Guest Blog Part 1 by Karen Regina

Karen Regina has a broad background in social studies education as a classroom teacher at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, museum educator at the Cincinnati History Museum and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and as a current faculty member in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services at the University of Cincinnati. She earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction at UC and subsequently authored a variety of curriculum materials, including several online WebQuests and an elementary textbook, Cincinnati: An Urban History. She contributed several lessons to CET’s Safe Passage project.




Writing a Lesson about William Howard Taft




When I was invited to write a lesson about William Howard Taft for CET’s website, I wasn’t clear about what kind of lesson to create. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Taft, so I took this as an opportunity to learn more about him. My first step was to review the Ohio Academic Content Standards for Social Studies to see what the state expected students to learn about Taft. I was surprised to find that Taft’s name was nowhere to be found, considering that he was a President from Ohio.

I recalled that years ago, when I was on staff at the Cincinnati Historical Society, I had chosen primary source documents from their collections for inclusion in the publication Cincinnati: An Urban History Sourcebook. So I turned to those pages first. There I found items about Taft’s 1908 campaign and inauguration particularly as they related to his hometown of Cincinnati. Making connections to Cincinnati would be a good idea, I thought.

Karen Regina

Come Back to CET Teach next week to learn about Karen's research process for creating a lesson on William Howard Taft.