Category Archives: Education

Educator and history-making mountain climber Fay Fuller

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Educator and history-making mountain climber Fay Fuller

There are many fine teachers who have distinguished themselves in fields outside of education. One of these is Evelyn Fay Fuller, a teacher who was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Rainier.

Evelyn was born on October 10, 1869, in New Jersey. As a child, her family called her Fay. When young Fay was just twelve years old, her family moved to Tacoma in the state of Washington. Even as a child, Fay expressed great interest in exploring wilderness areas.

In 1885, at the end of Fay’s sophomore year, her high school closed abruptly. The fifteen-year-old continued her education on her own, while simultaneously teaching children at Tacoma’s Longfellow Elementary School.

Later Fay accepted teaching positions at Rosedale and at Yelm in Washington. While teaching in Yelm, famed mountain climber Philemon Van Trump visited her school. He had earned the distinction of being one of the first climbers to ascend nearby Mount Rainer. The pair soon became good friends.

Through Van Trump’s influence, the intrepid young teacher set herself the goal of climbing to the summit of Mount Rainier. She made her first attempt to climb the mountain in 1887. To prepare for the climb, Fay blackened her face with charcoal and wore goggles to reduce the sun’s glare. Her climbing outfit included heavy flannel underwear, a thick blue flannel bloomer suit, woolen hose, heavy calfskin boy’s shoes, and a straw hat. She later commented that her costume was assembled “at the time when bloomers were unknown, and it was considered quite immodest.”

On her first climb, Fay reached an elevation of 8,600 feet. Three years later, on August 10, 1890, the intrepid 21-year-old finally achieved her goal of reaching the summit. She was the first woman to make the climb successfully. As the story goes, the next party to climb the mountain found Fay’s hair pins on the trail and joked that the find proved a woman really had made it to the summit!

Shortly after her history-making climb, Fay left the teaching profession to go into journalism. She became the first woman reporter for the Tacoma Ledger, where she wrote a column covering mountaineering news. She also became instrumental in founding alpine clubs in Tacoma and in Portland, Oregon.

In 1900, Fay relocated to Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York City, where she continued her career as a journalist. In New York she married, and the newlyweds settled in Santa Monica, California.

This amazing educator and mountain climber passed away in Los Angeles on May 27, 1958. She was 88 years old. She is interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. After her passing, Fay Peak in Mount Rainier National Park was named in her honor.

To read more about Fay’s climb, read this article published by the Historylink.org.

Two-time All-American softball player, teacher, and coach Sara Loete

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Two-time college All-American softball player Sara Loete teaches and coaches in Evansville, Indiana.

There are many examples of fine athletes who have also distinguished themselves in the classroom. One of these is two-time All-American softball player Sara Loete. She is now a high school history teacher and coach in Pekin, Indiana.

Sara was born on February 10, 1988, in Rock Island, Rock Island County, Illinois. She was raised in Pekin, Tazewell County, Illinois. As a teenager, Sara attended Pekin High School in her home town. While there, she was named a member of the All-Conference first team. She earned second-team All-Area honors as a senior after recording a .515 batting average. She earned Most Valuable Player honors in each of her last two seasons. In addition, her senior year, Sara earned honors as a national qualifying political speaker and the captain of the speech team.

Sara started playing softball when she was very young. “I actually started playing baseball when I was six years old,” she once recalled. “When I was nine and the boys started pitching, my mom wanted me to play softball. I’ve played ever since!”

After her high school graduation in 2006, Sara enrolled at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, as a pre-med biology major. “After quickly realizing my passion was not in medicine, but rather in teaching, I changed my major to Secondary Education with a concentration in History,” Sara remembers. At the end of her freshman year, she transferred to the University of Southern Indiana. While studying there, she played the position of designated hitter on the university’s softball team. Her efforts on the field earned her a position as the Illinois State hitting derby finalist and, in her junior year, she became a sectional champion. In 2011, Sara graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in History and Social Science with a minor in Psychology. In 2014 she earned a Master’s degree in Education at Arkansas State University.

Once she completed her education, Sara accepted a position teaching world history, psychology, and English at William Henry Harrison High School in Evansville, Indiana. In addition to her classroom duties, she coaches the school’s softball, volleyball, and speech teams. She also serves as the adviser for her school’s Link Crew.

To view Sara’s teacher website, click on this link: Miss Loete’s Website.

President LBJ: Teacher of English-Language Learners

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President Lyndon B. Johnson, our nation’s 36th president, was a teacher for English-language learners in Texas before he went to Washington, DC.

The role of Lyndon B. Johnson as our nation’s 36th president is well-known, but did you know that he used to be a school teacher? Before he went to Washington, DC, LBJ taught English language learners at a junior high school in Texas.

In 1928, LBJ needed a way to pay for his education at Southwest Texas State College. To do this, he accepted a position as a teacher at Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas, a town on the US southern border. There he taught English as a second language to Spanish-speaking junior high school students.

Despite the language barrier between himself and his students, the future president proved to be an enthusiastic and inspirational teacher, organizing speech and debate tournaments and other activities to help the youngsters learn English. “I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School,” Johnson once remarked. “I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American,” he said.

When LBJ became president in 1963, he didn’t forget his days as an educator. While in office, he passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. The legislation granted federal aid to students in elementary grades to achieve his goal of ensuring that every child received a quality education.

To read LBJ’s own words about his teaching experiences, follow this link to “LBJ the Teacher” on Humanities Texas.

Hip hop musician J-Live: He was once a junior high English teacher

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Hip hop artist J-Live was once a junior high school English teacher.

Fans of hip hop music may be familiar with an internationally known rap artist known as J-Live. The musician’s music has been popular with listeners of hip hop for over 20 years. But did you know that he was once a junior high school English teacher?

J-Live was born on February 22, 1976, in Spanish Harlem in New York City. His given name was Jean-Jacques Cadet. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Albany, State University of New York.

After earning his degree, J-Live taught junior high school English, first in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and then in Bushwick, Brooklyn. His career as an educator spanned from 1998 to 2002. “The degree in English sorta gave me the leg up,” J-Live once explained. “The experience teaching English just gave me something to talk about and a whole other perspective in terms of my experiences. And how to write songs that hit home when you have an intended message,” he continued.

Early in his teaching career, J-Live began to make hip hop records. The musician, who also uses the stage name Justice Allah, has released eight albums to date. His second album, All of the Above, released in 2002, sold 30,000 copies. In addition to creating hip hop music, J-Live has worked as an emcee, DJ, and producer. He is  actively involved in workshops, classes, and speaking engagements. In fact, he is known worldwide as a “hip hop teacher.”

Will J-Live ever return to teaching? “I am kind of pivoting into a more educational space,” he admits. “I’ve had the good fortune and opportunity to do some speaking events and workshops, and the opportunity to teach with Next-Level Hip-Hop, which is a State Department program run by the University of North Carolina,” he says. And, “I’m teaching DJing in Croatia for a couple of weeks.”

To learn more about J-Live, you can read this online article at Prefix.

Maggie George: Teacher and expert on Native American education

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Educator Maggie George of the Navajo Nation provides role model for Native American students.

There are many talented educators who serve as superb role models for Native American students. One of these is Maggie George from Arizona, a member of the Navajo Nation.

Maggie was born into the Tachii’nii clan, born for the Naakaii Dine clan in Red Valley, Arizona. Her father was a traditional practitioner and her mother was a homemaker. Maggie was raised in the traditional pastoral Navajo ways, raising livestock and living off the land.

As a youngster, Maggie attended a public school and a boarding school on the Navajo Reservation. “I grew up in an era when it was a challenge to be an Indian, and only one of my teachers was Navajo,” Maggie once confided. “I decided in junior high that I wanted to change that and teach Navajo children. Knowing who I was as a Navajo person — and being grounded in my identity, language and culture — helped me have confidence, competence and persistence,” she declared.

To achieve this goal, Maggie earned her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education in 1980 and her Master’s degree in Guidance and Counseling in 1989, both from the New Mexico Highlands University School of Education. Later she earned a PhD in Higher Education Policy and Leadership from the University of Kansas.

Once Maggie earned her degrees, she worked as a K-12 educator and counselor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and contract schools in New Mexico. After her skill as an educator became well-known, Maggie was selected to serve as the Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities. She also served as the Deputy Director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. In addition, she was a member of the faculty and then the Dean of the School of Education at Haskell Indian Nations University. The former classroom teacher also served as the Dean and Academic Vice President of Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona, from 2000 to 2005. From 2011 to 2016 Maggie served as the college’s President. There she inaugurated a program of academic affairs and Indian education for the New Mexico Higher Education Department.

For her work in the field of education, Maggie garnered a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. To read more about this chalkboard champion, click on this article about her work at Dine College.