Jessica Lander is a nationally recognized teacher and the author of the 2024 George Orwell Award-winning book Making Americans. Conferred by the National Council of Teachers of English, the Orwell Award recognizes writers who have made "outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse." Among other honors, Jessica was named the 2023 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year and one of the 2023 Top 10 National History Teachers of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. She has spent much of the last decade in the classroom, teaching high school history and civics to recent immigrant students.