Author Archives: Terry Lee Marzell

About Terry Lee Marzell

Terry Lee Marzell holds a bachelor's degree in English from Cal State Fullerton and a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Cal State San Bernardino. She also holds a certificate for Interior Design Level 1 from Mt. San Antonio College. She has been an educator in the Corona Norco Unified School District for more than 30 years.

Arts educator Elma Ina Lewis earned many prestigious honors

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Arts educator Elma Ina Lewis received a Presidential Medal for the Arts by Pres. Ronald Regan in 1983. Photo Credit: The National Alliance of Black School Educators

Many talented educators have used their considerable expertise to enrich others in their community. One of these was Elma Ina Lewis, an American arts educator who was so successful at promoting the arts that she received a Presidential Medal for the Arts by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

Elma was born on Sept. 15, 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of immigrants who came to the United States from Barbados in the early 20th century. As a young woman, Elma worked her way through college by acting in local theatre productions. In 1943, she graduated from Emerson College, and in 1944, she earned her Master’s degree from the Boston University School of Education.

To share her love of the theater, Elma founded both The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1950. Her school, which emphasized music and dance, was attended by many students who found work in Broadway musicals and who built professional careers in the theater. Among them were Kenneth Scott who performed in The Wiz on Broadway, and Leslie Barrow who built a distinguished career dancing and teaching dance in Germany. Later, Elma founded the National Center of Afro-American Artists which served as an umbrella organization for the performing arts school, local arts groups, and a museum. She also developed the Technical Theatre Program at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute. Through this program, 750 inmates at the Norfolk Prison staged performances and learned skills such as musical composition. In 1972 the book Who Took the Weight? Black Voices from Norfolk Prison included work by ten inmates who were writers and artists. Elma wrote the forward for the volume.

For her work in fostering the arts, Elma received the Commonwealth Award, Massachusetts’ highest award in the arts, and nearly 30 honorary doctorates from universities, including both Harvard and Brown. In Oct. 2003, the National Visionary Leadership Project at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named Elma a Visionary Elder. Musician Ray Charles and historian John Hope Franklin were similarly honored the same night. Also, Elma was one of the first recipients of a MacArthur Fellows Grant in 1981. In 1983, she garnered a Presidential Medal for the Arts from President Ronald Reagan.

Sadly, this amazing Chalkboard Champion passed away from complications from diabetes on Jan. 1, 2004, in Boston. She was 82 years old.

Aimee Couto recognized as Rhode Island’s 2024 Teacher of the Year

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Rhode Island elementary school teacher  Aimee Couto has been named her state’s 2024 Teacher of the Year. Photo Credit: University of Rhode Island

It is always my pleasure to shine a spotlight on exceptional educators who have earned recognition for their work with young people. One of these is Aimee Couto, an elementary school teacher from Rhode Island. She has been named her state’s 2024 Teacher of the Year.

Aimée teaches first grade at Emma G. Whiteknact School located in East Providence, Rhode Island. She has been teaching there for the past 13 years. In her classroom, she is a strong advocate for project-based learning and the development of competent reading practices.

In addition to her work with first graders, the honored educator serves as a teacher leader on her campus and within her district. She helps guide several programs centered around positive social and emotional development at Whiteknact, she serves on the school improvement team, and she is her district’s facilitator for the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) program.

Aimee was raised in a military family, which means that as a child she frequently moved all over the United States. She has lived in the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, to name just a few. As a youngster, Aimee was considered a struggling reader. “Because we moved every two or three years, I always struggled with reading,” Aimee confesses. “As I have studied and taken many courses about the science of reading, I have come to realize that my teachers didn’t have the knowledge to help me progress, especially when it came to those frequent family moves. It’s why it’s so important that we come up with a national right-to-read act so we are all on the same page,” she declares. Today, Aimee has developed a classroom curriculum that fosters strong reading skills for her young students.

Aimee earned her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Rhode Island in 1996, and a second Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Rhode Island College.

To read more about Aimee Couto, click on this link to an article about her published by the University of Rhode Island.

Louisa Alexander: One of the first Black women to attend Oberlin College

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Louisa Lydia Alexander

Tombstone of Louisa Lydia Alexander.

This year’s celebration of Black History Month gives us the opportunity to recognize African American individuals that may otherwise go unrecognized. Our country’s history is full of stories of amazing African American pioneer educators. One of these is Louisa Lydia Alexander, an educator from the South who was one of the first Black women to attend Oberlin College.

Louisa was born at Mays Lick, Kentucky, on November 2, 1836. She was one of five daughters born to Henry and Lucy Alexander. Her father had been born a slave, but had been able to purchase his freedom when he was 21 years old. Once Henry was a free man, he became a merchant. Lucy and Henry worked tirelessly to earn money to send their daughters to school.

In 1950, Louisa was admitted to Oberlin College located in Oberlin, Ohio. Oberlin was the first American institution of higher learning to admit women students, and one of the first i the country to admit Black students. After studying for six years, Louisa completed the requirements for the Ladies Teaching course. She had earned her degree.

Following her college graduation, Louisa launched a lengthy career as an educator, teaching in numerous towns in the South, including Charleston, South Carolina; Marietta, Georgia; Henderson, Kentucky; Cumberland, Mississippi; Red Banks, Mississippi; Mays Lick, Kentucky; St. Mark, Alabama; and Giles Plantation, Mississippi.

This amazing pioneer educator passed away in Washington, DC, on August 18, 1911, at the age of 74. She is interred in Westwood Cemetery in Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio.

Teacher and pioneer Eliza Mott founded first school in Carson Valley, Nevada

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Teacher and pioneer Eliza Mott is credited with founding the first school in Carson Valley, Nevada. Photo credit: Cowgirl Magazine.

There are many amazing pioneer teachers who brought education and culture to the Western frontier. One of the most amazing was Eliza Mott, a remarkable educator who is credited with founding the first school in Carson Valley, Nevada.

In 1852, this enterprising pioneer wife and mother set up her school in her farmhouse kitchen. Her students sat on bare logs around a crude, wooden table. Armed with a couple of McGuffey Readers, a speller, and an arithmetic book, Eliza welcomed boys and girls dressed in plaid shirts or gingham dresses and home-knit stockings. Some were barefoot and some were wearing rough shoes with hard leather soles. The students in Eliza’ s class ranged in age from five to eleven years in age. Some of her pupils were her own children, and some were her nieces and nephews. 

Eliza was born on January 13, 1829, in Toronto, Canada. Her family immigrated to Lee County, Iowa, in 1842, and it was there that young Eliza developed her skills as a teacher. She excelled at academic subjects and vowed to make great strides in the field of education.

At the age of 22, she met and fell in love with Israel Mott, and on April 10, 1850, the pair were married. As soon as they were married, Israel and Eliza decided to go West. The fledgling pioneers set out in a Conestoga wagon pulled by two sturdy oxen. In early 1851 they landed in Salt Lake City, where they joined a Mormon wagon train and headed for California, one of a party of thirty families led by the famous frontiersman Kit Carson. When the caravan stopped to rest at Mormon Station in northern Nevada in July, 1851, Israel decided he liked the area so much he wanted to stay there. The couple homesteaded a 2,100-acre section of land along the Carson River route, and on this homestead Eliza established her school.

As more pioneer travelers established their farms in the area, the name of Mottsville was given to the settlement. It quickly became apparent that a school was needed. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Eliza still had to run the farm. On an average day, she would rise before dawn to care for her children, milk the cows, cook breakfast for her family and hired hands, prepare lunches for her students, and then complete her lesson plans. By fall, 1855, the Mottsville School had officially outgrown Eliza’s kitchen, and by the next year a schoolhouse was built in town. A schoolmaster was hired from the East, and Eliza resigned as the teacher to care for her family full-time.

This Chalkboard Champion will always be remembered fondly as the founder of the first school in Carson Valley, Nevada. You can read more about her in this story by Chris Enss printed online in Cowgirl Magazine.