Author Mary Breu reviews Chalkboard Heroes

Below you will find a review of my recently released book, Chalkboard Heroes, written by Mary Breu, author of Last Letters from Attu, the enthralling story of Etta Jones, an intrepid teacher and nurse from New Jersey who traveled to the Alaskan Territory as a pioneer. Etta Jones was incarcerated in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II.

Chalkboard Heroes: Review

by Mary Breu

Terry Lee Marzell, Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor. Tucson, Arizona: Wheatmark, 2015. vii + 243 pp. Preface, photographs, glossary, bibliography, index.

Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor is the author’s second book, a non-fiction compilation of innovative teachers who have impacted their students and our society; some names are familiar, others are not. Each profile has been thoroughly researched and includes vivid descriptions that exemplify qualities that make an excellent teacher. The reader can peek through a window and see the teachers’ early lives, watch him or her develop and see what inspired their passion for teaching. The teachers’ voices allow the reader to get a feel for the personalities and qualities of people who encouraged them to become teachers. The teachers in this book demonstrate the essence of what a teacher does; they find ways, sometimes against incredible odds, to reach his or her students and make learning more real as opposed to standing in front of the class and lecturing. Valuable backgrounds and historical events are included. The author’s writing style pulls the reader in by telling something striking about the teacher and that makes the reader eager to find out more.

Horace Mann’s niece, Olive Mann Isbell, was born in Ohio in 1824. Twenty-two years later, she and her husband found themselves at a Mission in California. The Mexican -American War was raging all around them, but Olive continued to teach her twenty students, using “a long pointed stick to draw diagrams on the dirt floor” and “charcoal from an extinguished fire to write the letters of the alphabet on the palms of the children’s hands. And she kept a long rifle by her side, just in case” (Page 2.) One hundred forty years later, another teacher “discovered that much information about the social history of the United States has been found in diaries, travel accounts and personal letters. Just as the pioneer travelers of the Conestoga wagon days kept personal journals, I, as a pioneer space traveler, would do the same.” (Page 187.) The teacher’s name was Christa McAuliffe. The author wrote, “Christa believed that such a journal, which would record space flight from the perspective from a non-astronaut, would demonstrate to students that even an ordinary person could contribute to history in very important ways” (Page 187).

Today, when teachers are in the throes of bureaucratic paperwork, subjected to administrators who make unrealistic demands, respond to parents who question a teacher’s seemingly unreasonable assignments and deal with students who, the teacher knows, come from incredibly difficult home environments, reading about these teachers’ lives will be an inspiration because, in the end, all a teacher wants to do is teach. The common thread woven into the fabric of this book is a quote from Lee Iacocca: “In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have” (Page 1.) Christa McAuliffe understood that message when she proclaimed, “I touch the future…I teach!” (Page 177.)

I recommend this book to teachers of all grade levels. Middle and high school students would also benefit from the author’s clear, concise and correct telling of historical events and people.

Read More by Mary Breu

To view Mary Breu's web page, simply click on Mary Breu.

To  find Mary Breu's book on amazon.com, click on Last Letters from Attu.

The Conversation about Using Blogs in the Classroom

Within my professional learning community, my colleagues and I have been having a lively discussion about the purpose and value of blogs. So I was looking over my blog here, which I inaugurated on November 18, 2012. In the little over two years since I first started my blog, I have published nearly 300 posts. To date, I have attracted over 24,889 page views. I've been told this is pretty impressive, so I thank all my readers! I love to write about great teachers, and I hope that my posts and books will inspire respect for educators, and also reinforce a passion for the profession from current practitioners.

Even though my favorite thing to write about is remarkable teachers, it seems that the posts that garner the most response are the ones that offer tips and hints about how teachers can build upon their own practice. So this post is an offering in that vein.

Almost everyone is already aware that the use of blogs for personal, professional, and educational purposes has exploded in recent years. In 2015, 6.7 million people published blogs on blogging sites, and 12 million people blogged via some sort of social network. Today, 31% more individuals are blogging than were publishing three years ago. It has been noted that approximately 70% of American students under the age of 18 are writing blogs. If you would like to read more statistics about blogs, click on this article: 10 Interesting Key Facts and Figures about Blogging.

As you can expect from teachers, most of the conversations I've had with my colleagues have revolved around how blogs can be used productively in the classroom. There are so many possibilities to use blogs as an effective instructional tool! Some of the purposes we discussed include providing opportunities for educators to personally reflect on teaching experiences, to provide tips and strategies to other teachers, to record lesson plans and other curricular materials, and to explore issues and topics important to the profession. You can use the platform to keep parents informed of your instructional program. You can create an online book club for your students, or post assignments, writing prompts, or online readings for students to react to. You could showcase your students' writing, art, and projects. You could build a class newsletter and record your students' activities, posting photographs and videos of them in action. Using blogs, students can express opinions about class readings or current events, complete class writing assignments, put together an online portfolio of their work, or showcase products of their project-based learning, all for a pre-determined audience: just the members of the class and their parents, groups of students in other schools, or even the world at large. This real-world application of the technology falls in line very nicely with Common Core State Standards---which is a genuine benefit. To read a first-hand account of a teacher successfully employing this strategy in her classroom, click: Blogging in the the 21st Century Classroom.

I've included here a ten-minute YouTube video to help you further explore the practice of classroom blogging. I selected this particular video because it was concise and relatively short, offering a brief overview of the history of blogs, the uses of blogs in general, how blogs can be used in the classroom, and examples of some blogs that are relevant to professional educators. I also liked it because it is a more polished and professional production than something created in an individual's bedroom.





Blogging---and other social networking tools---are becoming one of the most powerful tools a teacher can employ in their instructional program. But why is this the case? I can say from personal experience that part of the lure of blogging is the idea that people out there are interested in reading my thoughts and ideas. When I published my first blog post, I was excited by the idea that my online "voice" would be read by others, and that they would respond with comments of their own. I was pretty disappointed when, the first month or so, I had no readers at all, and zero responses. Writing is hard work, and blogging on a daily basis is an immense commitment! But I continued to plug away at it, and gradually my daily readership grew. It has come to the point now that I feel an obligation to my readers to publish at least once or twice a week. I can't let them down! Imagine how excited your students will be when they publish their classwork and projects online---they have a built-in audience ready and waiting: the other members of your class---and the feedback from their peers will quickly pile up. Furthermore, experts say that one of the best aspects of blogging is that the relative anonymity of online publishing gives a voice to the student who might not otherwise contribute to the academic conversation. How exciting would it be if your students came to feel motivated to write for their audiences daily or even weekly, just like I did?

Blogging is just one of the social media tools that can be used to enhance learning. Experts agree that the teacher who recognizes and employs blogging and other social networking strategies is tapping into extremely potent implements for learning. In the seven-minute video below, educator Don Olcott, Chief Executive of the Observatory of Borderless Higher Education in London, England, discusses the efficacy of social networking tools to facilitate learning in the classroom:





Finally, a really great resource to consult for more information about this topic is a nifty little book called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson (Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Publishing, 2010).

If you are not yet using blogs in your instructional program, I hope that now you will feel motivated and confident enough to give it a try!


Sources:

Anurag. "10 Interesting Key Facts and Figures About Blogging." Quickrpost. February 5, 2015.
http://www.quikrpost.com/4487/10-interesting-key-facts-and-figures-about-blogging-bloggers-should-know/

Keller, Lee, and Cavenaugh, Kim. "Blogs in Education." Palm Breeze Cafe. January 20, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7XiCg_wpzE

Lampinen, Michelle. "Blogging in the 21st-Century Classroom." Edutopia. April 8, 2013. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-in-21st-century-classroom-michelle-lampinen

Olcott, Don. "Facilitate Learning Between Students." Penn State World Campus. August 16, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO0FE4125ak&list=PL10135682177CBD2D&index=51

Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Publishing, 2010.

National School Counseling Week: Let's Celebrate!

This week, February 2-6, is National School Counseling Week 2015. The purpose of this celebration is to focus public attention on the unique contributions by professional school counselors within American school systems.

National School Counseling Week highlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping our students to achieve school success. Day in and day out, these dedicated professionals labor tirelessly to help ensure the academic success, personal achievement, and emotional well-being of our kids.

On the campus where I work, their commitment to the success of each student starts with their very first interaction with students through their eighth grade outreach programs, and continues with assisting the freshmen with their graduation requirements plans, one-on-one meetings with English-language learners, counseling students who are failing classes, helping students who are lacking credits with strategies for credit recovery, and making sure seniors are on track to graduate. In between all this heavy-duty work, counselors help students find scholarships to fund their post-graduation education programs, write letters of recommendation, judge senior projects, and attend IEP meetings. And as if all that wasn't enough, they also organize small group counseling sessions to help students deal with such issues as bullying, smoking-cessation, teen parenting, or bereavement. When the inevitable quarrels between students arise, they serve as competent conflict resolution facilitators, and they have even been known to mediate the occasional dispute between a student and a teacher. And then, just to top it all off, if---God forbid---some tragedy such as a fatal traffic accident or a suicide strikes, school counselors quickly mobilize into a highly-effective crisis management team.

Phenomenal, aren't they? Chalkboard champions, in the truest sense of the word.

Slam Poetry Artist and Teacher Taylor Mali

There are many talented educators who have earned accolades in fields other than education. This is true about Taylor McDowell Mali, a teacher who has also earned fame as a slam poet, humorist, and voice over artist.

Taylor was born on March 28, 1964. His father was H. Allen Mali, a manufacturer of pool table coverings, and his mother was Jane L. Mali, a recipient of an American Book Award. In 1983, Taylor graduated form the Collegiate School, a private boys' school. After his high school graduation, he enrolled in Bowdoin College, earning his bachelor's degree in English in 1987 and his master's degree in English and creative writing from Kansas State University in 1993.

Taylor Mali spent nine years teaching English, history, and math, including stints at Browning School, a boys' school on the Upper East Side of New York City, and Cape Cod Academy, a K-12 private school on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He now lectures and conducts workshops for teachers and students all over the world. In 2001, Taylor Mali used a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to develop the one-man show "Teacher! Teacher!" This show explores the combination of poetry, teaching, and math. He is a strong advocate for the teaching profession, and in 2000, he set out to create 1,000 new teachers through "poetry, persuasion, perseverance, or passion." He finally achieved that goal on April 1, 2012.

Taylor has earned numerous accolades as a slam poetry artist. A slam poetry contest is a competition at which poets read or recite original work. These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience. As a slam poetry performer, Taylor has been a member of seven National Poetry Slam teams, six of which appeared on the finals stage, and four of which won the competition.

Additionally, Taylor is the author of What Learning Leaves and the Last Time as We Are. He has recorded four CD's. He is also included in various anthologies, and is perhaps best known for the poem "What Teachers Make." The popular poem became the basis of a book of essays entitled What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World, published in 2012. He appeared in Taylor Mali & Friends Live at the Bowery Poetry Club and the documentaries "SlamNation" (1997) and "Slam Planet" (2006). He was also in the HBO production Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, which won a coveted Peabody Award in 2003.

Music Educator Joseph E. Maddy

One of the most talented teachers of music education in American history was the celebrated educator Joseph Edgar Maddy.

Joseph was born on October 14, 1891, in Wellington, Kansas, the second son of two teachers. Joseph never graduated from high school, but as a young man, he attended the Wichita College of Music in Wichita, Kansas, where he studied violin. Later he became a member of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. In 1918, he became the first music supervisor of instrumental music in America when he accepted the position in Rochester, New York.

After a short time in Rochester, Joseph was encouraged by Will Earhart to take a job at Morton High School in Richmond, Indiana, to revive the outstanding school and community music program Earhart had developed there some years earlier. Joseph remained in Richmond for four years. In 1924 Maddy was invited to Ann Arbor to become the supervisor of music in public schools and the chairman of the Music Department for the University of Michigan. There he developed one of the few conducting courses in the country, and he also conducted the Michigan All State High School Orchestra. While teaching in 1925, Maddy organized the first National High School Orchestra to play for the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC) in Detroit in 1926. In 1927, Joseph was invited to bring the National High School Orchestra of over 250 High School musicians from 39 states to the MSNC in Dallas that year.

While in Ann Arbor, Maddy also pursued other approaches to music education by developing teaching materials in collaboration with Thaddeus P. Giddings for a radio teaching program.The radio program taught band and orchestra instrumentation with instruction books distributed by NBC. By 1936 their radio program aired five times per week, and believed to have reached 225,000 student listeners. It was sustained until 1940, and employed professional musicians to help with technique demonstrations.

In 1928 Maddy formed the National High School Orchestra and Band Camp, incorporated as the National High School Orchestra Camp on July 6, 1927.The camp exists today in Interlochen, Michigan, as the Interlochen Center for the Arts and has generated several complementary entities including Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen College of the Creative Arts, and Interlochen Public Radio.Joseph also published and collaborated on a number of instructional materials and courses for elementary band and orchestra including the Universal Teacher, Tritone Folio, the Willis Graded School Orchestra and Band Series, and the Modern School Graded Orchestra Books.

He was a member of the Epsilon Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and a recipient of the Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award. He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity, and he received an honorary degree from Earlham College in 1965.

This pioneering music educator passed away on April 18, 1966, at the age of 74, in Travers City, Michigan.

New Book, Chalkboard Heroes, Has Been Published!

I am happy to announce that my second book, Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and their Deeds Valor, has just been released. This new volume presents inspirational life stories about some of America's most amazing teachers. These educators were not only talented teachers, but they were also pioneers, trailblazers, and social reformers influential in America's history.

I love to tell stories about outstanding teachers. There are so many phenomenal stories that could be told! I believe that teachers represent the best our country has to offer, and, as a group, they are among the most dedicated, hardworking, and talented people anyone can know. It fills me with joy to be able to share the stories of just a few of the amazing individuals who have made such significant contributions to the lives of so many. And it fills me with pride to know that, every day, talented educators all over the country are making significant contributions to the lives of their students.

You can order Chalkboard Heroes from amazon in print now. Simply click on this link be taken to the page where you can order. The e-book versions will be ready, I am told, in about three weeks. Enjoy!

Ohio Educator and Legislator Emma M. Cramer

Often talented educators make their mark in the political arena as well as in professional teachers circles. Such was the case of Emma M. Cramer, a public high school teacher who was also a member of the House of Representatives for her home state of Ohio.

Emma was born on June 21, 1859, the daughter of Albert C. and Louise (Crone) Cramer. Born and educated in Portsmouth, she later went on to teach at Portsmouth High School. She attended college during the summers, earning degrees from both the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago. She began her teacher at the age of 20, and her career spanned 54 years, until her retirement in 1933. Her students described her as thorough and exacting, but also patient, persevering, and sympathetic.

During her teaching career, Emma was also involved in many civic organizations. She was a member of the Portsmouth City Council (1912-1925), Chairperson of the Republican Women of Scioto County (1922-26), and member of the Portsmouth Board of Education (1934-37). After she was elected to the state House, she continued to teach while occupying her seat in the legislature. Her colleagues often said she was an individual of stalwart character and tireless in her efforts to serve others.

Emma donated her time and energy not only to the legislature and to education, but also to other organizations, including the Ohio League of Women Voters, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Portsmouth Public Library Board of Trustees, the Ohio Library, the National Municipal League, the State and National Education Associations, the Council of Republican Women of Ohio, the Women's City Club, and the Business and Professional Women's Club.

This remarkable educator passed away on June 15, 1952, at the age of 92.