I’m excited to announce that today Dr. Jessie Voigts of Newago, Michigan, published a review of Chalkboard Heroes on her website, www.WanderingEducators.com. Dr. Voigts, who holds a PhD in International Education, is the director of the Youth Travel Blogging Mentorship Program, the co-founder of Writing Walking Women, and she has published six books of her own. Here is an excerpt of her review:

Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor

You know what I love? Stories of awesome people. They inspire, teach, and lead by example. Such is the case with Chalkboard Heroes, a marvelous new book by Terry Lee Marzell.

I think that to write about incredible people, you must be an incredible person, yourself. And so it is. Terry has been an educator in Corona, California, for the past thirty-three years, working at both the high school and the junior high school levels. She has taught English, developmental reading, drama, journalism, library science, geography, and interior design. She has also served as her school’s cheerleading advisor for four years, the drama coach for two years, and the school’s newspaper advisor for five years. Throughout her long career as an educator, she has worked with English-language learners and students in honors courses, and she has been a mentor for both International Baccalaureate candidates and special education students. Terry has seven years of experience as a home-stay coordinator and tour escort for students from abroad. In addition, she has mentored several collegiate student teachers. She is currently serving her school as a district librarian.

Let’s talk about her new book, Chalkboard Heroes. This is a remarkable, inspiring book of – yes, you guessed it – remarkable, inspiring teachers. What springs to mind when I read this? That ordinary people can do extraordinary things. That beliefs COUNT. That teachers are pretty special, indeed.

What I love most about this book is the care taken in writing these lives. You can tell that Terry loves teachers, writing, researching, and the selflessness and caring that teachers bring to their students.

This book? It’s a gift to the world, an act of love that shows how important teachers are, throughout history. We know the stories of some – Christa McAuliffe, Robert Moses, Dave Sanders. The stories of others I didn’t know both educate and warm my heart, from coping with racism to the frontier, from gender to social change. This is a history book, an ode to the teaching profession, and a deep look into the lives of teachers. But most of all, it’s a compilation of incredible lives, spent in the pursuit of something they cherished. That is, indeed, remarkable.

You can read the entire review at: www.Wandering Educators.com