Jessica Lander head shot outside

Jessica Lander

Jessica Lander is an award-winning teacher, writer and author. She teaches history and civics to recent immigrant students in a Massachusetts public high school and has won numerous awards for her teaching, including being named a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2021, presented by the Varkey Foundation and being named a Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Finalist in 2022, presented by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Jessica writes frequently about education policy and teaching. She is the author of Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education, a coauthor of Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher’s Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success and the author of Driving Backwards.

Latest Blog Posts

Outline of United Staes filled with colorful individual people

Blog: Making History

Project: We Are America

Our communities, our country has much to learn from the wisdom of these courageous young people.

Colorful circle of people holding hands within three concentric circles

Blog: Making History

Tasting History In the Classroom

On a Friday, earlier this fall, the desks of my classroom were covered not in notebooks or Chromebooks but in heaping platters of Ecuadorian empanadas, Cambodian lok lak, Indian Khaman, Spanish magra, and Congolese chapatis.