Elizabeth Duncan Koontz: The Chalkboard Champion Who Served in President Nixon's Administration

Many talented educators have also made important contributions to our country's political arena. Such is the case with Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, a special education teacher from North Carolina.

Elizabeth Duncan was born June 3, 1919, Salisbury, North Carolina, the daughter of two educators. She was the youngest of their seven children. Elizabeth was only four years old when she was enrolled in elementary school, but she had already mastered the ability to read and write. The child excelled as an elementary school student, even helping her mother with the lessons of illiterate adult learners that her mother was tutoring in reading. ''I knew then that teaching was for me,'' she related years later.

In 1935, Elizabeth graduated as the salutatorian from Salisbury's segregated Price High School. Three years later, in 1938, she graduated from Livingstone College with a bachelor's degree in English and elementary education. In 1941, she earned her master's degree from Atlanta University. She also completed courses from Columbia University, North Carolina College, and the University of Indiana.

Elizabeth inaugurated her career as an educator when she accepted a position as a fourth grade teacher in North Carolina. Particularly interested in helping children with disabilities, she became a special education teacher at Price High School in Salisbury, North Carolina. She spent her entire career championing equal rights and better opportunities for African Americans, women, and the working poor. In 1968, this dedicated educator became the first African American president of the National Education Association.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed her to be an advisor to the US Secretary of Labor. She also served as the director of the Women's Bureau. At the end of President Nixon's first term Elizabeth returned to North Carolina to coordinate the nutrition programs for the Department of Human Resources. From 1975 until her retirement in 1982, she served as Assistant State Schools Superintendent.

Elizabeth's many contributions did not go unnoticed. She was given the North Carolina Award for Public Service in 1977, and in 2006, Elizabeth Duncan Elementary School in Salisbury was named in her honor.

Eve Kristine Vetulani Balfour: The Chalkboard Champion Who Was Once Imprisoned by the Nazis

One indisputable chalkboard champion is Eve Kristine Vetulani Balfour. Born a Catholic in Krakow, Poland, this remarkable educator came from a family that abhorred the Nazi regime. The Vetulanis adopted a Jewish woman during WWII, thereby saving her from the Nazis. Eve Kristine did not escape their clutches, however. In 1942, during the German occupation of Poland, she was forced to work in Nazi slave labor camps. Her knowledge of languages saved her life during World War II because she was more valuable to the Germans as a translator than a slave laborer. Fortunately, she was liberated by the Allies in 1945 from a camp in Nordhausen, the site of the construction of V-1 and V-2 rockets.

After the war, Eve Kristine worked as a translator for US Army intelligence while she attended Frankfurt University in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1950, she immigrated to the United States as a displaced person. Upon her arrival, she first enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After moving to Maryland, she graduated from Frostburg State Teachers College, Maryland, in 1962, and earned her master's degree in French from Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1966.

For over twenty-five years Eve Kristine worked as an instructor of French, German, and Spanish at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She retired from the teaching profession in 1988. Able to speak Polish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, and Italian, Eve Kristine translated historical documents for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, after her retirement. She also worked for the Red Cross at their Tracing Bureau, assisting efforts to reunite Holocaust survivors with their families.

Eve Kristine passed away in 2004 at the age of 79, but she will always be remembered as a true chalkboard champion.

Science Made Thrilling by Educator Michael Stephen Lampert

Science is a thrilling experience in the classroom of educator Michael Stephen Lampert, a teacher at West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon. This dedicated educator opens his classroom at least one afternoon each week for students to work on their science projects, which he mentors. He also coaches the school's robotics team and academic teams, including Science Bowl, Ocean Bowl, and High Five. Twice Michael's students have won the Toshiba ExploraVision competition for their work developing a prosthetic arm that can sense touch and using bio-sensing technology to treat attention deficit disorder. Also, his students advanced to the finals in the Lemelson-MIT Inventeam contest for their work on a device that evaluates the ripeness of watermelons.

 

This remarkable educator has quite a professional resume outside of the classroom as well. For example, he has launched weather balloons in Antarctica to study ozone depletion, and he has helped install an infrasound listening station in Africa that can be used to detect a nuclear explosion. When he is away from the classroom working on projects such as these, he shares his experiences with his students through online journals, demonstrations, and community presentations. In addition to his hands-on projects, Michael has helped write curriculum and design the web site for the new PBS show Wired Science. He has written numerous grants to fund innovative projects that explore topics such as airbag physics and sports physics. He has earned more than $250,000 in grants for his students. And he has conducted extensive outreach programs to elementary schools in his home town.

 

Michael has earned plenty of recognition for his efforts. He was one of forty-five winners of the 2005 Disney Teacher Award. In 2009, he was selected Oregon Teacher of the Year, and the same year he was named the winner of the Science Education Prize for High School Teachers by the American Association for the Advancement of Science Leadership. In 2010, he was one of ten winners of the PBS Teachers Innovation Awards. Additionally, the Society for Science and the Public has listed him as one of ten SSP Fellows.

Michael Lampert graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in physics, and then started work on his doctorate in atomic physics at Oregon State University before deciding to pursue a career in teaching. How greatly is the profession enriched by the contributions of this amazing chalkboard champion!

Zitkala Sa: The Music Teacher Who Became a Political Activist and the Champion of the American Indian

One of the most amazing chalkboard champions and political activists in American history is Native American Zitkala Sa, whose Indian name translated means Red Bird.

This remarkable educator was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Her father, an American of European descent, abandoned his family, leaving his young daughter to be raised alone by her Native American mother. Despite her father's absence, Zitkala Sa described her childhood on the reservation as a time of freedom and joy spent in the loving care of her tribe.

In 1884, when she was just eight years old, missionaries visited the reservation and removed several of the Native American children, including Zitkala Sa, to Wabash, Indiana. There she was enrolled in White's Manual Labor Institute, a school founded by Quaker Josiah White for the purpose of educating "poor children, white, colored, and Indian." She attended the school for three years until 1887, later describing her life there in detail in her autobiography The School Days of an Indian Girl. In the book she described her despair over having been separated from her family, and having her heritage stripped from her as she was forced to give up her native language, clothing, and religious practices, and to cut her long hair, a symbolic act of shame among Native Americans. Her deep emotional pain, however, was somewhat brightened by the joy and exhilaration she felt in learning to read, write, and play the violin. Zitkala Sa became an accomplished musician.

After completing her secondary education in 1895, the young graduate enrolled at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, on a scholarship. The move was an unusual one, because at that time higher education for women was not common. In 1899, Zitkala Sa accepted a position as a music teacher at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Here she became an important role model for Native American children who, like herself, had been separated from their families and relocated far from their home reservations to attend an Indian boarding school. In 1900, the young teacher escorted some of her students to the Paris Exposition in France, where she played her violin in public performances by the school band. After she returned to the Carlisle School, Zitkala Sa became embroiled in a conflict with the Carlisle's founder, Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, when she expressed resentment over the rigid program of assimilation into the dominant white culture that Pratt advocated, and the fact that the school's curriculum did not encourage Native American children to aspire to anything beyond lives spent as manual laborers.

As a political activist, Zitkala Sa devoted her energy and talent towards the improvement of the lives of her fellow Native Americans. She founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 and served as its president until her death in 1938. She traveled around the country delivering speeches on controversial issues such as Native American enfranchisement, their full citizenship, Indian military service in World War I, corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the apportionment of tribal lands. In 1997 she was selected as a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Zitkala Sa: a national treasure and a genuine chalkboard champion.

If interested, you can read more about the Carlisle Indian School in my book, Chalkboard Champions, available from amazon.

Talented Musician Conrad Johnson Chooses Career as a Music Educator Instead of Fame and Fortune

Many music teachers and jazz aficionados have probably heard of Conrad Johnson, Sr., a music educator from Houston, Texas. In addition to his role as a remarkable educator, Conrad was a phenomenal musician.

Conrad once played with the legendary Count Basie, and Erskine Hawkins once tried to persuade him to join his orchestra. Conrad declined the fame and fortune because he didn't want to leave his family or his give up teaching. "Conrad Johnson is one of Houston's unsung cultural heroes," says Rick Mitchell, former pop music critic for the Houston Chronicle. "He could have made a national name for himself with his two big bands. Instead he chose to devote his career to educating Houston's future musicians. He is retired from the school system, but he's still hard at work as an educator."

Born in Victoria, Texas, the young Conrad was nine years old when his family moved to the port city of Houston. After graduating from Yates High School, Conrad attended Houston College for Negroes, and then Wiley College in Marshall in eastern Texas, where he graduated in 1941. He started his career as a music educator at Kashmere High School that same year.

Conrad made a lasting contribution to music when he formed the Kashmere Stage Band, an internationally-known school orchestra that won a number of awards during its decade-long existence. His kids always called him "Prof." Under Prof's tutelage, the student musicians in the Kashmere Band won forty-two out of the forty-six competitions they entered between 1969 and 1977. They recorded eight albums featuring more than twenty original compositions by Conrad, and they went on tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe.

In 1978, following a thirty-seven-year career, Conrad retired from his position at Kashmere High School. In his retirement, he continued to remain active in shaping music in Houston by conducting summer programs and in-home tutoring. In 2000, the talented educator was inducted into the Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame. The Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a magnet school at Kashmere High School, is named after him. This wonderful teacher and musician passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.

Math Teacher and Youth Mentor Sheck Exley Was Also a Pioneer Scuba Diver

Sheck Exley was a teacher of advanced algebra and calculus at Suwanee High School in Live Oak, Florida. The man is better-known, however, for his pioneering work as a cave diver. He broke numerous world records in the sport, and was also a successful author on the subject. He published Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival (1986) and Caverns Measureless to Man (2009), whose title was inspired by a phrase from the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This naturally-talented educator spent years training advanced divers, and those experiences fueled his passion for teaching. A popular teacher, he even posted his home number on the bulletin board and told his students they could call him day or night if they had trouble with their math homework. Before long, the kids were calling him with troubles that had nothing to do with differential equations. Over time Sheck became a mentor to adolescent boys who had brushes with the law or were on the verge of dropping out of school. One by one, he pulled them into the local karate club he founded, teaching them how to avoid trouble through physical and mental discipline, to take control of their lives, and to make better decisions.

Sadly, Sheck's own life story does not have a happy ending. He died while attempting to set a new world depth record in a cenote, or sinkhole, known as El Zacaton in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on April 6, 1994. He was only 45.

Union Organizer "Mother" Jones: A Remarkable Chalkboard Champion

One amazing chalkboard champion was teacher, dressmaker, and union organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones. This remarkable woman was born in 1837 in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland, the daughter of impoverished tenant farmers. She was just a teenager when her family immigrated to Canada to escape the Irish Potato Famine. Her family later moved to the United States.

All her life, Mary was passionate about the welfare of children and the underprivileged. Following her graduation from normal school at age seventeen, she became a schoolteacher, first at a convent in Monroe, Michigan, and later in Memphis, Tennessee. It was in Memphis that she met and married George E. Jones, an iron molder and union member. Tragically, the young schoolteacher lost her husband and all four of their children, all under the age of five, in the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. Next, Mary relocated to Chicago and established a dressmaking shop. Unfortunately, the workshop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Following the demise of her business, Mary began working as an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers Union. She helped coordinate several major strikes, and she also co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Because she referred to the union members as "her boys," Mary was often referred to as "Mother" Jones. Mary gained fame for mobilizing the wives of striking coal miners to march with brooms and mops in an effort to block strikebreakers from crossing the picket lines.  In 1902, one American district attorney called her "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners.

In 1903, Mary was greatly disturbed by the inadequate enforcement of child labor laws in mines and silk mills in Pennsylvania, so she organized one hundred youngsters in a Children's March from Kensington, Philadelphia, to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, New York. In the procession, the children carried banners that proclaimed, "We want to go to school, and not the mines!"

Mary Harris Jones died in Adelphi, New York, on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. She was buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Elementary School in Adelphi was named in her honor. This amazing former schoolteacher will always be remembered as a chalkboard champion.