Keisha Bell Sowell: AVID Coordinator and national soccer player

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Keisha Bell Sowell, a former award-winning American soccer player, now works as an AVID Coordinator in Houston, Texas. Photo credit: Keisha Bell Sowell.

Many excellent classroom teachers have also earned acclaim as fine athletes. One of these is Keisha Bell Sowell, a former award-winning American soccer player who now teaches in Houston, Texas.

Keisha was born on December 20, 1979, in Spring, Texas. As a young girl, she attended Klein Oak High School in her home town. While in high school, she played soccer, playing both outside midfielder and defender. She earned All-District honors in 1996.

Once she graduated from high school, Keisha enrolled at University of Florida, where she majored in Sociology. She was a freshman when she became part of the University of Florida team that garnered the 1998 NCAA Championship. Her position was defender. That year, she served on the NCAA Championships All-Tournament Team. In 2001, she was a member of the United States National Team at the Algarve Cup competition, which was held in Portugal. By 2003, she was serving the University of Florida team as a volunteer coach.

Today, Keisha serves as the AVID Coordinator for Woodcreek Middle School in Houston, Texas. She teaches sixth, seventh, and eighth grade there. “My passion and joy is investing in kids, especially tweens and young teens,” expresses Keisha. “I embrace each day with a clean slate and hope that just a small piece of what I teach can be instilled in them and impact them for rest of their lives,” she continues.

To learn more about Keisha’s illustrious career as a college soccer player, see this information published by the University of Florida.

PA’s Christine Houlahan: Educator, veteran, and politician

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Christine Houlahan of Pennsylvania: Educator, veteran, politician. Photo credit US Congress.

The Teach For America program has produced some very fine educators. One of these is Christine Houlahan, a high school science teacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She also serves as a representative in the US Congress.

Christine was born on June 5, 1967, at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Her father was born to a Jewish family in Poland, and at age four, he emigrated to avoid the Holocaust. After serving as a naval aviator, he became a historian and author.

As a young woman, Christine completed the requirements for her Bachelor’s degree in Engineering at Stanford University in California in 1989. She earned her Master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Christine also served three years in the United States Air Force and 13 years in the Air Force Reserve. She retired from the military in 2004 after earning the rank of captain.

After completing her military career, Christine accepted a job in the private sector. While there, she completed 40 hours of paid community service working with young girls in a local Science, Engineering, and Technology (STEM) program. Later she enrolled in the Teach for American program. Through this program, she taught eleventh grade chemistry and other science courses at Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia.

After she left the Teach for America program, Christine joined Springboard Collaborative, a Philadelphia-based non-profit focusing on early childhood literacy in underserved populations nationwide. She served as both President and CFO/COO of that organization before leaving to focus on her political campaign.

In 2018, Christine was elected to the Democratic ticket to serve as a representative in the US Congress from Pennsylvania’s 6th District. During the one term that she served, her platform  included an emphasis on health care, campaign finance reform, and the creation of more jobs. She also stressed the importance of education, veterans’ affairs, and family issues. While in Congress, she was part of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Small Business Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Christine Houlahan: Veteran, politician, and Chalkboard Champion

Hawaii’s Lori Miki Kwee named her state’s 2021 Teacher of the Year

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Elementary school educator Lori Miki Kwee of Hawaii has been named her state’s 2021 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Honolulu Star Advertiser

I love to share stories about innovative educators from all over the country. One of these is Lori Miki Kwee, an elementary teacher in Hawaii who has been named her state’s Teacher of the Year.

Lori currently teaches fourth grade at Ala Was Elementary School in Honolulu. Interestingly, her mother was also a teacher at that school. Lori’s career as an educator in public schools has spanned 31 years.

During the pandemic, Lori and her students created a business, which they have named #Sharealoha, to promote kindness and fellowship among others and to raise funds to build a student-designed “peaceful oasis” on the school grounds. For this business, participants created and sell unique Jars of Aloha, #Sharealoha T-shirts, and face masks.

Lori has long invested in programs with her students that attempt to eliminate bullying. Through active inquiry, her students explore forgiveness, compassion, and methods to manage emotions. Her students engage in student-led learning projects based on their interests and curiosities, and they explore how kindness affects health and well-being. For these efforts, Lori was honored by the National Life Group as their National Life Changer for 2018-2019.

In 2017, Lori’s students chose to launch a class project to save the Vaquita porpoise, an endangered species endemic to the Gulf of California. They spent hours writing reports, letters to policy makers, and social media posts in their effort to save the Vaquita porpoise. As a result, their attendance and test scores increased, and they became skilled in their pursuit of information and finding answers to their questions.

Lori earned her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Hawaii. To read more about this Chalkboard Champion, see this article published about her in the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

Eulalia Bourne: The plucky educator once fired for dancing

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Eulalia Bourne was a daring educator who taught elementary school in rural areas, mining camps, and Indian reservations throughout Arizona during some of our country’s most challenging periods.

I love to share stories about plucky teachers, and here’s one about a really plucky teacher from the American Southwest: Eulalia Bourne. This daring educator, whose career spanned more than four decades, taught elementary school in rural areas, mining camps, and Indian reservations throughout Arizona during some of our country’s most challenging periods: World War I, the Depression, and World War II. This women’s libber was ahead of her time, becoming one of the very few women in her day to own and run her own cattle ranch.

Eulalia thought outside the box in many ways. Every year on the first day of school she would wear a new dress, usually blue to complement her eye color. Every school day after that, she wore jeans, Western-style shirts, cowboy boots, and Stetson hats to class. She was once fired for dancing the one-step, a new jazz dance, at a birthday party some of her students attended, because the clerk of the school board considered the dance indecent! She even learned to speak Spanish fluently and, when confronted with non-English-speaking students, taught her classes in Spanish, even though at the time it was against the law to do so.

Eulalia is probably best known for producing a little classroom newspaper entitled Little Cowpunchers which featured student writings, drawings, and news stories about classroom events. Today, these little newspapers are recognized as important historical documents of Southern Arizona ranching communities from 1932 to 1943.

Additionally, Eulalia published three critically-acclaimed books about her teaching and ranching experiences: Ranch Schoolteacher, Nine Months is a Year at Baboquivari School, and Woman in Levi’s. These volumes, although now out of print, can sometimes be purchased at used book stores or at online sites featuring royalty-free works. These books are well-worth the search, particularly for those interested in Arizona history.

You can read more about about Eulalia’s intriguing life in a book entitled Skirting Traditions, published by  Arizona Press Women. You can also find a chapter about her in my first book about remarkable teachers, Chalkboard Champions.

Angel Santiago named New Jersey 2021 Teacher of the Year

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Educator Angel Santiago of Blackwood, New Jersey, has been named his state’s 2021 Teacher of the Year. Photo credit: Angel Santiago.

Congratulations go to educator Angel Santiago of Blackwood, New Jersey, who has been named his state’s 2021Teacher of the Year. Angel teaches Language Arts to fifth graders at Loring Flemming Elementary School.

Angel says he owes his successes in the classroom to his passion for fostering strong relationships with his students, their families, his colleagues, and the community in which he serves. In addition to his classroom responsibilities, Angel is the facilitator of the group Young People of Character (YPOC). This group of fourth and fifth graders, who come from different socio-economic backgrounds, participate in various community service projects to promote teamwork, empathy, and personal growth. Some of the projects the group has been involved in include writing letters to veterans for Veterans Day, cleaning up the school grounds for Earth Day, and volunteering during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. “Community outreach is a great example of how a rural community like mine uses empathy, teamwork, and leadership to teach our students life lessons without using textbooks or assessments, but rather our hands and our hearts,” asserts Angel.

The honored educator has taught his entire professional career in Camden County. In 2012 he began teaching in the Lindenwold Public Schools, and in 2013 he moved to Gloucester Township Public Schools where he continues to teach.

Angel graduated from New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University. He earned both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Humanities. In addition, he is a member of both Phi Theta Kappa and Kappa Delta Pi Honor Societies.

To read more about this Chalkboard Champion, see this article published online by the New Jersey Education Association.