Margaret Hamilton: A Wickedly Wonderful Chalkboard Champion

Not many people would recognize the name or photograph of actress Margaret Hamilton, but just about everyone knows the iconic movie roll she played. Bedecked in green make-up and black pointed hat, this pleasant face was the Wicked Witch of the West in MGM's version of The Wizard of Oz. It's ironic that this very sweet and loving former kindergarten teacher is best known for her her frightful disposition and her villainous behaviors, not to mention for scaring the daylights out of generations of little children. The true Margaret Hamilton was a lifelong advocate for educational causes, devoting much of her energy and money to benefit causes that improved the lives of children and animals. She passed away in 1985 at the age of 83.

Susan B. Anthony: She Championed Women's Suffrage

Many people are familiar with Susan B. Anthony, a tireless champion for women's suffrage who lived during the nineteenth century. Her political accomplishments are legendary. But did you know that this American civil rights champion was also a schoolteacher?

Beginning in 1939, Susan taught first at Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, and then at Canajoharie Academy in Canajoharie, New York. She left the profession in 1849 to devote her energy full-time to the women's suffrage movement.

Although she did not live to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, this historical achievement would not have been possible without Susan B. Anthony's many years of devotion to the cause. You just know that someone who worked that hard for women's rights worked equally diligently in the classroom.

Recognizing Chalkboard Athlete Frank Eufemia

Recognizing the value of making a contribution to the field of education, sometimes a professional athlete will become a teacher after they leave the game. This is true of major league baseball player Frank Eufemia.

Frank was born in 1959 in the Bronx, New York. He was drafted as a relief pitcher for the Minnesota Twins during the 1985 season. Frank finished the season with a record of 4 wins, two losses, an earned run average of 3.79, and thirty strike-outs.

This chalkboard athlete currently teaches physical education and health and coaches baseball at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, New Jersey.

Olive Mann Isbell: The Chalkboard Champion of Mission Santa Clara

A little-known figure in California history is educator Olive Mann Isbell, who is credited as being the first teacher in California. In 1846, when Olive was only 22 years old, she and her husband, Dr. Isaac Isbell, traveled west by wagon train. The territory had recently been severed from Mexico, and the Isbells arrived just as the Mexican army was poised to attack in an attempt to reclaim the land.

Olive and over two hundred American women and children were barricaded inside Mission Santa Clara de Asis, while the men were quickly drafted to defend the dilapidated fort. Inside the shelter, Olive, sensing the anxiety of the children, decided to organize a school to occupy their attention. The newly-arrived pioneer was well-suited to this work, being the niece of the famous educator Horace Mann and an experienced teacher from her home state of Ohio. When  Mexico finally laid down their arms and signed a truce with the United States on January 3, 1847, Olive's Santa Clara Mission School became recognized as the first American school on California soil.

You can read more about this amazing educator in Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present, available on amazon.

Honoring Chalkboard Hero Henry Alvin Cameron, an American Veteran

As our nation pauses this Memorial Day to honor our men and women in uniform, we must recognize that many of our chalkboard champions have served not only in the classroom, but also in our county's military. One such hero is Henry Alvin Cameron, an African American schoolteacher who served as an officer in the United States Army during World War I. Henry taught science and coached basketball at Pearl High School in Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of 45, well past the usual age of enlistment, Henry answered the call for African Americans to serve as officers in all-black regiments that were deployed to Europe. Henry served in France and, tragically, was killed in the Battle of the Argonne Forest just days before the war ended.

With Henry's death, the educational community lost a talented and popular teacher, the African American community lost a respected leader, and our country lost a valiant serviceman. His sacrifice deserves to be remembered. I have devoted a chapter to this chalkboard champion in the book I am currently writing, tentatively entitled Chalkboard Heroes.

Elaine Goodale Eastman: Chalkboard Champion who Taught the Sioux

Elaine Goodale Eastman was a talented teacher who established a day school on a Sioux Indian reservation in the territory of South Dakota. She believed very strongly that it was best to keep Native American children at home rather than transport them far away from their families to Indian boarding schools. She hadn't taught on the reservation very long when she was promoted to the position of Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. In this capacity, she travelled throughout the five Dakota reservations, visiting the more than 60 government and missionary schools within her jurisdiction, writing detailed evaluation reports on each school she visited.

It was because of her work that Elaine just happened to be visiting the Pine Ridge Reservation when the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre took place. Following the massacre, she and her fiance,  physician Charles Eastman of the Santee Sioux tribe, cared for the survivors and wrote detailed government reports to accurately describe what happened.

In her later years, when America was experiencing a back-to-nature revival, Elaine and her husband operated Indian-themed summer camps in New Hampshire. Read more of the life story of this fascinating educator in Theodore D. Sargent's biography The Life of Elaine Goodale Eastman, or an encapsulated version in  Chalkboard Champions, both available on amazon.

Joint Use Libraries: Connecting The School and the Community

Those of us who work in the educational community are always contemplating effective ways to connect the school with the community. In my opinion, joint-use libraries are one of the best ways to accomplish this. I have had the pleasure of working in my school's joint-use library for the past four years. During the day, the library is used by the students and staff. In the evenings, weekends, and school vacations, the library becomes the public facility which serves our local community.

Our joint-use library offers a wealth of resources to students and teachers, all conveniently located right here on our campus. Print books, reference materials, DVDs, audiobooks, and magazines are among the offerings available through the public library. And here's the thing I think is really great: if a particular item is not available in the on-site collection, it can be ordered from one of the other 43 branches in the public library system. The item is transported to our campus where the student can check it out with their public library card, and when the patron is finished, the item is returned to its home branch. It's very convenient, and best of all, it's free!

In a joint-use facility, another convenience is added if the public library will provide a limited-access password to school personnel so that public library materials can be checked out to students and staff during school hours. The manager of the public library at our facility allows me to do this. This is just one example of the many ways we all work together to provide the best services and resources to everyone.

I absolutely adore the public librarians that are employed in our joint-use library. These dedicated public servants work tirelessly to provide our students and teachers with useful resources, pleasurable leisure reading materials, and meaningful teen programming. Our library has truly become a popular gathering place for kids after school, not only for the high school students, but for the junior high and elementary students in our neighborhood as well. And the public librarians accomplish all this in addition to providing the family story time and craft programs, adult programming, and community resources that many patrons have come to expect from their local library.

As modern educators, we are committed to the concept of lifelong learning, and joint-use facilities are a great way to foster this. The first time I saw a former student of mine come back to the library as an adult patron, I got really excited! It's gratifying to know that we have instilled a love of books and learning that extends beyond the fleeting years our students spend with us. For this reason, every year in the fall I campaign to get public library cards into the hands of as many students as possible.

Many established communities already offer great library facilities, but in new or growing areas, it might be worth considering the installation of a joint-use library in your community!

Mary McLeod Bethune: A True Chalkboard Champion

Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875, the last of seventeen children born to former slaves in a log cabin on a plantation in Marysville, South Carolina. She was the only one of the McLeod children to be born into freedom.

As a young child, Mary showed an unusual interest in books and reading, but in those days it was, unfortunately, not the custom to educate African Americans. Nevertheless, a charitable organization interested in providing educational opportunities for children established a school near Mary's home. Her parents could scrape together only enough money to pay the tuition for one of their children, and Mary was chosen.

When she grew up, Mary retained her strong desire to extend educational opportunities to other African Americans. In 1904 she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona Beach, Florida. This school is now known as Bethune Cookman University.

In her later years, Mary became a close friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and also a trusted advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed her the head of the National Youth Administration in 1936. In 1945, she was appointed by President Harry Truman to be the only woman of color present at the founding meeting of the United Nations. This celebrated educator passed away peacefully in 1955.

For all her accomplishments, Mary McLeod Bethune is truly a chalkboard champion.

Maya Soetoro-Ng: The Chalkboard Champion with Presidential Connections

Maya Soetoro-Ng is a former high school history teacher, current university professor, and expert in comparative international education. She also happens to be the half-sister of President Barack Obama. Born in 1970 in Jakarta, Indonesia, she is the daughter of Anne Durham, Barack Obama's mother, and Anne's second husband, Indonesian businessman Lolo Soetoro. An accomplished educator in her own right, Maya's work as a promoter of international relations would be amazing even if she did not enjoy her presidential connections.

Early in her career, Maya taught history at La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls and at the Education Laboratory School, both located in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has also taught courses as an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii, College of Education, and between 1996 and 2000, she developed and taught curriculum at The Learning Project, an alternative public middle school located in New York City. She has also served as an Education Specialist at the East-West Center, an organization that promotes understanding between the United States, Asia, and the nations of the Pacific.

Maya published a children's book entitled Ladder to the Moon in 2011 and is currently working on a book about peaceful conflict resolution aimed at high school students. She also oversaw the 2009 publication of her mother's dissertation, entitled Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, penning the foreword to the book and presenting it at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

Oklahoma's Chalkboard Heroes Protect Students From Devastating Tornado

Once again our nation is reminded of the heroism of our teachers, who go above and beyond the call of duty to care for, protect, and comfort their students in crisis situations. Such was the case yesterday, in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, when a devastating tornado tore through this Mid-Western neighborhood. Two elementary schools, Briarwood Elementary and Plaza Towers Elementary, lay directly in the tornado's path of destruction. Thankfully, all the students at Briarwood have been accounted for, and already there are eyewitness accounts from the rescued children describing what extraordinary measures their teachers took to ensure their safety and well-being. Every one of those educators is a chalkboard hero. This photo shows a teacher from from Briarwood evacuating a student. At Plaza Towers Elementary, there is still grave concern for 75 teachers and their students, most of them third graders, who are still missing. I know we will keep all of them in our thoughts, and hope with all our might for the best of outcomes.

Turn-of-the-Century Farm Schools Educated Orphan, Homeless Boys

While conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned a great deal about various types of schools that I had never heard about in my thirty-odd years as a teacher. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? One type of school I learned about that I found particularly intriguing is the farm school.

 

A farm school was a boarding school which primarily served young boys. Typically these schools were established by missions or charitable organizations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The farm school provided housing, food, and medical care, usually to orphans or homeless boys who were over fourteen years of age. In addition, the school offered training in agricultural skills and fundamental lieracy skills in such subjects as reading, writing, and mathematics. The purpose of the farm school was to care for orphans and homeless youth, while simultaneously giving these youngsters the opportunity to learn a marketable skill which would enable them to find employment on farms in the Midwest or the South.

Chalkboard Champions Added to Nine More Public Libraries

I'm pretty excited to announce that my book, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America's Disenfranchised Students, has been added to the catalogues of nine more public libraries in the Southern California area. These libraries are located in Cathedral City, Eastvale, Idyllwild, Palm Desert, Perris, San Jacinto, Temecula, Valle Vista, and Woodcrest.

 

How wonderful is it to know that the general public is interested in reading stories about remarkable teachers! I love to tell stories about extraordinary teachers, and in today's world where so much negativity hits the news, this knowledge should give all of us who are professional educators a lift!

Princess Pauahi's Kamehameha Schools Preserve Native Hawaiian Culture and History

While conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned a great deal about numerous types of schools that I had never heard about in my thirty-odd years as an educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? One type of school I learned about that I found particularly intriguing is the Kamehameha School located in the beautiful state of Hawaii.

Kamehameha Schools were first established in 1887 at the bequest of Bernice Bishop, also known as Princess Pauahi, a member of the Hawaiian royal family when the state was still a territory. Princess Pauahi and her beloved husband, an American named Charles Reed Bishop, had no children of their own, and so when she passed away in 1882 at the age of 52, she directed that her vast estate should be used to benefit and educate underprivileged Native Hawaiian children. Two schools were built: one for boys and one for girls. Eventually the two schools were merged to form a coed school, now located on a six-hundred-acre campus on the main island of Oahu overlooking Honolulu Harbor. 

 

Kamehameha Schools serve the important function of preserving Native Hawaiian culture, history, and language. One of the ways this is done is through the annual choral competition known as the Kamehameha Song Contest, where traditional Hawaiian songs and dances as well as new compositions in the genre are performed by the students. This is a wonderful tradition that goes back 45 years.

 

When I think of Chalkboard Champions, my first thought is of teachers, of course, but individuals such as Princess Pauahi who support schools financially and with their volunteer hours are also heroes to our students!

Read more about Kamehameha Schools in my book Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

The "Soup School": Food for Thought

While in the process of conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned about many types of schools that I had never heard about in the thirty-odd years I have been a professional educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, freedom schools, farm schools, normal schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? I was particularly intrigued by the concept of the "soup school." What was that all about, I wondered?

 

I learned that a "soup school" was an institution established during periods of pronounced immigration to our country. Their purpose was to provide assistance to immigrant children as they struggled to assimilate within a new, dominant culture. Often times these schools were founded by charitable organizations or missionary societies. It makes sense that these schools were located primarily near areas of immigrant entry, New York City, for example. The main curriculum in these facilities was instruction in the English language, basic literacy skills, and American culture. Apparently, the school got its name from the fact that at noontime a bowl of soup was served to the students, a free meal which would have been most welcome to the poorest of immigrants. In contemplating this practice, I'm wondering if our nation's free lunch program would be considered a modern version of the "soup school"?

 

You can read more about soup schools in Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

Indian Boarding Schools: A Cultural Disaster

While I was conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I was surprised to learn a great deal about numerous types of schools, more than I ever learned in the thirty-odd years I had been teaching. Industrial schools, soup schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? I was particularly interested in reading about Indian boarding schools, and the controversies these generated.

Indian boarding schools were created specifically for the purpose of educating Native Americans. Indian children were sent to these schools, sometimes involuntarily, because it was believed the only way Native Americans could ever succeed in a predominantly white society would be if they abandoned their tribal ways and adopted the lifestyle practiced by the dominant culture, and that this assimilation could best be accomplished when the Indians were very young. Most Indian boarding schools were first founded by church missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later, some were established and run by the U.S. government. The intentions were pure, but in retrospect the results were disastrous. Some historians go so far as to assert these schools were institutions of cultural genocide.

The children, some as young as four years old, were taken away from their families, sent many miles away from home, and forced to give up their languages, customs and religious beliefs, art and music, native clothing, and even their names. These youngsters often found it traumatic when they were forced to cut their long hair, a symbolic act of shame and sorrow to Native Americans. The highly regimented routine and military atmosphere were harsh on the youngest ones. Exposure to diseases to which they had no natural immunities, coupled with homesickness and, in some locations, unsanitary conditions, led to a disturbingly high death rate. In despair, some of the youngsters ran away from their schools, freezing or starving to death trying to make their way back to their home reservations. Such a terribly sad thought for educators who care so much about kids and really believe in the liberating power of schools.

 

You can read a quick overview of these schools in the book Indian Boarding School: Teaching the White Man's Way, available on amazon.com. You can also read about them in Chalkboard Champions.

Pat Nixon: The Pretty Teacher of Whittier High School

I was really surprised to learn that former First Lady Pat Ryan Nixon had been employed for several years in the 1930's as a business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. In fact, she was working as a teacher when she met her future husband, a young and ambitious city attorney named Richard Nixon. Pretty and popular, the former Miss Ryan instructed courses in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, and stenography. Her students remembered her fondly, writes Julie Nixon Eisenhower in a very detailed and very personal biography about her mother published in 1986. You can read all about Pat Nixon's teaching career in the book Pat Nixon: the Untold Story, available on amazon.com.

LBJ, the Schoolteacher

I was very surprised to learn that President Lyndon Johnson had once been a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas, where he taught a class junior high school class comprised primarily of Mexican American students, and then as a high school speech and debate teacher in Houston. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher, and, had he stayed in the profession, probably would have enjoyed a very successful career there. I enjoyed learning all about his challenges and successes as an educator. When I read this book, I learned a lot of scandalous things about this president, too. Stuff that would be juicy enough for any daytime drama or prime-time reality show. You can read the detail about LBJ's career as a teacher---and the scuttlebutt, if you're interested---in The Path to Power, Book One of Robert A. Caro's trilogy about this intriguing historical figure.

The Rebound Effect: Positivity Generates Positivity

Every Chalkboard Champion knows that positivity in the classroom generates positivity in return. Here's a tangible example of that which I learned one year, quite by accident.

You know how at the beginning of every year we are asked to complete a form that lists our goals for the year? Well, one year I decided that my goal was to make a sincere effort to be better at praising my students. I wanted to create a more positive relationship with my kids and a more congenial classroom environment. In addition, my principal was impressing upon the staff the need to foster better communication with parents. I decided I would combine the two goals, and so, on my form, I wrote that each month I would write six letters to parents praising their child. As a junior high school teacher with six classes of 42 students each, I reasoned that it shouldn't be difficult to find one kid from each class each month that I could say something good about.

And so for the entire year, at the end of every month, I selected my six students and wrote each one a praise letter on decorative stationery. I read each letter aloud to the student before I put it in the envelope and sealed it, and then I gave it to the kid to take home to their parents. I shared the notes with the students to lower their anxiety level---a letter from the teacher is rarely good news---and to ensure that the note would really get delivered. But I could just as easily have put some postage on the letters and sent them through the U.S. mail.

The response I received from the parents was overwhelming. Many of the parents wrote notes back to me, expressing messages about how much they appreciated receiving praise about their child, how much their child enjoyed my class, or how pleased they were that I was their child's teacher. Imagine my surprise when I realised that I was receiving praise letters like the ones that I was sending! I saved these notes, partly because they were so uplifting, and partly as proof that I had met the goals I had set for myself for the year. In May, I presented them to my principal at my annual evaluation conference. My principal suggested I photocopy the notes and take them to the District Office to be placed in my personnel file there, so I did.

And here is how those letters further rebounded positivity back to me. A couple of years later I applied for a transfer to a new school that was opening up in my district. I was thrilled when I was selected for the position. Imagine my surprise when, later, my new principal told me that he had read those letters in my personnel file, and it was partly because of them that he decided to hire me!

Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories

For any teacher who is teaching a course in U.S. History, or for anyone who is intrigued by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's, this slender volume is a must-read. The book contains an inspirational collection of true stories by thirty African Americans who were children or teenaged activists during that period of time. These young people tell about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South, to sit in an all-white restaurant and ask to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face the frightening potential for violence, arrest, and even death to advance the cause of civil liberty. Anecdotes about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sit-ins, the integration of Jim Crow schools, Freedom Rides, the Children's Crusade, and Freedom Summer are among the topics included. You can find Freedom's Children on amazon.com.

From Classroom to White House: Chalkboard Politicians

I was fascinated by this little book that tells anecdotes about our nation's presidents and first ladies as students and as teachers. In addition, the book describes the educational issues the presidents addressed during their White House years, the complications  in education at their time in history, and an overview of American schooling over time. I was amazed to learn that John F. Kennedy's teacher said he could "seldom locate his possessions," and that the teacher of George H.W. Bush described the young student as "somewhat eccentric," and that Bill Clinton's sixth-grade teacher called him a "motormouth." If you're  a teacher as intrigued by presidential history as I am, you've got to read  From Classroom to White House, which can easily be found on amazon.com.

Carrie McLain: A Pioneer Teacher in Northwestern Alaska

Carrie McLain was born in 1895 in Astoria, Long Island, New York. When she was just a child of ten, her father moved Carrie and her four siblings to the fledgling village of Nome on the ice-crusted coast of northwestern Alaska. There she grew to adulthood, became a pioneer teacher, married, and reared a family of one son and three daughters. McLain tells the fascinating story of her provincial life in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Anyone interested in learning more about rugged existence on the frigid Alaskan frontier would be interested in reading this slender volume  (it's only 70 pages, including photographs). Pioneer Teacher can be found on amazon.

Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning

In today's classrooms we educators spend a lot of energy promoting life-long learning. When I contemplate this topic I am reminded of an interesting book I came across last year. The book is entitled Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning in the Lifespan, written by Charles A. Wedemeyer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Wedemeyer devoted most his lengthy career as an educator to the creation and promotion of nontraditional learning methods and programs. During WWII he developed courses to enable our nation's soldiers to earn their high school diplomas while serving overseas. Wedemeyer was an early proponent of university extension courses, and was also dabbling in long-distance learning methods such as computer courses before he passed away in 1999.

You can find his discussion of nontraditional learning methods in Learning at the Back Door, available at amazon.com.

Be the Chalkboard Champion of Your Own Book!

When I became a teacher 32 years ago, I started keeping a collection of items that marked my activities and successes in the classroom. I kept the sweet little notes from students and the praise letters from their parents, the thank you cards from colleagues and the district office for the extra services I performed, photographs of special projects or activities we worked on, the newspaper clippings about the programs I initiated, the evaluation forms I was especially proud of, and any awards I received.

 

I just kept these things in a file folder until, a few years later, when I became a scrapbooking enthusiast, I decided to transfer them all to a simple scrapbook. I arranged the items in chronological order, mounted some of them on school-themed scrapbook paper, and placed them in clear plastic page protectors. I also combed through old school yearbooks to photocopy published pictures of me at work in the classroom, on field trips with the kids, or chaperoning various school events. When the scrapbook was completed, I realized that what lay before me was a record of many classroom successes and an archive of my professional achievements.

Personally, I found my book to be a great source of solace during those periods of my career when I questioned whether or not I had made a serious vocational error! Also, I think it will make a nice table display when I eventually retire. But seriously, a book like this can become a valuable tool whenever you need to make a list of your accomplishments; if you're looking for a new job or applying for that summer institute, for instance. Think about creating one for yourself. You can be the Chalkboard Champion of your own book!

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family

Teachers who are creating lessons about World War II war relocation camps will probably want to examine  Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida. This slender volume is a beautifully written personal history of the author's family, of their life before the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and of their internment in a war relocation camp first in Tanforan, California, and then in Topaz, Utah, during World War II.

Uchida's purpose in writing this memoir is to describe an internment camp experience, and how she, as one of  the 110,000 internees, many of whom were American citizens, felt when she was  imprisoned by her own government simply because she happened to look like the enemy. Uchida, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, was a twenty-year-old student in her senior year at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco at the time.

Read the book for your own edification, suggest it as leisure reading for your students, or incorporate it in whole or in part in your lesson plans. Any way you go, the book is a great resource. You can find Desert Exile on amazon.

Carrie Chapman Catt: The Sufragette Teacher

Carrie Chapman Catt graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College, having worked her way through school as a teacher in the summer months. Her father, a subsistence farmer, contributed only $25 a year to her education, partly because he didn't have a lot of financial resources, but mostly because he didn't believe in advanced education for girls. But the young woman was determined to get a college degree. After her graduation, she continued to teach, earning a stellar reputation as an educator. In time, she was promoted to the position of  superintendent of schools.

Catt could have remained in that comfortable job until retirement, but she was determined to improve the lives of the women of her day. The enfranchisement of women became her life's passion. Catt became one of the leading forces for the Suffragist movement, which lobbied state by state, and eventually descended upon Washington, DC, to pressure Congress into passing a constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote. Once that goal was accomplished, Catt spent the rest of her life advocating for peace and human rights. You can read about the life of this remarkable teacher in Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life, available on amazon. I have also included a chapter about her in the book I am currently writing, tentatively titled Chalkboard Heroes.

What Makes Great Teachers? We All Want To Know!

What makes a great teacher? I think every dedicated educator wants to know the answer to that question. Steven Farr, who works as a recruiter for the Teach for America program, has spent ten years travelling around the country visiting classrooms, and he suggests some deceptively simple answers. You can read them in his highly acclaimed book Teaching as Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap. Some of Farr's suggestions were featured on a segment of ABC News with Diane Sawyer. You can view this segment on YouTube at this link:

What Makes Great Teachers

If you want to buy Farr's book, you can find it on amazon at this link:

Teaching As Leadership