Category Archives: Education

From Classroom to White House: Chalkboard Politicians

Posted on by
9780786464869_p0_v1_s260x420[1][2]I was fascinated by this little book that tells anecdotes about our nation’s presidents and first ladies as students and as teachers. In addition, the book describes the educational issues the presidents addressed during their White House years, the complications  in education at their time in history, and an overview of American schooling over time. I was amazed to learn that John F. Kennedy’s teacher said he could “seldom locate his possessions,” and that the teacher of George H.W. Bush described the young student as “somewhat eccentric,” and that Bill Clinton’s sixth-grade teacher called him a “motormouth.” If you’re  a teacher as intrigued by presidential history as I am, you’ve got to read  From Classroom to White House, which can easily be found on amazon.com.

Carrie McLain: A Pioneer Teacher in Northwestern Alaska

Posted on by
51f8ZZ5X-FL._SL500_SS500_[1][1]Carrie McLain was born in 1895 in Astoria, Long Island, New York. When she was just a child of ten, her father moved Carrie and her four siblings to the fledgling village of Nome on the ice-crusted coast of northwestern Alaska. There she grew to adulthood, became a pioneer teacher, married, and reared a family of one son and three daughters. McLain tells the fascinating story of her provincial life in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Anyone interested in learning more about rugged existence on the frigid Alaskan frontier would be interested in reading this slender volume  (it’s only 70 pages, including photographs). Pioneer Teacher can be found on amazon.

Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning

Posted on by
1954[1][1]In today’s classrooms we educators spend a lot of energy promoting life-long learning. When I contemplate this topic I am reminded of an interesting book I came across last year. The book is entitled Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning in the Lifespan, written by Charles A. Wedemeyer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Wedemeyer devoted most his lengthy career as an educator to the creation and promotion of nontraditional learning methods and programs. During WWII he developed courses to enable our nation’s soldiers to earn their high school diplomas while serving overseas. Wedemeyer was an early proponent of university extension courses, and was also dabbling in long-distance learning methods such as computer courses before he passed away in 1999.

You can find his discussion of nontraditional learning methods in Learning at the Back Door, available at amazon.com.

Be the Chalkboard Champion of Your Own Book!

Posted on by
chalkboard2[1]When I became a teacher 32 years ago, I started keeping a collection of items that marked my activities and successes in the classroom. I kept the sweet little notes from students and the praise letters from their parents, the thank you cards from colleagues and the district office for the extra services I performed, photographs of special projects or activities we worked on, the newspaper clippings about the programs I initiated, the evaluation forms I was especially proud of, and any awards I received.
I just kept these things in a file folder until, a few years later, when I became a scrapbooking enthusiast, I decided to transfer them all to a simple scrapbook. I arranged the items in chronological order, mounted some of them on school-themed scrapbook paper, and placed them in clear plastic page protectors. I also combed through old school yearbooks to photocopy published pictures of me at work in the classroom, on field trips with the kids, or chaperoning various school events. When the scrapbook was completed, I realized that what lay before me was a record of many classroom successes and an archive of my professional achievements.

Personally, I found my book to be a great source of solace during those periods of my career when I questioned whether or not I had made a serious vocational error! Also, I think it will make a nice table display when I eventually retire. But seriously, a book like this can become a valuable tool whenever you need to make a list of your accomplishments; if you’re looking for a new job or applying for that summer institute, for instance. Think about creating one for yourself. You can be the Chalkboard Champion of your own book!

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family

Posted on by
janm_2256_87093872[1][1]Teachers who are creating lessons about World War II war relocation camps will probably want to examine  Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida. This slender volume is a beautifully written personal history of the author’s family, of their life before the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and of their internment in a war relocation camp first in Tanforan, California, and then in Topaz, Utah, during World War II.

Uchida’s purpose in writing this memoir is to describe an internment camp experience, and how she, as one of  the 110,000 internees, many of whom were American citizens, felt when she was  imprisoned by her own government simply because she happened to look like the enemy. Uchida, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, was a twenty-year-old student in her senior year at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco at the time.

Read the book for your own edification, suggest it as leisure reading for your students, or incorporate it in whole or in part in your lesson plans. Any way you go, the book is a great resource. You can find Desert Exile on amazon.