African American teacher, poet, and biographer Henrietta Cordelia Ray became known for her sonnets and her ode to Abraham Lincoln.

Many excellent educators have also earned fame for their endeavors outside of the classroom. One of these was Henrietta Cordelia Ray, an African American teacher who is best known for composing a poem about Abraham Lincoln that is associated with the Freedmen’s Memorial located in Washington, DC.

Henrietta was born on Aug. 30, 1852, in New York City. Her father was Charles Bennett Ray, a blacksmith, abolitionist, and clergyman.

As a young woman, Henrietta earned her degree in pedagogy from the University of the City of New York in 1891. She also studied French, German, Greek, and Latin at the Sauvener School of Languages. Then she launched her career as a public school teacher in New York City schools. During this period, Henrietta also became active in community-building and political activism.

Henrietta gave up her position as an educator to pursue a career as a writer. One her pieces, an eight-line ode to Abraham Lincoln, was read at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Memorial in Washington, DC, in April, 1876. At this unveiling ceremony, the prominent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass served as the keynote speaker. In 1887, Henrietta co-authored a biography of her father with her sister, Florence. The book was entitled “Sketch of the Life of Rev. Charles B. Ray.” Henrietta also published a collection of sonnets in 1893 and a second book of poetry in 1910.  Selections from the 1910 volume were widely included in anthologies published in the early 20th century. Frequently, the subjects of her verse were nature, piety, and idealism.

In her retirement years, Henrietta returned to her original vocation of teaching. She tutored students and instructed English classes for teachers. In addition, she organized and participated in regional and national conferences for African American teachers.

Sadly, Henrietta passed away on Jan. 5, 1916. She was 63 years old.

Ellen Gray Massey, English teacher and prolific author of juvenile fiction, expressed her profound love of the Ozarks in her classroom and in her novels. Photo Credit: ellengraymassey.com

Many talented authors have also worked as dedicated educators. Ellen Gray Massey, a high school English teacher from Missouri, is one of these. She has published numerous award-winning novels and publications with settings in her beloved Ozarks.

Ellen was born on Nov. 14, 1921, in Nevada, Missouri, although she was raised in Washington DC. As a youngster, she spent her summers at the family farm, Wayside, near her birth town of Nevada. While there, she fell in love with the Ozarks, a lifelong appreciation which was reflected in her later writings.

After she graduated from high school, Ellen earned her Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Maryland. After she married Lane Massey in the 1940s, the couple settled on a farm in Laclede County and started their family. Unfortunately, Lane died while he was still a young man. After his passing, Ellen and her three children ran the farm by themselves.

When Ellen decided she was ready to go into the classroom, she accepted a position as an English teacher at Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Missouri. For ten of the years she taught there, Ellen led her sophomores, juniors, and seniors into the writing and publishing of their own periodical, Bittersweet Magazine. Through this project, her students interviewed older residents around the Ozarks in order to preserve in writing and photographs the history and stories that were dying off with their generation. “She sent those kids out into the boonies interviewing old time Ozarkians about how rough it was, how they made do with what they had, how they embraced the culture. It was wonderful,” remembered friend and fellow author Veda Jones.

After retiring from Lebanon High, Ellen continued to share her vast knowledge of the writing process and her love of the Ozarks at Drury University, where she taught graduate education courses.

Over the course of her lengthy career as an author, Ellen earned numerous accolades for her writing. She won 15 First Place awards from The Missouri Writers Guild and was awarded their annual Best Book Award five times. She also earned three finalist awards from the Western Writers of America. In 2014, she garnered the Western Spur Award in the Juvenile Fiction category for her novel Papa’s Gold. In addition, in 1995, she was one of the charter inductees into the first Writers Hall of Fame of America.

Sadly, Ellen Gray Massey passed away on July 13, 2014, in Lebanon, Missouri, at the age of 92. To learn more about this Chalkboard Champion, visit her website at ellengraymassey.com.

Public school science and mathematics teacher Joseph Acaba was also a NASA astronaut. Photo credit: NASA

As an astronaut, Joseph Acaba has logged a total of 306 days in space on three flights, first as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Discovery, and twice aboard the International Space Station. But did you know that this accomplished individual was once a public school science and mathematics teacher?

Before his selection by NASA in 2004 as one of three “educator astronauts,” an initiative intended to build upon the legacy of Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe’s Teacher in Space program, he spent his first year, 1999-2000, as a full-time teacher at Melbourne High School in Florida. There he taught freshman science before moving on to teach math and science in Dunnellon Middle School in Florida, where he remained for four years.

And that is not all of this Chalkboard Champion’s impressive employment history. Joe was a member of the United States Marine Corps Reserves. He  also worked as a hydro-geologist in Los Angeles, California, primarily on Superfund sites. And he spent two years in the United States Peace Corps as an Environmental Education Awareness Promoter in the Dominican Republic. In addition, he worked for a time as the manager of the Caribbean Marine Research Center at Lee Stocking Island in the Exumas, Bahamas.

Joe once said that, as an educator astronaut of Hispanic heritage, he hoped to reach out to minority students. On March 18, 2008, he traveled to Puerto Rico, where he was honored by the island’s senate. During his visit, Joe met with school children at the capitol and at Science Park located in Bayamon. Science Park boasts a planetarium and several surplus NASA rockets among its exhibits. Joe made a second trip to Puerto Rico on June 1, 2009. On that trip he spent seven days on the island and came into contact with over 10,000 citizens, most of them school children.

Educator Astronaut Barbara Morgan of Montana served as the alternate to the first Teacher in Space. Photo credit: NASA.

Educator Barbara Morgan is probably best-known for being named as Christa McAuliffe’s alternate for the Teacher in Space Program in 1985. Following Christa’s untimely death in the space shuttle Challenger explosion, Barbara continued her training as an astronaut. She became a mission specialist, becoming a full-time astronaut in 1998, and flew into space in 2007, completing an assignment aboard the International Space Station.

Barbara was born in Fresno, California, on Nov. 28, 1951. After her graduation from Herbert Hoover High School in 1969, she enrolled at Sanford University. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology there in 1973. She earned her teaching credential in 1974 from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California.

Once she completed her education, Barbara began her career in education as a remedial reading and math teacher at Arlee Elementary School located on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arlee, Montana. From 1978 to 1979, Barbara taught science and English to third graders at the Colegio americano de Quito located in Quito, Ecuador. She has also been a teacher of second, third, and fourth graders at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, Idaho. Her career there spanned from 1979 to 1998.

After working extensively with NASA, Barbara accepted a teaching position at Boise State University in 2008. Later that year, she took a full-time position as a Distinguished Educator in Residence. There she represented the university in policy development, advocacy and fund-raising in science, technology, engineering and math.

On July 4, 2008, Barbara was honored with the “Friend of Education” award from the National Education Association. The following month, an elementary school named for the Chalkboard Champion was inaugurated in McCall, Idaho. The same year, she garnered the Women in Space Science Award from the Adler Planetarium.