Stephen Lazar is a National Board Certified Social Studies teacher, who is typically teaching students Social Studies and English at Harvest Collegiate High School in NYC, which he helped to start. This year, he is on sabbatical and a Ph.D. candidate in history at the CUNY Graduate Center. Lazar was the lead writer of the 11th Grade US History portion of the New York Social Studies Toolkit, consisting of model curricular units based on the C3 Framework. His writing on policy and practice has been published on the New York Times, Washington Post, Education Week, Chalkbeat, and Albert Shanker Institute websites.
In honor of Constitution Day (September 17th), this blog series invites teachers and leaders in the field of civics and democracy education to address the question: Why is it important to teach the Constitution?