Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School

Here's a great book for anyone who is interested in progressive education or pluralism in education: Leonard Covello and the making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as if Citizenship Mattered. Leonard Covello came to the United States in 1896 as a nine-year-old Italian immigrant. Despite immense cultural and economic pressures at home, Leonard wanted to get an education. As an adult, he analyzed these cultural and economic pressures, which were common in Italian immigrant households at that time. He realized that Italian parents viewed the school as a wedge between their children and the family; he recognized the pressure even the youngest Italian children faced to go out and get a job rather than succeed in school. His answer? Involve the parents in the school, and involve the students in the community. The result was New York's Benjamin Franklin High School, a truly innovative marriage of school and home. Lots of lessons in this story are relevant even in today's times, especially for school personnel who are clamoring for more involvement from parents in the school system.

 

You can find this eye-opening book on amazon.com at the Leonard Covello link. You can also read the abbreviated version of Leonard Covello's life story in Chalkboard Champions.

Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul

This one is without a doubt a no-brainer: Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul: Stories to Open the Hearts and Rekindle the Spirits of Educators. Ever since it was first introduced, the Chicken Soup series, no matter what the topic, has been an uplifting choice. Anytime you're feeling down-and-out, and you need a quick professional pick-me-up, this volume will do it for you. I find this is a good book to keep on my desk at school, and when the students are doing their sustained silent reading (SSR), I can read an entry or two at the same time. When they see you leisure reading, hopefully they are inspired to read even more. What's good about using a book like this for SSR is that the entries are short, so time doesn't get away from you, and if you get interrupted, you can easily pick up where you left off. Try it! You can acquire this book at amazon at the following link: Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul.

Mary Tsukamoto: Teacher, Prisoner, American Hero

At the start of World War II, Mary Tsukamoto was living a quiet life as the wife of a strawberry farmer in a diminuitive Japanese-American community in Florin, Northern California. When Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, "a day that will live in infamy," Mary's quiet life was suddenly turned upside-down. Like 120,000 other persons of Japanese descent living on the West Coast, most of them American citizens, Mary was forced into a relocation camp by the U.S. government because her loyalty to our country was questioned. Mary, her husband, their five-year-old daughter, her elderly in-laws, her teenaged brother and sisters, and other members of her family wound up in Jerome, Arkansas, where they were incarcerated until authorities were convinced this family of farmers posed no threat to national security. While detained in the camp, Mary became part of a prisoner-organized effort to provide meaningful educational opportunities for their imprisoned children. Mary taught speech courses for the high school students and English language classes for the elderly.

After the war, she returned to college, completed her degree, and became an elementary schoolteacher, one of the first certificated Japanese American teachers in the United States. Her remarkable story is told in her autobiography, We the People, a volume which unfortunately is now out of print. However, with some effort, it can be found through second-hand book sellers or in some libraries (check WorldCat), and it is well worth the hunt. You can read also read her story in Chalkboard Champions, available through amazon.com.

Sandra Adickes and Legacy of a Freedom School

Sandra Adickes was an energetic and idealistic thirty-year-old New York City schoolteacher in 1964, the year she ventured south into Mississippi to teach in a Freedom School. The goal of the summer program was to empower the black community to register to vote and to help bridge some of the gap of educational neglect that had long been a tradition in that Jim Crow state. Both blacks and whites realized that only through education and participation in the democratic process could African Americans hope to improve their lot.

 

The enterprise was not without danger. On the first day of Freedom Summer, three workers involved in the program disappeared while investigating the firebombing of the church facility designated for their voter recruitment activities. Six weeks later, as Sandra Adickes conducted her classes in Hattiesburg, the badly beaten and bullet-ridden bodies of the three missing men were discovered buried in an earthen dam in nearby Neshoba County.

 

At summer's end, Sandra's fearless students decided to integrate the Hattiesburg Public Library in what became, in effect, a graduation trip with an emphasis on civic reform. Sandra was arrested in the effort. Read her riveting story, and what became of her courageous students, in her book Legacy of a Freedom School. You can also find a chapter about this remarkable teacher in Chalkboard Champions.

How Did I Select Teachers to Write About in the Book?

I am often asked how I selected the teachers I wrote about in my book, Chalkboard Champions. Two of the twelve were easy: Anne Sullivan, the teacher who worked with Helen Keller, and Jaime Escalante, the teacher who was the subject of the movie Stand and Deliver. I don't think a book about outstanding teachers can be written if these two are excluded. It helped that Anne Sullivan worked with handicapped students and Jaime Escalante worked with inner city Latino youth, since the thrust of my book is teachers who worked with disenfranchised student populations. After I selected these two, I began to think about other groups of disenfranchised students. I thought about minority groups such as Native Americans and African Americans, which led me to Elaine Goodale Eastman, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Carter Godwin Woodson, and Sandra Adickes. I specifically looked for a teacher in Hawaii, and discovered Gladys Kamakakuokalani Brandt. I have to say, the chapter I wrote for Gladys is among my favorite chapters. Then I considered underprivileged students such as the poor, orphans, and newly-arrived immigrants. Researching these groups led me to Julia Richman, Clara Comstock, and Leonard Covello. I specifically looked for a teacher who was working with students in World War II Japanese internment camps, and after much effort found Mary Tsukamoto. I stumbled across Eulalia Bourne, and couldn't resist her.

 

When selecting the teachers I wrote about, I tried to include a good cross section of ethnic groups, both as teachers and as student groups. I strove to include both men and women, although it is easier to find women teachers to write about, and I also attempted to include representation from a variety of geographic regions within the United States. I also tried to select teachers that came from different time periods in our history, starting from the Civil War era and continuing through to more contemporary times.

 

I love to tell stories about remarkable teachers, and although I selected twelve very extraordinary teachers to write about, there were, of course, many more that I did not have room to include in the volume. I hope to write about these others in future publications! You can read the fascinating stories of the remarkable teachers mentioned above in the book  Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

Spring Break and Professional Renewal: Find Inspiration in The Quotable Teacher

Easter time, and its accompanying Spring Break (yippee!), is a time of renewal and new growth, not only spiritually and personally, but professionally as well. Whenever I am looking for professional inspiration, I turn to a handy little book called The Quotable Teacher edited by Randy Howe. This little volume is divided into ten chapters devoted to various teaching topics of interest to educators. For example, "Those Who Teach," "The Philosophy Behind Good Teaching," "The Need to Think Outside the Box," and "Those We Teach." I keep a copy on my desk at school for those moments when I need a little lift. If you wish to acquire this thought-provoking little volume, you can find The Quotable Teacher on amazon.com.

The Freedom Writers Diary, Both Book and Movie

Just about everyone has heard of the best-selling book The Freedom Writers Diary, written by teacher Erin Gruwell and her high school class of inner-city at-risk students. This collection of student experiences, which will tug at any teacher's heart strings, was also depicted in a movie starring Hollywood celeb Hilary Swank. This book really zeroes in on some of the challenges our kids face when they are not in school, and how much a caring and dedicated teacher can help them overcome those challenges. The movie delves a little more into the personal life of the teacher, and aside from the suggestion that you have to work three jobs and give up your marriage to be a good teacher, it's pretty inspiring. What I think is amazing is that my high school students love this book just as much as my fellow teachers do! The Freedom Writers Diary is easy to find on amazon and at just about any brick-and-mortar bookstore.