Jon Bassett has wanted to be a history teacher since he was in middle school. He has a BA in history from Columbia University, an MAT in history from Brown University, and an EdD in curriculum and teaching from Boston University. Jon has taught history in grades 9-12 on all academic levels, from Advanced Placement to at-risk students. He has taught in a Catholic girls high school in the South Bronx, at district public schools in the suburbs of Boston, and at a charter public school in the city of Boston. He was the department chair in history and social sciences at Newton North High School in Newton Massachusetts for seventeen years, where he also founded and directed a teacher residency program. He is the founding partner, with Gary Shiffman, of 4QM teaching, an organization dedicated to engaging students in the thinking skills of history and social studies through the Four Question Method.  |After graduating from the State University of New York at Binghamton with a BA in political science, Gary Shiffman taught elementary and middle school in New York City and Maalot, Israel. Well chastened, he attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, where he studied political theory. He then taught for eight years at the University of California, San Diego. Chastened again, he became a high school teacher in 2002, when his current partner and then department chair hired him to teach history at Newton North High School in Massachusetts. Four years later he became Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator at nearby Brookline High School, where he teaches one class and supervises and evaluates teachers. He co-founded 4QM Teaching in 2017.