Hillsborough High School social studies teacher Bob Fenster has been chosen as the 2019 Teacher of the Year by the New Jersey Council for the Social Studies.
The Fred Cotterell Social Studies Educator Award was presented to Mr. Fenster by NJCSS president Joseph Orlak and Hillsborough Township Public Schools social studies supervisor Dr. Cynthia Assini at the NJCSS annual fall conference.
Mr. Fenster has been teaching in Hillsborough for 27 years. He currently teaches Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics and U.S. History I Honors.
In addition, he advises the Model Congress, Model United Nations, Mock Trial, and Amnesty International clubs at the school, and runs an annual alumni charity concert.
Last spring, the charity raised over $4,000 to benefit students in Sierra Leone, a country he visited as part of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition earlier in the year.
Over the summer, Mr. Fenster spent four weeks at the Massachusetts Historical Society as a Swensrud Fellow, researching the election of 1824 and creating five original lesson plans. The previous summer he spent four weeks at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas as a Reese Fellow, creating a web site providing extensive interdisciplinary resources for teachers of art, social studies and English.
Mr. Fenster was also the recipient of a national award this year from the American Lawyers Alliance. The award was presented to him for excellence in teaching law-related education in a ceremony in San Francisco, California in August.
