Category Archives: Education

Oregon’s Matthew Bacon-Brenes earns prestigious awards

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Matthew Bacon-Brenes

Portland’s Matthew Bacon-Brenes recognized as Oregon’s 2018 Teacher of the Year.

The 2018 Oregon State Teacher of the Year is Matthew Bacon-Brenes, a middle school social studies teacher from Portland.

Matthew, a California native, spent his childhood in Oregon’s Lake Oswego. After his graduation from Whitman College, he inaugurated his career as an educator teaching English in Japan through an exchange program. After three years there, he returned  to Oregon to teach at Gladstone High School for ten years and then fifteen years Mt. Tabor Middle School. In all, his career as a professional educator has spanned 29 years.

Matthew is credited as instrumental to the success of Portland’s popular Japanese immersion program. He supervises an annual two-week-long trip for eighth-graders that allows students to study Japanese culture and history. The course concludes with a culminating project that is influenced by their findings. He has run the program for 20 years.

In addition to his 2018 honor, Matthew has also been awarded a Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence for 2019 from the National Education Association (NEA)  Foundation and Horace Mann.

The award is one of five given nationally, and comes with a $10,000 prize. The five winners are also finalists for the NEA Member Benefits Award, one of whom will garner a $25,000 prize in February at a gala to be held in Washington, DC.

Melissa Romano named Montana’s 2018 State Teacher of the Yeari

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Melissa Romano Melissa Romano named Montana’s 2018 State Teacher of the Year

Chalkboard champion Melissa Romano, a fourth grade teacher at Four Georgians Elementary School in Helena, Montana, was selected the 2018 Montana State Teacher of the Year by the Montana Professional Teaching Foundation.

Melissa inaugurated her teaching career in 2004 after working for ten years as a nanny. In a Montana Federation of Public Employees press release dated October 4, 2017, the honored educator remembers that watching a child’s face light up as they play and discover the joy of learning something new inspired her to become a teacher. She says she strives every day to create those experiences for her students in her classroom.

Melissa earned a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and a Master’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Bridgeport located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since earning her degrees, she has worked as a teacher in the Helena Public School District in a career that has spanned more than 12 years.

In addition to her selection as Montana’s State Teacher of the year, Melissa garnered a National Science Foundation President’s Award for Excellence in Mathematics Education in 2012. The award recognized her stellar work as a K-8 math coach and as an elementary school math and science teacher. She was recognized at the White House for the prize in 2013.

“Ensuring that my students are connected to the world around them and able to display empathy and compassion to those in their world is extremely important,” Melissa asserts. “Students who experience other cultures and develop skills in a connected world are better prepared to be productive, kind, and world changers, she continues. “I aim to bring the world to my students by extending student learning through field trips and hands on experiences, using technology as a tool to compare our community and state to other parts of the world, and by emphasizing the act of giving to others,” she concludes.

Educator and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

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Alex Caputo Pearl

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of United Teachers Los Angeles, spokesperson for LA teachers currently on strike for the first time in 30 years.

One hardworking and dedicated educator whose name and picture have been prominent in the news this past week is Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of United Teachers Los Angeles. He’s currently acting as the spokesperson for LA teachers as they stage their first teachers’ strike in 30 years.

The strike follows a complete breakdown in 20 months of negotiations between the teachers union and the school district. There is much at stake, says Alex. “United Teachers Los Angeles’ struggle for a fair contract is just one part of a broader movement for students, families and schools,” asserts Alex in an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times on January 6, 2019. “But at its heart, the standoff between L.A. Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles is a struggle over the future of public education,” he continues. To read the entire editorial, click on this link: Why Los Angeles teachers may have to strike.

A veteran teacher, Alex taught for 22 years in the Compton and Los Angeles school districts. He worked most of those years at Crenshaw High School, before he was elected president of UTLA in 2014. Over the years, Alex has earned many accolades for his work in the classroom. He has been recognized with LA Academic English Mastery Program Award, UCLA Social Justice Award, and UTLA Bilingual Education Committee Awards.

Throughout his career, Alex been heavily involved in community organizing, helping to strengthen the efforts of the Labor/Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union, as well as helping to establish the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition, and the Extended Learning Cultural Model.

Alex earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Brown University and his Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA. He has many published articles to his credit, and in addition has been a guest lecturer speaking about labor and community organizing at various Los Angeles area universities. He is an active member of the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teaches Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.

The remarkable Mary Jane Patterson: From slavery to classroom

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Mary Jane Patterson: Teacher, principal, and women’s rights activist. Photo Credit: Oberlin College Archives

Here is the story of a truly remarkable educator: Mary Jane Patterson. Mary Jane was born the daughter of slaves in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 12, 1840. Her father, Henry Patterson, worked as a master mason. After Henry gained his freedom in 1852, he relocated his family north to Oberlin, Ohio.

Oberlin was a favored destination of free Blacks and fugitive slaves seeking an education because it boasted a college that was integrated and co-educational. When Mary Jane earned her Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1862, she became the first African-American woman to receive a degree from an established American college.

After earning her degree, Mary Jane taught for a short time in Chillicothe, Ohio, before moving to Philadelphia to work at the Institute for Colored Youth, a college preparatory school for African Americans. She taught there for five years. In 1869, the young teacher moved to Washington, DC, where she eventually became the principal of the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth. That school was later renamed M Street High School, and today is called Dunbar High School.

Mary Jane was the first African-American high school principal in Washington, DC, and she is still remembered today for her strong, forceful personality, and for increasing her school’s enrollment from fewer than 50 students to 172 students. During her tenure there, she also initiated high school commencements and a teacher-training department.

In addition to her accomplishments in the school, Mary Jane was also a part of the Colored Woman’s League of Washington, DC, an organization committed to women’s rights. The group focused on training women to become kindergarten teachers, rescue work, and classes for industrial schools and homemaking.

This remarkable educator passed away September 24, 1894, at her home in Washington, DC. She was 54 years old.

First Lady Pat Nixon was once a high school business teacher

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Pat Nixon Business teacher and Former First Lady Pat Nixon.

Throughout American history, there are many examples of well-known personalities who were once schoolteachers. One of these is former First Lady Pat Nixon, who served as our First Lady from 1969 to 1974. She was employed during the 1930’s as a business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. In fact, Pat was working as an educator when she met her future husband, a young and ambitious city attorney named Richard Nixon.

Pat Ryan Nixon was born into a family of farmers on March 16, 1912, in Ely, Nevada, although she grew up in a rural community now known Cerritos, California. Her mother died of cancer in 1924, when Pat was only 12 years old. After her mother’s death, the young girl kept house for her father and two older brothers, Wiliam, Jr., and Thomas. It was a big responsibility for such a young girl.

In spite of her challenges, Pat graduated from Excelsior High School in 1929, and then worked her way through college working a variety of jobs. These jobs included retail sales, pharmacy manager, typist, and telephone operator. After her high school graduation, she first attended Fullerton Junior College in Fullerton, California, and then transferred to the University of Southern California, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Merchandising, cum laude, in 1937.

A pretty and popular teacher, the former Miss Ryan instructed courses in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, and stenography. Her students remembered her fondly, writes daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower in a detailed and personal biography published in 1986. The book is called Pat Nixon: the Untold Story, and is available on amazon.com.

In the political arena, Pat served her country as the wife of the Vice President from 1953 to 1961, and then as First Lady during her husband’s presidency, which spanned the years of 1969 to 1974. Her major platform as First Lady was to promote volunteerism. Through this platform, she encouraged Americans to address social problems at the local level through volunteering at civic organizations, hospitals, and rehabilitation centers.

Pat Nixon passed away on June 22, 1993, in Park Ridge, New Jersey. She was 81 years old. She is interred next to her husband at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.