Jon Bassett wanted to be a history teacher ever since he was in middle school. He began his career at a Catholic girls high school in the South Bronx (Saint Pius V), then spent over twenty years in the Boston suburbs, at Dover-Sherborn Regional High School and Newton North High School, where he served as chair of the history department and helped found the Newton Teacher Residency. In 2018 Jon returned to urban classrooms, and currently teaches world history at the Match Charter Public High School in Boston. Jon has taught students in grades nine through twelve and on every academic level, and has won two teaching awards. He has a B.A. in history from Columbia, an M.A.T. in history teaching from Brown, and an Ed.D. in curriculum and teaching from Boston University.

The Four Question Method (4QM) is a way of planning and teaching history courses that makes them engaging, meaningful, and fun. Teachers who use the 4QM plan units and lessons around Four Questions that are at the heart of our discipline. Students who learn the 4QM are able to think clearly and well about history and social studies. They can more easily remember key information, because every event, person, or idea that they learn is related to the story of the unit they're studying, and to their own judgment of history. Our ultimate goal is to graduate Philosopher-Citizens.

Gary Shiffman became a high school teacher at age 39. That summer he interned at Madison Park High School in Boston. In the fall, he began teaching 9th and 10th graders at Newton North High School, where Jon Bassett had hired him on a lark. He taught at Newton North for four years and then became Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator (a.k.a. department chair) at Brookline High School, where his two daughters, his wife (Class of ’80), and his friend Jon (Class of ’84) all attended. After seventeen years in that position, he stepped down to devote himself full time to spreading the word about the Four Question Method. Gary has a B.A. in Political Science from SUNY Binghamton, a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, and is a former Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.