Kimberly Stevenson, one of the 2026 Kentucky Teacher Achievement Award winners, teaches her 8th-grade history class at Todd County Middle School. Provided photo

Kimberly Stevenson, a social studies teacher at Todd County Middle School, was one of the recipients of the 2026 Teacher Achievement Award.

Stevenson teaches 8th-grade history in Todd County, which she said is her favorite subject to teach.

“It’s fun getting to tell stories and engage kids with those stories to get them to do a little bit of research and spark their imaginations,” Stevenson said.

Stevenson has a bachelor’s in secondary social studies education from Arkansas State University. She has a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Oklahoma, and an education specialist degree from Arkansas State University.

She has taught in three different states and has been in Kentucky for eight years. Previously in Kentucky, she taught at Russellville Middle School (Russellville Independent) and Logan County High School. She has been at Todd County Middle School for six years.

Stevenson enjoys bringing activities into history class, such as mock archaeology digs or learning colonial dances. She also incorporates other subjects into her class.

“I incorporate reading and math through social studies; so I might give students a reading and say, ‘let’s read this information, highlight all the numbers and create a timeline,’” she said.

During her lesson on the Revolutionary War, she has a project where students calculate how many pounds of food are needed for a certain number of soldiers. When incorporating reading, she creates word problems based on battle lessons and other stories.

She’s also working with the local historical society, Historic Todd County, to bring members to the classroom to talk to students. She wants students to be able recognize and know the history of places, landmarks or events in their community.

“We’ve only lived (in Todd County) for five years now, so just learning new things through the students and their research and then, of course, speaking with the people from the historical society, I’ve learned a ton about the area,” Stevenson said. “There’s so much history that the kids aren’t even aware of that have lived here their whole lives.”

Through local history, Stevenson teaches her students about the values of documenting their own stories and teaches them how to interview family members. She encourages students, in their own time, to record their family histories, take photos, make audio recordings of stories, and archive them.

“This is something that someone may have in their digital files, maybe the historical society might have, and you’ll have that recording forever,” Stevenson said. “That’s something that you will always have as part of your family or your community.”

Stevenson is also involved in the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies. She also participates in many professional learning opportunities throughout the year.

In the summer of 2025, she went on a bus tour of the American Revolution battlefields in New England. She took pictures and documented the history. Now, she teaches a unit about the battlefields and incorporates her pictures into the lesson plan.

She also works with the National Constitution Center and Founding Forward, which are organizations that educate the public about the U.S. Constitution and its principles. The organizations offer various programs and resources to spark civic dialogue help students. Through the organizations, Stevenson helps build lessons for other teachers to use.

“To me, this is an accomplishment because I’m doing something useful that helps other people,” she said. “I like to help people, which I guess is also of the one of the reasons I became a teacher.”

Stevenson said she loves watching students grow throughout the year and being able to tell how much more knowledge they have than when they started.

“Looking at an assignment, it’s like, we didn’t know this at the beginning of the year, but now I know that you know how to do that,” she explained. “Just seeing that growth in students and seeing them succeed as they get older … is pretty amazing.”