Living History

Every once in a while, I'm lucky and get to go back to school.

I will attend my son’s back–to-school night. Or I'll go on assignment for a story, sit in a particular class, listen to the teacher and think I wish I could be back in school again. In this class.

Recently, I went to San Ramon Valley High and sat in classroom C-3, belonging to history teacher Jesse Hansen. 

This week, Hansen, who has taught history at San Ramon Valley High for 10 years, will be one of three Contra Costa County teachers to receive an outstanding teacher award from the Warren W. Eukel Teacher Trust.

This community-based nonprofit fosters excellence in education by providing monetary grants to exceptional teachers. A press release from the trust said Hansen is receiving recognition for using humor, a lively, personable style and a gift for storytelling to engage students in the “drama and sweep of history.”

Hansen’s personality and passion for history were well on display during his second period AP European History class. Trippingly on his tongue, and those of his 20 students, came all sorts of grand historical terms over the course of an hour -- terms referencing great social or political movements, romantic-sounding places and eras and colorful characters whose lives have inspired sumptuous movie epics.

Constantinople, Venice, Humanism. Voltaire, Henry VIII, Catherine the Great. The Reformation. Spain’s Golden Century.

I felt like I was at some society dinner party with a bunch of very smart, intellectually curious people. At the head of the table was Hansen.

I got this sense, even though I was sitting through a lesson plan that Hansen worried wouldn’t be all that thrilling for an outsider to observe — or for students to sit through. He warned them the topic wasn’t “overly exciting” but added “I hereby declare that there will be an outlining question on the next test.”

Yes, the lesson for the day was on the process of creating outlines. It wasn’t a lesson about big ideas, but a lesson in how to organize one's thoughts around big ideas.

Hansen explained that knowing how to outline a topic is key to effectively answering questions on an AP test. Outlines also come in handy when it’s time to write a college paper or a report for work, he added.

On the day I visited, Hansen apologized that he was feeling a bit run down. He was nursing a cold. Still, his enthusiasm for the lesson and his ability to engage with students was clear, like the fun young assistant professor overseeing an intellectually exciting graduate school seminar class.

He said that even if his health and the day’s outlining topic wouldn’t allow many opportunties for joking around, he hoped the class would give him a couple laughs because there was a visitor who had come expecting to see his award-winning sense of humor on display.

The outline lesson nonetheless invited some thoughtful discussion about the definition of the Early Modern Age and whether the artistic achievements of the Renaissance helped cause the shift in power from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Hansen’s students had clearly been paying attention over the course of the first quarter, rattling off terms with the ease and authority of History Channel pundits. I made mental notes to hit Wikipedia later in the day so that I could understand their references to Scholasticism and the War of Spanish Succession.

Hansen has long been a fan of history, a subject, he says, that allows him to engage in discussions about “everything in life.”

“With English and history, you may be teaching about a book or a period of time, but you’re also teaching about social class, politics, religion, intellectual movements. It’s like a backdrop for everything you might want to talk about,” he said.

He grew up in Oakland and graduated from Bishop O’Dowd High School before going to Carlton College in Minnesota, where he wanted to study history but wound up choosing a field that was potentially more practical: economics

He chose teaching as a career because it was a logical fit for his own talents. “I’ve always worked well with young people,” said Hansen who now lives in Pleasant Hill and has two children, 6 and 4. “I was also interested in having a job that allowed for me to do ‘real work’. With teaching, you’re thrown into the fray from the beginning.”

After gaining experience teaching in the Oakland Unified School District, he came to San Ramon Valley High. In addition to European history, Hansen also teaches elective classes on World War II and the Vietnam War and hopes to introduce a new course, possibly for next year, on Chinese history.

Hansen’s self-described “quirky sense of humor” comes in handy when he assigns students to draw comics depicting the 17th century practice, during the reign of Louis XIV, of dragooning men off the streets to build up the French Army. The students often depict themselves in a good-natured way as cartoon characters being dragooned off to Hansen's AP history class.

Hansen has also hosted an Enlightenment-styled salon in which students get to role play the parts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, and Montesquieu. He plays the part of the salon's hostess.

He enjoys teaching high school students, as opposed to elementary school kids or middle schoolers, because teenagers are sophisticated enough to dive into the topics and to challenge him.

“They push me,” he said. “They bring up contradictions, and want to peak behind the curtains of what I know.”

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Warren W. Eukel was a Walnut Creek resident and physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory whose own life was changed by inspiring contacts he had with teachers. The 20th Eukel awards dinner takes place Thursday night at Diablo Country Club.

This year’s other recipients of the $10,000 award are Brian Mangold, a special education teacher at Stanley Middle School in Lafayette, and Victoria Tukeva, a dance and physical education teacher at Richmond High School. Nominations come from teachers’ colleagues and students themselves.

Tickets for the dinner are $150 per person (of which $70 is a tax-deductible contribution) or $1,500 for a table of ten.  For further information or to purchase tickets, please call 925/945-0200 or visit the organization’s website, www.eukelteachertrust.org.