Katie Blomquist teaches 5th grade at Sunrise Valley Elementary School in Reston, Virginia. She also teaches two Academy Courses for Fairfax County Public Schools: Writer’s Craft: Explicit Instruction in Grades 2-3, which provides teachers with a structure and philosophy to inspire young writers, and Virginia Passport to Success, which helps teachers incorporate critical and creative thinking strategies into the Virginia Studies curriculum. As a Colonial Williamsburg Master Teacher, Blomquist facilitates teacher institutes and writes curriculum to further education for citizenship. As a presenter, she shares strategies for fostering inquiry and a love of history in the elementary classroom. Most recently, she presented Maps on the Move: Connecting History, Geography, and Sugar at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference in Boston. She also co-planned and presented Increasing Rigor through Primary Sources for 2012 VDOE SOL Academy. Blomquist has attended two Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminars, one at Montpelier on The Founding Era, and the other at the University of Edinburgh on Jefferson and the Enlightenment. She was honored as Virginia’s History Teacher of the Year by the Virginia Council for the Social Studies in 2012 and by Gilder Lehrman in 2013.
