Jason Pendleton, Free State High School history teacher, speaks to a U.S. government class on Thursday. Pendleton recently was named Kansas History Teacher of the Year. The state honor puts him in the running for National History Teacher of the Year, which will be announced in October.

Jason Pendleton can relate to any student who might be bored learning about the American revolution.

“I hated high school history,” Pendleton said. “My history teacher, bless her heart, wasn’t into critical thinking.”

But the California high school boy who hated history grew up to become a history teacher and then some. Pendleton recently was named Kansas History Teacher of the Year.

“Mr. P,” who has taught at Lawrence’s Free State High School for seven years, was honored in July by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America, a White House program.

He is competing against the top history teachers from each state and U.S. territory for the honor of being National History Teacher of the Year. The award will be announced in October.

Pendleton’s success comes from going beyond dates, names and places.

“Jason doesn’t teach kids facts, he teaches kids how to think,” said Mike Hill, a Free State vice principal who nominated Pendleton for the honor.

“There’s a difference there. And I think that’s why he has the respect of his peers and of his students,” Hill said. “And he’s a very articulate person. He’s someone who cares a great deal about learning and a great deal about kids. It’s demonstrated in his teaching.”

Pendleton has been teaching 14 years, including the last seven as a member of Free State’s social studies department.

Full routine

“My daily routine includes an awful lot of bells,” he joked as an electronic bell signaled the beginning of another class.

His day begins with his family – he and wife, Jodi, have two sons, Nathan, 5, and Nicholas, 17 months.

After dropping Nathan at kindergarten at Quail Run, Pendleton teaches three American history classes and two U.S. government classes.

Then it’s off to soccer practice. He’s head coach for both the boys’ and girls’ teams at Free State.

During his spare time, he researches social history and has written articles on African-American baseball in Kansas and a 1963 riot in Garnett.

He’s also the co-editor, with Christopher Phillips, of “The Union on Trial: The Political Journals of Judge William Barclay Napton 1829-1883.”

He also maintains a Web page (http://web.mac.com/mrpendleton) where students can go for a podcast to review for his history quizzes.

Connecting to the past

And he tries to keep up on news events that might relate to students in his classrooms.

For example, he worked up plans for incorporating the 9-11 anniversary into today’slessons.

Five years ago, just after the attacks, he had students write their personal reactions to the terrorist attacks. He kept some of them and wrote one himself.

He said he might share those reactions with his students today.

In his history classes, Pendleton works to connect current events with other episodes of American history. For example, comparing happenings in Iraq with the American revolution.

Pendleton likes to get his students thinking.

“I play devil’s advocate with them, provoke them into considering things that maybe they hadn’t considered before,” he said.

“I think with a subject like history and government, you always have that opportunity to teach kids about the present by concentrating on the past.”