students. I love bring history to life in my classroom.”

Last week Miller was informed that she had been selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants to participate in the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Summer Teacher Institute.

Each year, the Library of Congress provides the opportunity for a carefully chosen group of K-12 educators to attend one of its seven Teacher Institutes in Washington, DC. During the five-day program, Miller will work with library education specialists and subject matter experts to learn effective practices for using primary sources in the classroom, while exploring some of the millions of digitized historical artifacts and documents available on the Library’s website.

Miller and other educators attending the Teacher Institutes develop primary-source based teaching strategies that they can bring back to their school districts, apply in the classroom, and pass along to colleagues. Teaching with primary sources is a powerful way to help students ask engaged, probing questions, develop critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge.

“As a teacher this is one of the greatest opportunities. I am actually going to view, touch and copy documents that the general public has not seen,” said Miller. Her focus while at the Library will concentrate on the Civil War.

“Meredith Miller is an outstanding educator with sincere passion and dedication to the profession,” said Michael Salvatore, Superintendent of Schools. “Her merits are reflective of the excitement in her classroom and the positive relationships she has formed with students. Learning is paramount in her eyes and she has been such an asset to the district. I am sure this rare opportunity to visit such a confidential archive will spark learning in her lessons for quite some time.”

Currently Miller is working on her doctorate degree, she has published a book, and is a member of the International Society For Women Educators. Besides teaching history at LBHS for the past nine years, she also teaches at Monmouth University. Several years ago the Long Branch Public Schools recognized Miller as their District Teacher of the Year.