A Hillsborough High School teacher has been selected to participate in a collegiate sponsored educational course this summer.
It was announced on June 18 that Hillsborough High School teacher Robert Fenster was chosen along with another teacher from Montgomery High School to attend a seminar for high school social studies teachers in association with Harvard Business School.
The course is focused on the Harvard Case Study method for teaching civics. The program concentration addresses key issues in American history that have impacted the trajectory of American democracy.
The Greater New Brunswick Area League of Women Voters (GNBA) works in collaboration with the Harvard Business School in sponsoring the seminar as well.
The League of Women Voters USA announced that the two teachers from Somerset County had been named to attend after they submitted qualifying essays.
“These two veteran educators, each with over twenty years of teaching experience, will be attending seminar sessions offered in August and September respectively,” the GNBA said in a statement.
The organization said that the aim for the program is that each teacher will incorporate some of the modules into their classes next academic year and anticipate to present samples of the Harvard Case Study method for learning civics at a future GNBA meeting that the public will be invited to attend.
The honorary announcement for Fenster came shortly after it was revealed that he had been named a 2019 Law Related Education Teacher of the Year by the American Lawyers Alliance.
Through this program, Fenster will be one of three high school teachers, chosen in a nationwide contest, who will be honored at an Awards Breakfast to be held on Aug. 9 at the University Club of San Francisco in California.
Fenster has written curricula for and teaches U.S. History I Honors, (Native Americans through Reconstruction), and Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics. He also conducts Independent Student Study with a focus on International Law.
Alongside Fenster’s educational achievements, he also helped organize a benefit concert, “Boro4Bo” in March where Hillsborough High School alumni join together for a night of acoustic musical performances to support a school in Bo, Sierra Leone.
The initiative for the event came after a trip Fenster took along with nine other American teachers in January where they traveled to Sierra Leone as part of “TransAtlantic Histories,” a program sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition out of Yale University.
The teachers were chosen to participate in this program via a lengthy application process and their commitment to participate in preparation work for the program prior to the trip.
