After years of pursuing various educational and career paths, Bernstein has found his calling as a high school history teacher in Maryland. He was recently recognized by the Washington Post Foundation as a top teacher in his county.
It took nearly 20 years, several degrees, and numerous career changes for Ken Bernstein '73 to realize he belonged in front of a classroom. Now, he's been recognized as one of the best teachers in Maryland's Prince George's County.
Bernstein, who teaches social studies and U.S. history at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Md., recently won the Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award from the Washington Post Foundation. Winners of this award, which recognizes dedicated and innovative teachers, are nominated by their communities and selected by their individual school systems. Bernstein was chosen from 9,000 teachers in his county.
It's a remarkable accomplishment for a man who took 10 years to earn his Haverford degree. Bernstein entered the College in 1963, but after his sophomore year, he dropped out to enlist in the Marines. After two years, he received an honorable discharge and returned to Haverford in the fall of '66, but, he says, he felt he“wasn't grown up yet.” He moved to New York City for a time, where he held down various jobs and briefly enrolled in New York University.“I then talked [then Dean of Admission] Bill Ambler into readmitting me to Haverford,” he says. In 1971, Bernstein lived with freshmen in Barclay Hall as a 25-year-old upperclassman. He majored in music, finally graduating in 1973.
Bernstein went on to receive a master's degree in religious studies from Saint Charles Seminary in Philadelphia, and had begun another graduate program in pastoral counseling when he and the woman who would in 1985 become his wife, Jurretta Heckscher, decided they both wanted to live in Washington, D.C. Despite his interest in religious issues, his life took a different turn as he began working as a data processor.
In 1992, Bernstein attended the 25th reunion of his original Haverford class (1967), where he met up with former classmate Bob Sinclair, who taught at a Brooklyn high school and also helped to recruit teachers. Bernstein, who'd briefly been an unpaid teacher at a Friends school in New Jersey, started talking with Sinclair about the highs and lows of the profession. Two years later, in 1994, he says,“I talked my way into a master of arts in teaching at Johns Hopkins University.”
Bernstein started substituting in Prince George's County in 1995, and landed a permanent position at Eleanor Roosevelt in 1998. In addition to U.S. history and social studies, he teaches three sections of AP government, as well as comparative religion. He has also sponsored the Muslim Students Association, directed the school's musical theater program, and coached the mock trial team and JV boys' and girls' soccer.
What he enjoys about teaching, he says, is“the opportunity to empower students to do things they might not otherwise have done.” He was surprised to receive the Agnes Meyer Award: “At the ceremony, I wondered why I was on the same stage with the other honorees. My wife kicked me when I said that.”
Outside of teaching, Bernstein has also made a name for himself as a respected blogger. He has written about education policy for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and now opines on a variety of issues at the political blog Daily Kos, where he posts as“teacherken.”
