Thoughts on Teaching Philip Bigler,Teacher of the Year, poses at Thomas Jefferson High School. (AP) The Importance of Teaching Bringing in New Teachers Accountability in the Profession The Schools of Today

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 25, 1998; Page B01

In his classroom in Northern Virginia, Philip Bigler sometimes has his students pretend to be presidents from American history. Yesterday he brought some of them along to meet the real thing.

With star pupils from the past and present looking on, Bigler was honored by President Clinton yesterday as the National Teacher of the Year during a sun-streaked Rose Garden ceremony. "We need more teachers like Philip Bigler," Clinton told an audience that also included other educators and members of Congress.

Bigler, who teaches history and social studies at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, was selected for his profession's highest award based in part on his use of interactive historical simulations that engage students in a way that rote lectures often do not.

Students do not merely read about the 1800 presidential election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; they act it out.

Bigler meets with students. (AP)

At other times, they play the roles of citizens of ancient Greece discussing the issues of their day, conduct mock arguments before their own version of the Supreme Court and stage a modern-day rerun of the court-martial trial of the soldier convicted in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

"For more than 20 years, his students haven't just studied history, they have lived it," Clinton said as Bigler stood at his side. "He's transformed his classroom into a virtual time machine. . . . Through these historic simulations, his students have learned lessons about democracy and the meaning of citizenship, lessons that will last a lifetime, lessons we want every American to know."

Clinton also used the opportunity to needle Senate Republicans for pushing through a bill this week that he has threatened to veto because it would provide tax breaks for private as well as public schooling and block his plans for voluntary national testing in reading and mathematics.

"This should not be a partisan issue; it should not be an ideological issue," the president said. "It ought to be purely and simply: What can we do to help you do what is best for our children and their future?"

Bigler began teaching in 1975 at his alma mater, Oakton High School, in Fairfax. But seven years later he quit, feeling disillusioned, and went to work as a historian at Arlington National Cemetery. Yet he decided to give education a second chance and returned to the classroom in 1985, first at Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda and then back in Fairfax, where he taught at McLean High School before moving to the Thomas Jefferson magnet school in 1996.

The teacher of the year is chosen by a national committee sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers and Scholastic Magazine. The winner spends a year traveling as a spokesman for the profession.

"When I began my teaching career some 23 years ago at Oakton High School," Bigler said, "I never dreamed that one day I would be invited to the White House to be recognized by the president of the United States for my work as a classroom teacher."