Meet Our Teachers
Gabriela Townsend
鈥淚 am an idealist when it comes to American ideals,鈥� says Gabriella Townsend, who teaches American history at Benold Middle School in Georgetown, Texas. 鈥淲e have a system that backs our ideals up.鈥� Townsend brings an immigrant鈥檚 perspective to the constitutionally guaranteed rights many other Americans take for granted. A seminar on the American Revolution in the summer residential Master鈥檚 program in American History and Government (MAHG) helped her think about how those rights were secured鈥攁nd the task of preserving them.
Townsend attended MAHG as a Buchwald Fellow. She learned about MAHG while stealing a few moments during a planning period to research professional development opportunities. Seeing that the MAHG program featured close study of primary documents鈥攁n aspect of her own teaching she鈥檇 been asked by her school district to develop鈥攕he immediately applied for a fellowship to cover her first seminar.
Seizing Opportunities to Travel and Learn
Born in Argentina, Townsend first entered the US on a student visa, pursuing a degree in city planning at New Mexico State University. She married an American whose engineering career took her to Michigan, where she completed a Master鈥檚 program in developmental psychology and began teaching the subject as an adjunct at Wayne State University. She completed the naturalization process, then traveled to Russia to adopt a son, although she was already a mother to twin daughters. The adoption process was complicated鈥斺�渂ut when you have such opportunities, you have to take them,鈥� Townsend said. Later, when her husband鈥檚 work took him to China, she accompanied him with the children. 鈥淗ow could I say no to China?鈥� she explained.
Later she moved to Florida, where her then twelve-year-old daughters were offered places in a tennis academy. That鈥檚 when she began teaching history, at a private high school in Boca Raton. When her daughters won tennis scholarships to Texas A & M University, she moved with them and began her current work as a public middle school teacher.
Learning From Others While Pursuing One’s Own Question
鈥淚 never told Professor Stevens this, but his course was the first American history class I ever took,鈥� Townsend said. 鈥淚ronically, my undergraduate degree at New Mexico State didn鈥檛 require any American history.鈥� She read history in her spare time because she loved it. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I was interested in the program in Ashland. As much as I had learned on my own, it鈥檚 good to learn from others.鈥�
Townsend brought a 鈥渉igh intrinsic motivation鈥� to the seminar on the Revolution. She wanted to understand 鈥渨hy the American Revolution worked so well here in the US, so much better than鈥� democratic revolutions in Latin America. This question, she said, 鈥渋s always nagging me.鈥�
She has no memory of the military dictatorship that governed Argentina when she was small. Instead, she remembers a 鈥渕ostly鈥� democratic society haunted by memories of the 鈥渄isappeared鈥濃�攃itizens seized and presumably killed because of their suspected sympathy with left-wing opposition groups. In its unstable political culture, Argentina is hardly unique among Latin American countries. 鈥淢any Latin American countries declared their independence within decades of the American Revolution,鈥� Townsend notes, and 鈥渕ost have constitutions similar to that of the US, because they copied ours.鈥� Yet they have struggled to maintain their democracies.
The format of the MAHG seminar helped Townsend pursue her question. Expecting lectures, she found discussions. 鈥淲hen Stevens walked into the classroom on Sunday, he looked at the arrangement of desks and said, 鈥楾his is not going to work.鈥� He asked us to rearrange the desks in a circle. At first it didn鈥檛 make sense鈥攂ut then it did. Most of what I learned in that class came from those discussions with other teachers.鈥�
The Ideals of the Revolution
It also helped that Stevens鈥� course emphasized the political thought of the revolutionary generation. 鈥淲ho won what battle鈥� mattered less to her inquiry than 鈥渨hat the ideals of the Revolution were and still are.
鈥淲e talked a lot about our unalienable rights and the self-evident truth that Jefferson taught us in the Declaration. I had never really thought what it meant to say something was self-evident.鈥� Talking with others helped her realize that the term refers to a truth 鈥測ou weren鈥檛 aware of before, but once you realize it, there is no turning back.鈥� Americans鈥� realization that they had a right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness was no passing political opinion; it was a truth they had to defend.
No other government of the time recognized this truth, and many today still do not. 鈥淟atin Americans might talk about unalienable rights,鈥� Townsend said; 鈥渋t doesn鈥檛 mean they understand what this means.鈥� Trying not 鈥渢o judge too harshly or too easily,鈥� she hypothesized that the instability in Latin American political institutions arose from the inadequate 鈥渆ducation of the people.鈥�
Education to Preserve Democracy
Even in the US, education in American ideals must be continually renewed, a process the founders called cultivating 鈥渕oral virtue鈥� in the citizenry, Professor Stevens explained. He 鈥渧ery eloquently said that the American Revolution is in the hands of American history teachers, because if we don鈥檛 teach students to value what they have, we could lose it.鈥�
Townsend knows the American system works. Twenty years ago, she ran into a wall while adopting her son. Although she produced naturalization papers proving her American citizenship, she did not yet have an American passport, causing Russian authorities to stop the process. She contacted her congressman, who 鈥渨as not of the party I voted for,鈥� and within a week the adoption was back on track. Her elected representative defended her interests.
Yet Townsend also knows few Americans understand that their freedoms are exceptional in human history. While teaching in Boca Raton, she asked her students to find news articles on political conditions in Venezuela. 鈥淲e were in Florida, where people leaving Venezuela move, yet ninety percent of my students at the time鈥攖hey were high school seniors鈥攈ad no idea what was happening a few hundred miles away.鈥� Reading the news stories, 鈥渢heir eyes opened. They鈥榙 had no idea of the violations of human rights. Thirty years ago, Venezuela was a democratic country鈥� with large oil reserves, 鈥渙ne of the most prosperous countries in South America. Yet today half the population is starving.鈥�
The MAHG seminar impressed on Townsend her responsibility to help students 鈥渓earn how we came to be鈥� as a nation. 鈥淭his year my goal will be to teach them to value the freedoms that they have, to learn about their basic rights鈥� as enumerated in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and to 鈥渕ake sure they understand all of them鈥攏ot just the 2nd amendment, which obviously is very popular here in Texas.鈥� Because of the seminar, Townsend will use short primary document excerpts to help her eighth-graders understand American ideals. 鈥淚 already selected five documents for next year. Most are letters. One will be a letter from Jefferson talking about slavery.鈥�
Of all facts of history, the fact that slaveholders proclaimed their belief in human equality most confounds students. During the seminar, Townsend concluded that the founders knew an immediate attempt to abolish slavery would have doomed the Revolution. Southern colonies would not have joined the effort. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 one thing I actually learned in the class. That the colonies were united was probably the biggest advantage we had.鈥� But accepting this reality is 鈥渉ard for middle schoolers. We have to teach them that people are not all good or all bad.鈥� This year, in addition to helping students understand Jefferson鈥檚 reference to self-evident truths, Townsend will show her students his original draft of the Declaration, which shows his keen awareness of the contradiction in which he and other American slaveholders were caught.
The founders 鈥渄id what they could and more, I think, than any other generation of Americans,鈥� Townsend said. Preserving and perfecting this achievement is the task her students face.