Teacher Winchel Bacon: Part of the Underground Railroad

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Teacher Winchel Bacon: Abolitionist and member of the Underground Railroad.

In many cases hardworking school teachers become involved in important social causes. This is true of Winchel Bacon, a schoolteacher, farmer, businessman, and politician from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who participated in the Underground Railroad.

Winchel was born August 21, 1816, in Stillwater, New York, the son of Samuel and Lydia Barber Bacon. For two years, he worked as a clerk in Troy, New York, before joining his parents in their 1837 move to Butternuts, New York. On July 4, 1838, the young Winchel married Delia Blackwell, a native of Butternuts. For four years the couple ran a farm in Butternuts, while Winchel taught school in the village during the winters.

On September 2, 1841, the Bacons ventured west. They travelled from Utica to Buffalo, New York, by steamer, and from there to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From Milwaukee the young schoolmaster and his wife traveled west to what was then called Prairieville. This town in now known as Waukesha. There they settled for the remainder for their lives. Winchel continued to farm and teach school. From 1843, this intrepid pioneer ran a local newspaper and engaged in the wagon-making and blacksmithing business, in partnership with his brother-in-law Charles Blackwell and his friend, Edmund Clinton. In 1850 Winchel traded the business he’d built in Waukesha for a steam-powered sawmill located in nearby Brookfield.

Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the abolitionist schoolteacher participated in the Underground Railroad. He even sheltered at least one fugitive slave in his own home. He was also active in organizing first the Liberty Party and then the Free Soil Party in Wisconsin. In 1852, he was elected to one term in the Assembly from Waukesha as a Free Soiler. Additionally, Winchel took an active role during the Civil War. In 1863, he was appointed paymaster in the army by President Lincoln. He was stationed at St. Louis.

After the war, Winchel used his influence to establish the Reform School located at Waukesha. As an acting commissioner, he had charge of the school’s accounts and disbursed the money until the school was opened. For several years he was a trustee of the State Insane Hospital. He also served as a trustee of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. He was president of the Waukesha Agricultural Society for several years, and also served as a member of the Chicago University’s Board of Trustees. He was also a member of the Masonic Order of the Knights Templar.

In his later years, the former teacher was afflicted with a heart condition. At the age of 78, Winchel passed away at his home on March 20, 1894. He is buried in Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.

Yoshiko Uchida writes about Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII

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Many teachers are busy creating lessons for the second semester. Some of these lessons may be about World War II war relocation camps. If you are, you will no doubt 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 Japanese American family.

In the book, the author describes her life as one of 110,000 Japanese American internees, many of whom were American citizens. Following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, these individuals were incarcerated in relocation camps. As the daughter of Japanese immigrants, Yoshiko was a twenty-year-old student in her senior year at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco at the time. She describes her existence before the bombing, and daily life in the relocation camp. In the specific case of Yoshiko, her family was incarcerated first in Tanforan, California, and then in Topaz, Utah, for the duration of World War II.

Her purpose in writing Desert Exile is to describe an internment camp experience, and how she felt when she was  imprisoned by her own government simply because she happened to look like the enemy.

As a children’s author, Yoshiko has created a canon of Japanese American literature where none existed before. She is considered the first Nissei writer to devote an entire career to writing for young people about her own cultural heritage. In this role, she has offered important books for young readers of all ethnic backgrounds.

You can read Desert Exile for your own edification. Or you can suggest it as leisure reading for your students. Or you might want to 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.com.

Art teacher and Miss America pageant contestant Ariel Beverly

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Miss Illinois 2019 Ariel Beverly, a former art teacher at Glennwood High School, competed in the Miss America pageant this week.

There are many fine teachers who have earned fame for accomplishments outside of the classroom. One of these is Ariel Beverly, a former high school art teacher from Illinois who was crowned Miss Illinois 2019. This week, the educator competed in the Miss America 2020 pageant.

Ariel has long been passionate about arts education. During her college years, she taught art classes at Infinite Heart Studios in Bloomington, Illinois. She worked there from 2014 to 2017. “This was my first teaching position during which I created and taught art lessons for long-term weekly courses, as well as week-long summer camps,” Ariel described. “I became comfortable with several art medias, as well as teaching many different age groups, spanning from second grade to early high school,” she continued.

To refine her instructional skills, Ariel earned a Bachelor’s degree in Art Teacher Education from Illinois State University in 2017. She completed her student teaching at Evans Junior High School and Central Catholic High School, both located in Bloomington, Illinois. She also worked for one semester at Central Catholic as a substitute teacher.

After earning her teaching credential, Ariel accepted a position at Glenwood High School in Chatham, Illinois. She taught there for one year, and then resigned to return to Chicago. But she hasn’t lost her fervor for arts education. Currently, the young beauty queen is focused on advocating for arts education. “Currently, over 80% of Illinois schools do not require students to take a single course in the arts in order to graduate,” Ariel points out. According to statistics, declares Ariel, lower socio-economic students who attend schools without any art program are five times less likely to graduate from high school than students who have access to art education. To combat this inequity, Ariel has collected and donated over $10,000 worth of art supplies to school art programs.

Ariel did not begin to enter pageants until her sophomore year in college. She garnered the title of Miss Illinois 2019 last June. With that title, she became eligible to compete in the Miss America pageant this week.

To learn more about Ariel and her work in the classroom, see this link from Media Release.

Teacher George Anderson named Iowa’s 2020 State Teacher of the Year

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Teacher and assistant football coach George Anderson named Iowa’s 2020 State Teacher of the Year.

Today we shine a spotlight on educator George Anderson, a teacher and coach from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. George has just been named his state’s 2020 Teacher of the Year.

The honored educator teaches at John F. Kennedy High School, where he has worked for 13 years. There he teaches history and also serves as the assistant football coach. He is also a member of his school’s leadership team.

George was raised in the Murrells Inlet area of Garden City, South Carolina. He graduated from Socastee High School. As a young man, he served his country in the US Marine Corps. While in the military, he was an infantry scout for the Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. When he received his discharge in 1999, he moved to Iowa and took a job as a construction framer. While working in this job, he worked his way through college. In 2006, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Social Science Education from the University of lowa.

“As a teacher, I like active rooms, students moving around and discussing the material with other students,” George says. “I like to see students engage with the material of history in a way that isn’t just fact recollection or sequencing events. I want student-centered dynamics in the classroom,” he continues. “I do not want to be the center of attention,” he confesses.

To read more about this Chalkboard Champion, see this article published in The Gazette.

The amazing Troy McAllister: Teacher and championship-winning football coach

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The amazing Troy McAllister: Teacher and championship-winning football coach

There are many talented educators who also serve as exemplary athletic coaches. One of these is Troy McAllister. He is a teacher and football coach at Wendell Phillips Academy High School, a public school located on the southside in Chicago, Illinois.

Troy has been the coach of the Phillips Academy Wildcats since 2010. When he first took the job, only ten players were on the team. In the ten years since he assumed the helm, his teams have won two Call 4-A state championships. Currently, the Wildcats are currently ranked Number 93 in the High School Football America 100 national rankings.

But Troy does more for his players than simply teach them winning football plays. He set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to provide healthy pre-game meals for his players. “Due to the lack of funds, our school and our boys have pre-game diets that are either nonexistent or devoid of nutrition,” Troy described. “I am raising money to be able to buy food for our boys for pregame meals. It seems obvious, but having enough energy to play four quarters of football could mean the difference between making history or not. However, our kids do not always have that choice,” he explained. Through the fundraising site, the Chalkboard Champion was able to raise more than $5,300 towards his goal of $7,000.

For his work on the field, Troy garnered the 2018 Gatorade Coaching Excellence Award, a national award that recognizes the best coaches throughout the country.

To learn more about Troy, click on this link to an article about him published on USA Today.