Charles Westley Turnbull: The history teacher who became the governor of the US Virgin Islands

Many talented educators have also distinguished themselves as accomplished politicians. An example of this can be found in Dr. Charles Wesley Turnbull, the twenty-seventh governor of the US Virgin Islands.
Charles was born February 5, 1935, in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas Island. The city is the capital of the US Virgin Islands. His parents were Ruth Ann Eliza (Skelton) and John Wesley Turnbull, impoverished immigrants from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. As a child, Charles attended public schools, graduating from Charlotte Amalie High School in 1952.

As a young man, Charles earned both his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Hampton University, a traditionally African American institution of higher learning located in Hampton, Virginia. His education was funded by a Ford Foundation Scholarship. While at Hampton, Charles served as vice president of his freshman class and president of both his sophomore and senior classes. He was also selected as the chief justice of the student court. Charles earned a bachelor's degree in history with honors in 1958, and his master's degree in secondary education in 1959. In 1972 he earned a doctorate degree in educational administration from the University of Minnesota.

Charles began his career as an educator as a teacher at the elementary level, eventually becoming a history teacher at the secondary level. Eventually, he worked his way up to the position of principal of his alma mater, Charlotte Amalie High School. Later he became a professor at the University of the Virgin islands. In 1967, the gifted educator accepted a position as the Commissioner of the Territorial Department of Education, where he served from 1979 to 1987. During his years there, Charles was responsible for constructing new schools, eliminating double sessions, initiating vocational and technical programs, inaugurating alternative education programs, and encouraging the involvement of volunteers. He also established the Cultural Education Division to promote awareness of the history and culture of the Virgin Islands and the greater Caribbean region.

In 1998 Charles was elected the sixth governor of the US Virgin Islands. Prior to 1970, the governor was appointed by the US president. Once elected, Charles served two terms. During his tenure, he served as a member of the National Governors Association, the Southern Governors Association, and the Democratic Governors Association.

For his tireless work as an educator, Charles has been honored with numerous awards. Among these are the Leadership and Service in the Field of Education award in 1989; the Citation for Excellence in the Service of Humanity in 1992; the Turner Broadcasting System's Trumpet Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Service and Education in 2001; and the Humanist Award from the Virgin Islands Humanities Council in 2005.

Charles Wesley Turnbull: a true Chalkboard Champion.

Coach and Chalkboard Champion Herb Banet

When we think of chalkboard champions, let's not forget all of our nation's talented coaches. These dedicated professionals work many long hours with our young people, teaching them the value of self-discipline, healthy competition, fair play, and teamwork, and helping them to choose a healthy, active lifestyle. One such chalkboard champion in Herb Bane, a high school teacher, basketball coach, and guidance counselor from Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

Herb was born in 1913 in Fort Wayne. As a high school student, he was a gifted athlete. At 6'2" and 200 pounds, he earned All-City Honors in both football and basketball. After his graduation from Fort Wayne South High School in 1933, he attended Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana, where he played collegiate football. While at Manchester, Herb played All-Conference Football and All-State Football in 1934, 1935, and 1936. During the 1937 season, Herb played in the National Football League with the Green Bay Packers. He was also a war hero. When World War II broke out, Herb served his country in the U.S. Navy.

These experience served him well during his eighteen-year career as a coach at Central High School in Fort Wayne. While coaching there, his team made one trip to the Final Four in 1960, where they were defeated by just one point by East Chicago Washington. Later in Herb's career he served as a guidance counselor at Northrup High School. This talented educator retired in 1979. In recognition of his illustrious career as an athlete, he was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000.

Herb Banet passed away in 2003 at the age of 89 and is buried at Falls Memorial Gardens in Wabash, Indiana. It is certain that his efforts as a gifted teacher, coach, and counselor will always be well-remembered.

Terry Lee Marzell to appear at Perris local authors fair

Terry Lee Marzell will appear at a local authors event at the Ceasar E. Chavez Library in Perris, California, on Saturday, August 15, 2015, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The event will feature raffles, a children’s storytime and craft, face painting, and refreshments. Terry, who will be one of two featured speakers, will talk about her two published works, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students (Tucson: Wheatmark 2012) and Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teaches and Their Deeds of Valor (Tucson: Wheatmark 2015). This event is open to the public and all are invited to attend. The Perris library is located at 163 E. San Jacinto, Perris, California 92570.

Leonard Covello: The Talented Educator of Italian Immigrants

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.

Should you read Harper Lee's new novel?

Like almost every other Language Arts teacher in America, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Harper Lee's new novel, a freshly-discovered sequel to her Pulitzer-prize winning To Kill a Mockingbird. The release of the new book, Go Set a Watchman, comes amid controversy about the portrayal of the character Atticus Finch, long revered as a noble and humane man who, in his quiet and unassuming way, fights for justice for the African American community in Jim Crow South, despite the perils of such a stance. Critics of the new book assert that Atticus is not so noble in Lee's second book.

Here's what I think. To Kill a Mockingbird fits the definition of a bildungsroman; that is, a novel that describes and interprets the process of growing up as experienced by the main character, who is almost always a child. In Mockingbird, the child is six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, known affectionately as Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch. Now, most people would concede that one of the most universal experiences when growing up is recognizing that parents are not perfect. Scout, who clearly and unabashedly idolizes her father, is not confronted with this fact of life until, in Watchman, she returns to her home town on vacation as a twenty-six-year-old New York City dweller. The novel is not really about how Atticus changes; it's about how Jean Louise changes. How she continues the process of growing up. In this way, the novel is an unusual kind of bildingsroman in that it describes and interprets the process of growing up as experienced by an adult character.

This new book is not likely to win the author another Pulitzer prize, but it does masterfully turn characters that might, upon close examination, appear to be somewhat flat into more round characters. By that I mean less one-dimensional and more multi-dimensional. More human. And Lee does make an attempt to explain the Southern perspective regarding the Civil War, and although I can't say I understood that explanation very well, I can say that the discussion is very timely when considering the recent debates over what it really means to fly a Confederate flag over government buildings in the Deep South. And, considering the revelations about Atticus presented in this new book, the novel adds to the ongoing conversation about the blight of racism, in both overt and subtle forms.

Read Go Set a Watchman. You'll find much to think about. After all, isn't that one of the primary functions of literature?

North Dakota's Merle Boucher: Educator, Rancher, and Politician

There are many gifted teachers who have also established themselves as hardworking politicians. Such is the case with Merle Boucher, a high school educator who also served in the House of Representatives for North Dakota.

Merle was born July 19, 1946, in Rolette County, North Dakota. After his high school graduation, he earned an AA from North Dakota University, attended Bottineau in 1966, and the Mayville State University, where he graduated with his bachelor's degree and a teaching certificate in 1970. Merle taught high school in Rolette for twenty years before he retired in 1990.

Merle taught business education and social studies, but he was as much a social worker as a teacher, says Joanne Musolf, the former school secretary who later worked as Merle's campaign treasurer.  According to his students, "Mr. Bushy" was an unconventional instructor who didn't always follow the textbook. One former student remembers doing some karate moves with Merle during a "bull session" before class one day. The student kicked Merle in the finger. The teacher's knuckle was dislocated, and to this day, he has trouble getting his wedding ring off. During his long career as an educator, he also served as the coach for the American Legion baseball team.

In his retirement years, Merle became a rancher, spending a great deal of his time with his cattle herds outside of town. He has one herd at his boyhood home, the family homestead. He's a sixth generation rancher, and even though his boyhood home burned to the ground a few years ago, he continues to keep cattle on the ranch while he lives in a small, modest ranch home in town.

In 1991, Merle was elected as a Democrat to the North Dakota House of Representatives, where he served until 2011. He served as Minority Leader from 1996 to 2011. During his political career, he served as a member of the Children's Services Coordinating Committee, the North Dakota Children's Caucus, and the Rolette Jobs Authority. He is a member of the National Education Association, the North Dakota Education Association, the North Dakota Farmers Union, and the North Dakota Mental Health Association.

The Strategies Annie Sullivan Used to Teach Helen Keller

Almost everyone has heard of Anne Sullivan Macy, the remarkable teacher who worked with Helen Keller, an extremely intelligent blind and deaf child from Tuscumbia, Alabama. The relationship between the teacher and the student is explored in the play The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, an iconic piece of American literature that is frequently taught in public schools. This award-winning play depicts the exact moment at which, due to Anne's expert instructional efforts, Helen was able to grasp the concept of language. This knowledge unlocked a world of isolation for the little girl, allowing her to connect with her fellow human beings, and making it possible for her to earn a university degree at a time when educating women was rare. The scene is sweet. But what strategies, exactly, did the miracle-working teacher use in order to achieve this breakthrough? After extensive reading on the subject, I think I may be able to identify a few of them.

First of all, Anne read every bit of published material available in her day about the education of handicapped students. Knowledge of pedagogy is the first step to effective practice. In addition to this, Anne had the "advantage" of personal experience, as she herself had wrestled with severe vision impairment as a result of trachoma. I'm sure at one time or another, we've all met an educator who is particularly effective at working with students who are facing the same challenges the teacher himself faced as a youngster.

Second, Anne was a keen observer, and she made it a point to watch the normal processes of language acquisition. She then replicated those processes as best she could to fit the particular circumstances and needs of her student. Today, we would probably call this strategy recognizing brain-based learning, and coordinating teaching strategies to fit the way the brain naturally learns.

Also, experts generally agree that much of Anne's success in teaching Helen language was attributed to the fact that the teacher always communicated to her student with complete sentences. Concrete nouns such as water or spoon, verbs such was pump or run, or adjectives such as hot or smooth,  may be easy to convey. But abstract ideas such as beauty or truth, or certain parts of speech such as pronouns and some prepositions are much more difficult to impart to an individual unable to see or hear.

Fourth, Anne was especially adept at incorporating experiential learning into her lesson plans. The effectiveness of "learning by doing" has been well documented, but in a day and age when most instruction consisted of rote memorization without necessarily comprehending, Anne's insistence on teaching through constructed experience was truly innovative. Wading through the creek water, climbing the tree, holding the chick as it hatched from the egg---experiences like these were the staples of Anne's instructional program.

To learn more about Anne Sullivan Macy, I have included an abbreviated but concise biography of this amazing teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Teachers who Educated America's Disenfranchised Students, which can also be found at amazon.com at the following link: Chalkboard Champions.