WHERE WE REPORT


Michael Freydin

LESSON BUILDER USER

Michael Freydin has been teaching in the New York City public schools for the past 20 years at the junior high school and high school levels, working with at-risk, immigrant and underprivileged youths in non-traditional educational environments. He has an unceasing desire to help students uncover a love for the world, its history, cultures and people. Widely traveled, Mr. Freydin has traveled to 60 countries of the world, immersing himself in other cultures and environments to help make students' experiences ever more tangible and real.  He has been a guest teacher in Thailand, Cambodia, Ukraine and India. Himself an émigré in the later days of the Soviet Union, he is especially able to relate to recent immigrants and help them better understand the world around them, working to innovate curriculum in ways that make abstract concepts accessible to students at all performance levels. Academically accomplished, he earned his Juris Doctorate at Hofstra Law School, continued his education across three continents, and has been awarded the Bernard Cohen Award for Outstanding Social Studies Teacher of the Year.

Mr. Freydin has worked as an adjunct at local colleges, and as a fellow of the Leaders of American History grant and the Teaching American History Grant he has specialized in the cultivation of high standard academic curricula. Mr. Freydin has presented at numerous educational conferences, including the Leaders of American History Grant Citywide, National Council of the Social Studies, New York State History Society, Long Island Council of Social Studies, Fund for the Advancement of Social Studies Education, and the Greater Metropolitan New York annual conferences, as well as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum web-based educational event Oh! Freedom!, the Museum of the City of New York Activism in the Classroom, as well as representing ATSS/UFT at National Council of the Social Studies conventions. Beyond the classroom, Mr. Freydin volunteers to guide students and parents through New York museums on weekends, as NYC licensed tour guide.

Michael has served the national chair of the Fund for the Advancement of Social Studies, a co-chair of the Greater Metropolitan New York Social Studies Conference, a national delegate for New York City to the National Council of Social Studies, and has been on the board of the Middle East Outreach Council.  Having won national competitions for lesson plan design, and having become a fellow of the Astor Foundation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael has worked as a curriculum writer for New York City.

Mr. Freydin is currently compiling source materials for a pictorial travel guide to Pre-Columbian ruins of Mesoamerica and South America, his passion.