Students gift retired teacher Pablo Robertson with ticket to the 2022 Super Bowl

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Retired Spanish teacher Pablo Robertson from Upland, California, will be attending the 2022 Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood today. The tickets, too pricey for Pablo to afford, have been gifted to the beloved educator from his former students. Photo credit: Pablo Robertson

I always enjoy sharing stories about educators who have earned the affection, appreciation, and admiration of their students. One of these is Pablo Robertson, a retired Spanish teacher from Upland, California. His former students love him so much they have banded together to buy him a ticket to the 2022 Super Bowl, just because they know he’s such an ardent Rams fan.

With a single ticket going for between $8,000 to $9,000, Pablo decided attending the game in person was not within the realm of possibility, so he was planning to watch the big game on television from home. But then he learned his students raised more than $10,000 on a GoFundMe page organized by his former student, Laura Salcido. She was Pablo’s student in 2003. Within three days, almost 100 of Pablo’s former students from Spanish classes he taught over his 40-year career at Upland High School contributed.

Pablo was born in New York in 1950, and relocated to Southern California when he just a ten-year-old. As a teenager, he graduated from Upland High School in Upland. By then, he’d already become a die-hard Rams fan. In 1979, Pablo became a teacher at his alma mater. Over the decades, he became well-known throughout the school for his classroom display of Rams memorabilia, which included banners, flags, pictures, and other collectables. But even more importantly, Pablo became a beloved mentor for young people. “He didn’t just teach Spanish,” recalled former student Sarah Wolframm, who graduated in 1993. “He was about teaching life and life lessons and life skills. Spanish was just a perk we learned on the side of the most important lessons,” she continued.

Throughout his career, Pablo’s love for his students was always visible. In addition to his Spanish-language instruction, he spent most of his weekday afternoons taking and developing photographs of his students at pep rallies and sporting events. He gifted the photos to the students or used them to create bulletin boards in his classroom. In addition, since 1994, the beloved educator served as a play-by-play announcer at the school’s athletic events. Even though he retired ten years ago, he still does this today. “I loved teaching Spanish, I love kids, I love photography, I love announcing. Teaching was an ideal career for me,” Pablo declares.

Enjoy the game, Pablo!

Beloved Sp Ed teacher and coach Jerry Landers succumbs to Covid-19

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Covid-19 claims the life of beloved high school Special Education teacher and girls basketball coach Jerry Landers of Tennessee. Photo credit: Tennessean

Sadly, we must report that Covid-19 has claimed the life of yet another beloved educator. Jerry Landers, a teacher and coach at Gallatin High School in Gallatin, Tennessee, succumbed to the disease on January 9, 2022. He was 60 years old.

Jerry worked at the Gallatin in the Sumner County School District since 2013. There he taught Special Education History and coached the girls basketball team. He served a the last five years as the Head Basketball Coach. After Jerry led his team to a 21-10 record and a Region 5 AAA Quarterfinals appearance, he was named the 2019-2020 District 9-AAA Coach of the Year.

But, says Gallatin High School Principal Ron Becker, “He was much more than just a coach. He was a mentor and a genuinely great guy. It wasn’t all about wins and losses with him as he was more focused on life and mentoring our kids.,” Becker remembered. Jerry’s wife, Nancy, agreed. “Jerry knew he could make a difference by teaching and coaching,” Nancy said. “His love for sports allowed him to reach people, and he always used that to help his students bloom.”

In addition to his work in the classroom and on the basketball court, during his lengthy career as an educator, Jerry coached volleyball, track and field, in addition to serving as a school athletic director, a youth leader, and a Sunday school teacher.

Jerry Landers, born March 30, 1961, was a native of Nashville, Tennessee. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Pensacola Christian College, a private Baptist college located in Pensacola, Florida. He earned his Maser’s degree from Union University in Hendersonville in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Teacher Dorothy Randolph Peterson promoted the Harlem Renaissance

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Teacher Dorothy Randolph Peterson was active in promoting the Harlem Renaissance and preserving African American art and culture. Photo credit: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Often, fine educators dedicate their considerable energy and passion to serving the interests of art and culture. One of these was Dorothy Randolph Parker, a New York City teacher who actively promoted the Harlem Renaissance and worked to preserve African American art and culture.

Dorothy was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 21, 1897. She was the daughter of diplomat Jerome Bowers Peterson, who worked as the US Consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela for one year, and Deputy Collector for the Internal Revenue Service, including several years in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During her childhood, Dorothy lived in Venezuela from July, 1904, to July, 1905, and in Puerto Rico from July, 1913, to July, 1920.

After her graduation from a Puerto Rican high school, she completed some classes at a university on the island. In the 1920s she relocated to Harlem, where she taught Spanish and attended New York University. In Harlem, Dorothy hosted literary salons, which were in vogue in those days. She also served as an early patron of Fire!!, a quarterly journal which promoted young Black artists.

With friend and librarian Regina Anderson, Dorothy co-founded the Negro Experimental Theater, also known as the Harlem Experimental Theater, in 1929. Even writer and historian WEB DuBois was involved in the enterprise. The group performed plays written by young Black authors. At least one of these plays was written by Regina Anderson herself. The theater’s largest and most successful performance was “Wade in the Water,” in 1929. The play starred Dorothy alongside prominent Harlem Renaissance actress Laura Bowman. The Harlem Experimental Theater became an inspiration to similar theater groups all over the country, and an encouragement to Black playwrights.

Later Dorothy worked to preserve African American art and culture. To achieve this goal, she founded the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale University and the Jerome Bowers Peterson Collection of Photographs of Celebrated Heroes at Wadleigh High School in Harlem.

Dorothy passed away on November 4, 1978,

 

National School Counseling Week celebrates hardworking professionals

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This week, February 7-11, is National School Counseling Week 2022. The purpose of this celebration is to focus public attention on the unique contributions by professional school counselors within American school systems.

National School Counseling Week highlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping our students to achieve school success. Day in and day out, these dedicated professionals labor tirelessly to help ensure the academic success, personal achievement, and emotional well-being of our kids.

At high schools throughout the country, the commitment of school counselors to the success of each student starts with their very first interaction with students through their eighth grade outreach programs. Their service continues with assisting the freshmen with their graduation requirements plans, one-on-one meetings with English-language learners, counseling students who are failing classes, helping students who are lacking credits with strategies for credit recovery, and making sure seniors are on track to graduate. In between all this heavy-duty work, counselors help students find scholarships to fund their post-graduation education programs, write letters of recommendation, judge senior projects, and attend IEP meetings. And as if all that were not enough, they also organize small group counseling sessions to help students deal with such issues as bullying, smoking-cessation, teen parenting, or bereavement. When the inevitable quarrels between students arise, they serve as competent conflict resolution facilitators, and they have even been known to mediate the occasional dispute between a student and a teacher. And then, just to top it all off, if—God forbid—some tragedy such as a fatal traffic accident or a suicide strikes the school community, school counselors quickly mobilize into a highly-effective crisis management team.

Phenomenal, aren’t they? Chalkboard Champions, in the truest sense of the word.

Great Black History Month read: Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals

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Like many teachers, I am always interested in learning more about historical events relating to the education of America’s disenfranchised students. Black History Month is a great opportunity to zero in on the education of our African American students. To learn more about this topic, there are many excellent books you can add to your reading list. Here’s a well-told first-person account about struggles of African American students in Arkansas at the onset of the Civil Rights Movement. The book is Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of nine heroic African American students known as famous Little Rock Nine.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education which declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Three years later, the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas, were still segregated. A plan for gradual integration generated an intensely hostile response from Little Rock’s staunch segregationists. Nevertheless, nine courageous African American students were selected to challenge the status quo and integrate the city’s Central High School.  Clinging stubbornly to Jim Crow tradition, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to block the entrance of the nine black students into the school, and, in response, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and charged the troops with protecting the lives of the nine and enforcing the Supreme Court’s ruling. Every school day that year, the Little Rock Nine braved angry mobs spewing hostilities, racial epithets, and threats to their lives simply for seeking the right to enter their school.

This book, Warriors Don’t Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High, tells the story of Melba Pattilllo Beals, one of those valiant nine students. When you read this compelling account, you wonder how any kid could have that much fortitude. This book is a great read for teachers, students, and history buffs. You can acquire a copy of Warriors Don’t Cry from amazon.