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.

Chalkboard Champion Gwynneth Hardesty Coogan Is Also An Olympic Competitor

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Many talented educators distinguish themselves in fields other than education, and a perfect example of this is Gwynneth Hardesty Coogan, a talented educator who also happens to be an Olympic athlete.

Gwynneth was born on August 21, 1965, in Trenton, New Jersey. As a youngster, Gwynneth attended Phillips Exeter Academy for two years, where she graduated in 1983. There she played both field hockey and squash. After her graduation from high school, she enrolled in Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1987, and her doctorate in math from the University of Colorado in 1999, working primarily in number theory. She did post-doctorate work with at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Gwynneth’s first teaching experience was at Hood College, but she  currently teaches math at Phillips Exeter Academy. At Phillips Exeter, Gwynneth is the director of the Exeter Mathematics Institute, and serves as the head coach of the girls varsity cross country team, in addition to her roles as dormitory adviser and mathematics instructor. She was the first Smith Family Instructor of Mathematics from 2007 to 2013, and she received a Brown Award for her teaching in 2011.

During her years at Smith, Gwynneth took up running, and won the NCAA Division III title in the 3,000 meters two times. She qualified for the 1992 Summer Olympics held in Barcelona, Spain, where she competed in the 10,000 meter race.Four years later, she was an alternate for the women’s marathon for the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Georgia.

Drag-Racing Champion Al Young and Chalkboard Champion Al Young: They Are One and the Same

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$RZLVHDHSo many chalkboard champions have earned recognition in fields other than education, and Al Young is a great example of this. Al taught high school in Seattle, Washington, for thirty-seven years, but he is also famous as a former world champion drag racer.

Alfred John Young, a Chinese American, was born in 1946 in Whittier, California. His father was a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and later a businessman; his mother was an artist and art collector. Al and his two siblings were raised in San Francisco, where Al graduated from George Washington High School. After his high school graduation, he enrolled at the University of Washington where he majored in English literature. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1968 and his master’s degree in 1972.

After his college graduation, Al served for many years as a teacher, tutor, counselor, and advocate for the Upward Bound program. He also founded one of Seattle’s first alternative schools, the Summit K-12 School, in 1972. In the thirty-seven years that this gifted teacher worked in Seattle public schools, Al instructed vocational courses such auto shop and physical education, electives such as film study and Chinese cooking, and rigorous academic courses such as history, AP American government, and AP comparative government and politics. He has also served as the adviser to school teams that participated in the Chrysler Trouble Shooting contests, YMCA Mock trial competitions, Junior State of America conventions, and he has led high school groups to the South Pacific and Washington D. C. for close-up learning. During his teaching career, this remarkable educator also coached volleyball, softball, and basketball.

In the world of drag racing, Al competed in Pro Bracket racing. He has won the American Hot Rod Association World Championship, and between the years of 1976 and 1996, he twice won major drag racing events, and three times was declared the winner of Bremerton Raceway’s Day Fire Nationals. In 1988, Al was inducted into the Firebird Raceway Bracketeer All-Stars in Boise, Idaho. Al has also been involved with the preparation of classic high performance race cars.

Al Young has been honored as one of Seattle Public Schools’ “Heroes in the Classroom” by such entities as Vulcan, Inc., Russell Investments, and the Seattle Seahawks organization.  In 2008, this accomplished chalkboard champion retired from the teaching profession. His wife, Vicki Johnson Young, is also a retired school teacher, having taught in the Seattle public school system for twenty-eight years. As retirees, Al and Vicki have driven throughout the United States and Canada in their 1973 Plymouth Roadrunner Muscle car. Al has also practiced martial arts and actively served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle and worked for the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Physical Education Teacher Wesley Darcel Walker Played NFL Football

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$RILVQ8RMany times talented teachers earn recognition for themselves in fields other than education. This is certainly the case for elementary school physical education teacher Wesley Darcel Walker. This chalkboard champion was once a player for the in the National Football League.

Wesley was born in 1955 in San Bernardino, California. He graduated from Carson High School in Carson, California, where he played football for his high school, setting many school records for receiving and returns. Following his high school graduation, Wesley attended the University of California, where he also distinguished himself as a gifted football player, having been named as an All-American.

After his college years, Wesley became a player for the New York Jets. As an NFL wide receiver, Wesley was known for his great speed, averaging over twenty yards per reception over the many seasons he played. He led the league in receiving yards in 1978, and that year was named his team’s Most Valuable Player. He was elected to the Pro Bowl twice: in 19878 and 1982. At the time of his retirement from the game, Wesley held the all-time record of second in receiving yards for the Jets. And he did all this despite a handicap: he’s legally blind in one eye.

Wesley is now employed as a physical education teacher at Park View Elementary School in Kings Park, Long Island, New York, and occasionally works on the side as a sports radio show commentator.

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George Rajna: The Chalkboard Champion Who Promotes Multi-Cultural Awareness

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GeorgeRajna[1]Many hardworking educators give unselfishly to causes near and dear to their hearts, and chalkboard champion George Kenneth Rajna is a fine example of this. George is an elementary school teacher, bilingual speech and language pathologist, Peace Corps volunteer, musician, and travel writer who has traveled to over one hundred countries across six continents around the world. He has worked tireless throughout his professional career to promote multi-cultural awareness.

George was born in Santa Monica, California. He graduated from the American University in Washington, DC, with an MBA in International Marketing. He has also attended California State University, Northridge, where he earned his master’s degree in science with an emphasis in communicative disorders.

From 1995 to 1999, George was employed as an elementary schoolteacher in both the Inglewood and Los Angeles Unified School Districts. George has also donated his teaching talents as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Paraguay, where he supported a government educational reform program used by teachers to engage students with didactic materials, hands-on activities, and multi-modal instruction. During his Peace Corps experience, George promoted programs improving dental hygiene in the local community, and he also facilitated workshops for teachers to assist them in creating and utilizing instructional materials for their classrooms.

After his return from Paraguay, George accepted a position as a speech and language pathologist in the Lennox School District in Lennox, California. He was employed there for six years, working with students who suffered from varying degrees of autism and children who exhibited articulation, language, and fluency delays. During his tenure in Lennox, George also mentored new clinicians on how to effectively treat children with speech and language disorders.

George met his future wife, science teacher Lisa Niver, online in 2007, and the following year the couple went on sabbatical together, travelling all over Southeast Asia. Their 2013 book Traveling in Sin describes their unique experiences on this trip, and how their sabbatical fostered the growth of their relationship. Together, George and Lisa founded an award-winning web site, We Said Go Travel, a global community of over one hundred writers who have publicly shared meaningful stories related to travel and world culture. George has also published travel articles in the Huffington Post, Jewish Journal, the Himalayan Times, Technorati, and The Clymb. In addition, George and Lisa are sought-after public speakers.

Here is a link to George and Lisa Rajna’s web site:We Said Go Travel.

Here is a link to George and Lisa Rajna’s book: Traveling in Sin.

Creating a Memory Book for Your Class

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TeacherAppleTN1[1]At my school, every teacher on staff has a Homeroom class. Our school is built for 4,000 students, and the concern is that with a student population that large, a kid could get lost in the shuffle. In Homeroom, the teacher strives to connect with each individual student, fosters team-building among the students in the group, and nurtures those relationships from the first day of their freshman year until the day they graduate. Today, I am going to share with you a strategy I use with my own Homeroom class. It’s a scrapbooking idea, and if you like it, you can adapt it to fit your own class needs, whatever they may be.

For this memory book, you will need a photo album or a large three-ring binder, 8 1/2″ by 11″ scrapbook pages, some page protectors, and some colored papers. I recommend you use acid-free pages and papers available at your local Michael’s or scrapbooking store. You could also invest in at least one acid-free journaling pen. If you’re into decorating stickers and such, you can buy some ready-made, but personally I prefer a rather simpler-looking page.

At the beginning of each year I ask a colleague to take a photograph of me and my class, and then I print a copy of the roster from the attendance program. These items go into the class memory book. Throughout the year, I add photos of students engaged in our weekly Homeroom activities. If the lesson calls for a written response, I collect a few representative examples and place them in the scrapbook, too. Also, if attend their extra-curricular activities, I take pictures and include those, too. I try to make sure that there is a visual record of some kind of each and every student in the group. At least once a year, I invite the students to create their own personal page to add to the scrapbook.

Since we have the same Homeroom group for all four years they attend high school, I am able to add to the scrapbook every year until their graduation. The memory book becomes a sort of yearbook of just this one class, and it shows how they have physically and socially grown over their high school years. At the end of their senior year, I offer to make color photocopies of the pages in the book and then I have the pages spiral bound. I only ask that they pay for the printing and binding costs, which is approximately $10 per copy. After the copies are made, I place the names of every student in the class in a bowl, draw out one name, and give the original scrapbook to the winner. Or you could keep the original as a memento for yourself, if you would like. By the time they graduate, you’ve probably bonded pretty closely with the kids and would like to keep the memory book to remember them by. Or you can use it as an example for the next group.

I like to put the memory book on display during Open House and Back-to-School Night. Parents love to thumb through the pages and look at the photos and writings of their own kids. Additionally, this scrapbook was very useful when we were going through the accreditation process. It was a visual record of the kinds of things we are doing in Homeroom, and it substantiated our claims that in Homeroom we are forming important relationships with our students.

I have gotten a lot of positive feedback to the scrapbook idea throughout the years. Feel free to create a scrapbook for your own class. Your students will love it!