NYC’s Paul Zindel: Chemistry teacher, author, and playwright
New York City’s Paul Zindel was a high school chemistry teacher. But he was also a celebrated author and playwright.
Many fine educators distinguish themselves in other fields. Such is the case with Paul Zindel, a high school chemistry teacher who is also a celebrated author and playwright.
Paul was born on May 15, 1936 in Tottenville, on Staten Island in New York. His father was a policeman, and his mother was a nurse. When Paul was still a child, his father abandoned his family, and his mother struggled to support the family alone. It was, by his own account, a difficult childhood.
Upon his high school graduation, Paul enrolled in Wagner College on Staten Island. Although he majored in chemistry, he took a creative writing course from celebrated playwright Edward Albee. Albee encouraged and nurtured Paul’s writing talent.
After Paul earned his college degree, he accepted a position as a technical writer for Allied Chemical. He was employed there for six months, but did not enjoy the work. Pursuing a passion for helping young people, Paul decided to go into teaching. For the next ten years, he taught chemistry and physics at Tottenville High School.
While still teaching, Paul wrote the book he is probably most famous for, The Pigman (1968). It was so successful that in 1969 he left teaching to write full-time. “I felt I could do more for teenagers by writing for them,” Paul once explained. “I started reading some young adult books, and what I saw in most of them had no connection to the teenagers I knew. I thought I knew what kids would want in a book, so I made a list and followed it,” he continued. “I try to show teens they aren’t alone. I believe I must convince my readers that I am on their side; I know it’s a continuous battle to get through the years between twelve and twenty — an abrasive time. And so I write always from their own point of view,” he concluded.
Paul’s other signature work includes The Effect of Gamma Rays on the Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which received an Obie Award in 1970 for best American play. He garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1971.
Sadly, Paul contracted lung cancer and passed away on March 27, 2003. He is interred in Moravian Cemetery in Staten Island.
To learn more about this extraordinary educator and author, visit his website at www.paulzindel.com.
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Retired special ed teacher Phyllis Ehrenthal succumbs to Covid-19
Covid-19 has claimed he life of yet another educator. Retired elementary special education teacher Phyllis Ehrenthal of Connecticut succumbed to the disease on April 16, 2020.
With sadness, we report that Covid-19 has claimed the life of yet another educator. Retired elementary special education teacher Phyllis Ehrenthal of Connecticut succumbed to the disease on April 16, 2020. She was 84 years old.
Phyllis was born on August 13, 1935 and raised in the Bronx borough in New York. As a young girl in the Great Depression, she was a talented and dedicated student. She attended Music and Art High School in New York City. She studied the visual arts there. Upon her graduation, she enrolled at Hunter College in New York City. There she earned her Bachelor’s degree in English.
As a teacher, Phyllis worked at several schools. Eventually she landed at Fox Run School in Norwalk, Fairfield County, Connecticut, where she worked with special education students for 25 years. During her years at Fox Run, Phyllis earned a reputation for encouraging every child to live up to their potential. She encouraged each one to choose their own life goals.
Once Phyllis retired from the teaching profession, she pursued a career as a family therapist. She worked diligently to strengthen the relationships between parents and their teenage children. During this time she also revived her childhood passion for art. She produced many fine oil paintings as a member of a cohort of artists at Weir Farm in Wilton, Connecticut.
To read more about Phyllis, see this online article at Legacy.com.
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Caroline Boa Henderson: Teacher and Dust Bowl chronicler
High school English and Latin teacher Caroline Boa Henderson, left, chronicled her experiences in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl.
I love to share intriguing stories of dedicated educators who exhibit talents in arenas outside of the classroom. This one is about Caroline Boa Henderson, a high school English and Latin teacher who is also celebrated as an author of her personal Dust Bowl survival story.
Caroline Boa was born on April 7, 1877, in Wisconsin, the eldest daughter of affluent farmers. Even as a young girl, Caroline dreamed of someday owning a piece of land she could call her own.
After her high school graduation, Caroline attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she earned her degree in languages and literature in 1901. The new graduate accepted her first teaching position in Red Oak, Iowa, where she taught high school English and Latin from 1901 to 1903. She then taught in Des Moines, Iowa, until 1907. Then, in pursuit of her childhood dream, Caroline relocated to Texas County, Oklahoma, where she staked out a homestead claim on a quarter section of land and moved into a one-room shack which she christened her castle. There she accepted a teaching position in the local school.
In 1908, Caroline married named Bill Henderson, a Texas County farmer. The couple established a farm in nearby Eva, Oklahoma. The following year, Caroline gave birth to a daughter they named Eleanor. When Eleanor came of age, the youngster enrolled at the University of Kansas, where she eventually completed her bachelor’s degree. In order to help pay for Eleanor’s education, Caroline relocated to Lawrence, Kansas, where the two women shared an apartment while Caroline taught school part-time. During this period, Caroline also enrolled in graduate courses in English at the University of Kansas. In 1935, she completed the requirements for her master’s degree.
During the years from 1931-1937, at the height of the Dust Bowl, Caroline published a series of letters and articles in the prestigious magazine Atlantic Monthly. These letters and articles chronicled the grueling conditions faced by farmers who elected to remain on their farms during the severe conditions presented by the Dust Bowl drought, as harsh a natural disaster as any our nation has seen, even in recent years. She also included descriptions of daily life on her own farm, including her experiences with housekeeping, canning, cooking, tending her vegetable and flower gardens, ironing, and caring for her chickens. Her letters and articles earned her a national following, and were included in a PBS special on the Dust Bowl created by Ken Burns in 2012. To read some excerpts from these published pieces, click on the link Letters from the Dust Bowl.
This very amazing teacher and talented author passed away on August 4, 1966, in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Beloved AP US History teacher Dorothy McGirt of Georgia
AP US History teacher Dorothy McGirt of Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia.
One of the most beloved educators at Henry W. Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia, was Dorothy McGirt. She taught Advanced Placement US History. She also served her school as the Chair of the Social Studies Department.
In 1984, Dorothy tackled the Advanced Placement teaching assignment. She was a “trailblazer in terms of introducing the program at Grady,” remembers former colleague Lisa Willoughby. Willoughby’s relationship with Dorothy goes way back. “She helped mentor me as I was starting out as a student teacher, then a teacher,” explains Willoughby. “She helped me figure out how to strike a balance between providing rigor and also being supportive to students and helping them be ready to do what they were doing,” she said.
Dorothy is also fondly remembered by former student Michael Fishman, who graduated from Grady in 1987. “She was a really good teacher,” Fishman said. “Very tough, but you learned a lot from her. Out of all the history teachers I had, she was probably the most challenging to have. She didn’t give you book work or anything like that, you had good discussions in her class,” he continued. “I think she left a really good impact on us. She just let us know that the … outside world is much tougher,” he concluded.
Sadly, Dorothy passed away on April 12, 2020, from coronavirus. She was 92 years old. To read more about Dorothy, read her obituary at The Southerner Online.
