Christopher Peak Photo
Nataliya Braginsky at work at Metro.
The country is now in on Metropolitan Business Academy’s secret.
Students at the high school for years have known they have a special social studies teacher there, Nataliya Braginsky, who steers them through primary sources to learn about their own community and challenges them to consider “core questions” about their world in new ways. Her engaging courses cover topics like African American and Latinx history, journalism, and contemporary law. (Read an example of that here.)
On Wednesday Braginsky’s name appeared in a press release sent out by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, announcing that it has chosen here as the 2021 National History Teacher of the Year.
Braginsky, a New Haven public school teacher since 2007, came out on top of a pool of 8,510 teachers nominated nationwide.
Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will present Braginsky with the award and a $10,000 prize.
In addition to teaching in the classroom, Braginsky took the lead on creation of a Youth Justice Panel at Metro as an alternative to punitive discipline and been active for years in local and national educator efforts to tackle racism and cultural bias in American classrooms.
“This honor belongs to teachers across the country who are committed to teaching the truth, many of whom I work alongside and learn from on a daily basis,” Braginsky stated in the Lehrman Institute release. “This honor belongs to New Haven and the histories this land holds for us to remember, both painful and inspiring, and always instructive. This honor belongs to the brilliant young people across the state, who fought for and won a legislative victory mandating that every high school in Connecticut offer an African American and Latinx History course. Finally and most importantly, this honor belongs to my students, who unearth untold histories, who educate their peers and communities, and who in their vision for what is possible, point us toward a more just future.”
Metro Principal Sequella Coleman is quoted describing how Braginsky “communicates well with students by being respectful of their differences and maintaining high expectations as they research topics to present evidence-based thesis projects, particularly around African American and Latinx History.”
Braginsky: Teaching is a collective effort.