SCH Welcomes First Baldridge Visiting Historian

“Today, we’re going to be historians,” Christy Howard told the Lower School students she met with last week. As, the first Baldridge Visiting Historian, Howard shared her passion for history with our younger learners, encouraging them to see… think… wonder… as they move through their day and their lives. She suggested, “If your brain is asking questions, then go ahead and ask more!”  

Using cutouts of figures in history—Andy Warhol, Harry Houdini, Simone Biles, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, and more—Howard asked students to place the figures along a timeline according to the year they were born and encouraged students to consider who these people might have known in the arc of history.

With the older classes, she provided white gloves, artifacts, and souvenirs to pick up and inspect, just as a museum curator might do. She prompted students to ask themselves: Where might you find this?  What is it made of? When might it have been made?

A retired classroom teacher with 30 years of experience, Howard seeks to support teachers with storytelling techniques and activities using primary sources, visual thinking strategies, and other cross-curricular instruction. She writes, “I am passionate about instilling the love of learning in all students and believe that all students’ voices should be heard and valued so that all students may find a path to be the best version of themselves. Be Kind. Work hard. Change the world!”

This special visit was made possible by an endowed fund created to honor former CHA Lower School teacher Carol Baldridge who passed away in 2022. The fund supports a yearly visit from a historian who will share Carol’s passion for the study of history through assemblies and classroom visits. Her former colleague Hadley Jones Ferguson, Springside Class of 1972, who spearheaded the fundraising shared, “Carol loved walking around in history,  regularly seeking to understand what it was like to live in earlier eras. Carol wanted her students to participate in the learning of history, not through memorization but through exploration.”