Elementary school teacher and former New Jersey First Lady Jean Byrne

There are many examples of talented teachers who have also made a mark in the political world. Such is certainly the case with Jean Featherly Byrne, an elementary school teacher who also became the First Lady of New Jersey.

Jean was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 17, 1926. Her parents were George and Jane (Crysler) Featherly. She was raised in nearby West Orange. After she graduated from West Orange High School, Jean enrolled in Bucknell University, where she earned her bachelor's degree. Although she majored in Spanish, she garnered academic awards in English composition and literature. She later earned her master's degree in education from New York University.

Jean taught second grade at an elementary school in West Orange, New Jersey. She also taught in schools in Harlem and Manhattan. Jean married Brendan T. Byrne in 1953. In those days, women teachers were not allowed to work when they were in the family way, so when Jean became pregnant with her first child in 1954, she was forced to resign from her teaching position. Jean and her husband had a total of seven children together.

Jean became the First Lady of New Jersey when her former husband, Brendan Byrne, was elected governor in 1974. The couple served their state until 1982. During her tenure as First Lady, Jean concentrated her energy on issues related to education and health care. One of her daughters was born with Down's Syndrome, so Jean advocated tirelessly for research into the condition. She was a lifelong advocate of quality education and civil rights.

Jean and Brendan were divorced in 1993, and Jean settled in Princeton, New Jersey. She passed away from babesiosis, a tick-borne disease which affects the red blood cells, on August 9, 2015. She was 88 years old.

Teacher Eulalia Bourne: The Women's Libber from Arizona

Teacher Eulalia Bourne, whose career spanned more than four decades, taught elementary school in rural areas, mining camps, and Indian reservations throughout Arizona during some of our country's most challenging periods: World War I, the Depression, and World War II. This women's libber was ahead of her time, becoming one of the very few women in her day to own and run her own cattle ranch. Eulalia thought outside the box in many ways. Every year on the first day of school she would wear a new dress, usually blue to complement her eye color. Every day after that, she wore jeans, Western-style shirts, cowboy boots, and Stetson hats to class. She was once fired for dancing the one-step, a new jazz dance, at a birthday party some of her students attended, because the clerk of the board considered the dance indecent! She even learned to speak Spanish fluently and, when confronted with non-English-speaking students, taught her classes in Spanish, even though it was against the law to do so. But she is probably best known for producing a little classroom newspaper entitled Little Cowpunchers which featured student writings, drawings, and news stories about classroom events. Today, these little newspapers are recognized as important historical documents of Southern Arizona ranching communities from 1932 to 1943. Additionally, Eulalia published three critically-acclaimed books about her teaching and ranching experiences: Ranch Schoolteacher, Nine Months is a Year at Baboquivari School, and Woman in Levi's. These volumes, although now out of print, can sometimes be purchased at used book stores and sometimes can be found at online sites featuring royalty-free works. The read is well-worth the search, particularly for those interested in Arizona history. 

 

You can read about Eulalia's intriguing life in a book entitled Skirting Traditions, published by Arizona Press Women. You can also find a chapter about her in my book, Chalkboard Champions.

Nancie Atwell, the first recipient of the Global Teacher Prize

What honor could be more prestigious than being named a global teacher? Nancie Atwell, a teacher from Edgecomb, Maine, knows. This year, Nancie has been named by the Varkey Foundation as the very first recipient of the Global Teacher Prize, an honor which was been unofficially dubbed the Nobel Prize of teaching.

The Varkey Foundation searched all over the world for “one innovative and caring teacher who has made an inspirational impact on their students and their community.” They looked at thousands of possible winners, and whittled their list of finalists down to ten. When they looked closely at Nancie, they knew they had their winner.

Nancie was presented her award at a ceremony held last May in Dubai, where the Varkey Foundation is based. Among the dignitaries attending the ceremony were President Bill Clinton and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emerates. Speaking at the ceremony, President Clinton said, “I think the most important thing this prize has done is re-awaken the world’s appreciation of the importance of teachers.” Nancie said she was honored to accept the award. “I hope this will invite creative, smart young people to consider teaching as a career,” she expressed. “I hope to convey to young people considering teaching that it’s a privilege,” she continued.

An educator since 1973, Nancy founded the nonprofit Center for Teaching and Learning, a school in rural Maine, in 1990. At the facility, which features a library in every classroom, students read an average of forty books a year, far above the national average. They choose which books they read and then they write prolifically. Students get through dozens of books and write across all genres each year. Many of Nancie’s former students have gone on to become authors. The institution also serves as a demonstration school for developing and disseminating teaching methods. Nancy has donated the $1 million case award that comes with her prize to help pay for the upkeep and development of the school, and for scholarships.

In addition to her work at the Center, Nancie has authored nine books on teaching. Her volume In The Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning (1987) has sold more than half a million copies.

UNESCO's Celebration of World Teachers Day

Today is the sixteenth UNESCO celebration of World Teachers Day. The celebration is intended to spotlight the importance of the world's teachers, and bring awareness to all those students worldwide who are in need of teachers.

So, today, take the opportunity to sincerely thank a teacher, and tell them just how much of a positive influence they have had on your life, and how much you appreciate all they do to make the world a little bit better. It could be your teacher, your child's teacher, or a friend who is a teacher.

If you would like to know more about UNESCO's celebration of World Teachers Day, here is a link to an article: 2015 World Teachers Day.

Chalkboard Champion Leonard Covello: He Created the Ultimate Union Between School and Home

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 union 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: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America's Disenfranchised Students.

Chalkboard Champion Maritcha Remond Lyons: Educator, Abolitionist, and Humanitarian

American history abounds with stories about teachers known for heroic achievements. One such teacher is Maritcha Remond Lyons, an African American woman who served the New York City public school system for forty-eight years. She was also an accomplished musician, an avid writer, and a published author. 

Maritcha was born on May 23, 1848, in New York City, the third of five children born to parents Albro and Mary (Marshall) Lyons. She was raised in New York’s free black community, where her father operated a boarding house and outfitting store for black sailors on the docks of New York’s Lower East Side. Her parents emphasized the importance of making the best of oneself, and they also modeled the significance of helping others.

A sickly child, Maritcha was nevertheless dedicated to gaining an education. Maritcha once said she harbored a “love of study for study’s sake.” She was enrolled in Colored School Number 3 in Manhattan, which was governed by Charles Reason, a former teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.

Maritcha’s parents were abolitionists, and were both active in the Underground Railroad. Obviously, these activities were not without dangers. The family home came under attack several times during the New York City Draft Riots of July, 1863, when Maritcha was just a teenager. The family escaped to safety in Salem, Massachusetts, but after the danger passed, her parents insisted on sending their children to lie in Providence, Rhode Island. In Providence, Maritcha was refused enrollment in the local high school because she was African American. Because there was no school for black students, her parents sued the state of Rhode Island and won their case, helping to end segregation in that state. When she graduated, Maritcha was the first black student to graduate from Providence High School.

After her high school graduation, Maritcha returned to New York, where she enrolled in Brooklyn Institute to study music and languages, When she graduated in 1869, she accepted a teaching position at one of Brooklyn’s first schools for African American students, Colored School Number 1.

Maritcha’s worked first as an elementary school teacher, then as an assistant principal, and finally as a principal. During her nearly fifty-year career, she co-founded the White Rose Mission in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill District, which provided resources to migrants from the South and immigrants from the West Indies.

This remarkable chalkboard hero passed away at the age of eighty on January 28, 1929.

Elaine Goodale Eastman: The Massachusetts Teacher Who Advocated for Native American Children

Elaine Goodale Eastman, originally from Massachusetts, 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 sixty 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. As a result of this tragedy, more than two hundred men, women, and children from the Lakota tribe were killed, and another fifty-one were wounded. In addition, twenty-five government soldiers were also killed, most by "friendly fire," and another thirty-nine were wounded. 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: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America's Disenfranchised Students, both available on amazon.