There are many outstanding educators who have earned recognition for their work with young people in our nation’s pubic schools. One of these is Andie Gudbegsson Redemann, a middle school Language Arts and English as a Second Language teacher and track coach in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has been named the Pepsi Teacher of the Month in April, 2026. View the YouTube video below to learn more about Andie.
Many talented educators also work to improve the lives of the people of their city through community activism. Leona Washington of El Paso, Texas, was one such educator. Photo credit: El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs
Many talented educators also work to improve the lives of the people of their city through community activism. Leona Washington of El Paso, Texas, was one such educator.
Leona was born in 1928 in El Paso. As a young woman, she attended Prairie View A&M University. There she earned both her Bachelor’s and her Master’s degrees. Once she earned her degrees, Leona taught for two years in Las Cruces schools. Later, Leona became a teacher in Douglass School, a segregated school in the El Paso Independent School District. Her career there spanned 39 years.
In addition to her classroom duties, Leona founded the McCall Neighborhood Center in El Paso. There she worked as the first Executive Director of the facility, which served both the African American and Mexican American communities in the city. In addition, she was a co-founder and principal organizer of the annual Miss Black El Paso Southwest Scholarship Pageant. She also served as President, Vice-President, and Treasurer of the Phillis Wheatley Chapter of El Paso, an organization that provided a food bank for needy families and the elderly. She was also a member of the NAACP, the El Paso Community Foundation Advisory Board, the Arts and Resources Board of El Paso, and the Planned Parenthood Board of El Paso.
As if all this were not enough, Leona accepted the responsibilities of publishing The Good Neighbor Interpreter, a newspaper that provided news about the African American community to the residents of El Paso. In addition, she composed the song “The City of El Paso,” which was adopted as the city’s official song in the 1980’s.
For her many works of community activism, Leona earned many accolades. She was inducted into the El Paso County Democratic Hall of Fame in 1984, and in 1991, she was inducted into the El Paso Women’s Hall of Fame. She was given the city of El Paso’s Conquistador Award in 2000. She also received Woman of the Year Award in 2002 and the Myrna J. Deckert Lifetime Achievement Award by the YWCA in 2007, the last honor posthumously.
Leona passed away on August 5, 2007. To learn more about this amazing Chalkboard Champion, see this article about her published in the Texas State Historical Association.
For the African American community, June 19 marks the annual observance of an important holiday: Juneteenth. Many teachers are aware of the significance of this event, and, if school for them is still in session, they may be planning an observance of the occasion with their students.
Juneteenth marks the 1865 arrival of Federal troops under the command of US General Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas. Their military mission was to take control of the state following the Civil War, and to ensure that all enslaved people living there had been freed. Until that day, 250,000 enslaved people in Texas were unaware that slavery had been declared officially ended. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The year following Granger’s arrival, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of “Jubilee Day” on June 19. In the decades since, Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services, and other holiday activities. As Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country, the tradition of celebrating Juneteenth spread.
Juneteenth is considered the longest-running African American holiday in US history. In 1979, Texas became the first state to declare Juneteenth an official holiday. Efforts to make the celebration a national holiday have, so far, stalled in Congress, but as of this year, 47 states recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday.
High school science teacher John Scopes was convicted in 1925 for teaching the theory of human evolution in his Tennessee classroom. His story was fictionalized in the movie Inherit the Wind in 1960. Photo credit: University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Law.
Recently I had the opportunity to view the film Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized treatment of the famed Scopes Trial of 1925 written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. The play was written in 1955, and the movie was released in 1960. The story centers around real-life high school science teacher John Scopes and his conviction for teaching the theory of human evolution in his Dayton, Tennessee, classroom.
In 1925, it was unlawful to teach human evolution in a Tennessee public school, which had been outlawed by the state’s Butler Act. To test the validity of the legislation, John Scopes allowed himself to be used as the test case. He was 24 years old at the time, had earned his Bachelor’s degree in Science from the University of Kentucky in 1924, and was a very popular general science teacher and football coach in his community.
The court case, which was viewed as a contest between religion and science, garnered national attention. The prosecutor was famed politician William Jennings Bryan, who was a former Secretary of State and three-time presidential candidate. The defense attorney was accomplished lawyer and orator Clarence Darrow. John, who did not deny he taught evolution in his classes but who asserted that teaching scientific theory was not illegal, was found guilty of the charges. However, the verdict was later overturned on a technicality.
The Scopes trial didn’t bring the debate over the teaching of evolution to an end, but it did represent a setback for the anti-evolution coalition. Of the 15 states with anti-evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) enacted laws that prohibited or restricted the teaching of Darwin’s theory.
When the trial was over, John Scopes was invited to attend graduate school at the prestigious University of Chicago. A sort of Go-Fund-Me page of that period was organized to pay for his education. Later he accepted a position as a commercial geologist at United Gas in Shreveport, Louisiana. At age 67, the former teacher published his memoirs under the title Center of the Storm.
To learn more about this Chalkboard Champion, see the biography published about him written by Professor Douglas O. Linder of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Law.
Innovative educator Mary Catherine Swanson developed the AVID program to help minority students develop the skills necessary to succeed in college. Today, the program is employed globally in at least 16 countries. Photo Credit: www.avid.org
Back in 1980, Clairemont High School in San Diego, California, suddenly faced a court-ordered integration order. Teachers at the predominantly white, suburban, middle-class school knew that their incoming minority students would need extensive remediation. As Clairemont’s staff scrambled for ways to meet the needs of these students, one innovative staff member came up with a groundbreaking idea. That staff member was English teacher Mary Catherine Swanson.
Mary Catherine believed strongly that with appropriate academic tools and support, minority and other under-represented students could succeed in a rigorous academic atmosphere just as well as their Clairemont classmates. To meet their needs, she developed an innovative instructional program called Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID). The program trained students in strategies for note-taking and test-taking, offered peer mentoring and tutoring, and sponsored cultural field trips.
Mary Catherine’s efforts produced astonishing results. Since the program’s inception, over 400,000 students have participated in the training. The program is so successful that today over 7,000 high schools in 47 states and 16 countries around the world have implemented it. Statistics show that of those students enrolled in AVID, 95% go on to enroll in a four-year college, and 85% of them graduate. To learn more about the AVID program, go to www.avid.org.
The overwhelming success of Mary Catherine’s work has earned her many honors. Among them are an A+ Award for Reaching the Goals of America 2000 from the US Department of Education; the EXCEL Award for Excellence in Teaching; and the Salute to Excellence from the American Association for Higher Education. She has also been recognized with the UC San Diego Remarkable Leader in Education Award and the Distinguished Achievement Award by the UC Davis Cal Aggie Alumni Association. She has also been recognized with honorary doctorates from UC San Diego and the University of LaVerne. Both CNN and Time Magazine named her America’s Best Teacher in 2001, and she was one of three 2001 recipients of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr., Prize in Education. Furthermore, Mary Catherine’s contribution to American education has been recognized by Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who wrote, “I don’t know any single person in the country who has done more for our school children than AVID founder Mary Catherine Swanson.”
Mary Catherine Swanson retired in 2006, but she will always be known as a genuine Chalkboard Champion.
