Highland Springs HS teacher among seven statewide selected for Virginia Humanities fellowship

Highland Springs High School history teacher Spencer Billett is among seven teachers statewide to receive the Virginia Humanities K-12 Educator Fellowship, announced earlier this week.

The program offers selected teachers a stipend of $4,000, supplies for their classroom up to $180, and two reference books for research. It is designed to support educators who teach the humanities to primary and secondary school students.

Billet has taught at Highland Springs High for nine years and now mostly teaches AP and dual enrollment sections of United States history. He also is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher and is working on his master’s in history through the Gilder-Lehrman program at Gettysburg College. He said he is excited to examine the historical record on enslaved Virginians and their relationship to the legal system.

This year’s cohort of teachers is composed of educators from five of the eight Superintendent’s Regions: Central Virginia (Region 1); Tidewater (Region 2); Northern Virginia (Region 4); Valley (Region 5); and Southwest (Region 7). Their proposed research topics range from the importance of cultural artifacts in telling Southwest Virginia’s historyto critical perspectives on the Commonwealth’s juvenile justice system.

The 2024–25 cohort also includes a new fellowship focused on using content from Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities’ free history resource.

Billet was a member of the Citizen’s Henrico’s Top Teachers Class of 2021.

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