Teacher Feature: Teaching students time before them

For Ms. Karen Lockhart, the favorite part about being a history teacher is “when my students can connect with the material,” she said. “Several students visited Washington DC in a Student Studies program because I mentioned going there in class. Other students have gone home to ask their family members about where they were during historical events that we studied in class.”

While she loves seeing what happens beyond the classroom, she also loves teaching the subject matter. Her favorite lessons feature “the Progressives, WWII including the Holocaust, and Civil Rights.” She said that she loves “learning from different perspectives, hearing all those little random details and facts about events.”

Ms. Lockhart fell in love with history when she was young. “I read a lot of biographies and historical fiction since I was a kid,” she said. “I always got an easy A in Jr. High and High School History, but it was in college when I really fell in love with the subject. I could take an entire semester to learn about one time period. High school was too rushed.”

Her own high school experience was at Will C. Wood, and her husband is a graduate from Fairfield High School, both rivals of Armijo. She ended up going to Solano Community College and earned her degree from Sacramento State University. “My husband was an art major in college, so he geeks out about history in the artistic sense,” she said.

While she has an interest in history, she originally taught music. “I began as a music major in college and taught elementary music for five years before coming to Armijo,” said Ms. Lockhart. She has experience in band, too, from Jazz and Marching Band to Concert band and Pit Orchestra. If she hadn’t gone into teaching history full-time, she would have considered becoming a band teacher, or maybe a military historian.