Choir teacher Kaitlin Holt: The Chalkboard Hero of Saugus High School

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Choir teacher Kaitlin Holt: The Chalkboard Hero of Saugus High School.

The backbone of any school is the teachers, who sometimes act in incredibly heroic ways. This was proven true when a troubled student opened fire on his classmates at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, on Fri., Nov. 15. One of the Chalkboard Heroes of that day was choir teacher Kaitlin Holt.

Kaitlin was teaching a class when five students suddenly bolted inside her classroom, claiming there was an active shooter outside. One of the students had been shot in two places. The quick-thinking educator grabbed a gunshot wound kit and immediately began to address the injured student’s wounds. Then she directed the students to block the doors to her classroom with rolling mirrors and a grand piano. She told them to turn off their phones, turn off the lights, and take shelter in her office.

Outside the choir room, the 16-year-old shooter killed two of his classmates, wounded three others, and then turned the gun on himself. He later died from his self-inflicted wounds.

Kaitlin says the staff received training for an active shooter situation last January. She insists she’s not a hero, she just reacted. But being required to instantly shift from being a teacher to being a paramedic was tough. “That should not be part of the teacher’s job,” she asserted. “I should not feel like I needed to be trained like a paramedic to save someone’s life and deal with the consequences of that.”

In spite of the trauma of that day, the heroic teacher is ready to return to her classroom. She says she wants her classroom to be a safe space for students, and she wants to be there for them. “I’m ready to do whatever my students need me to do,” she declared. “I want to help them rebuild.”

To read more about Kaitlin, click on this link to KTLA Channel 5.

Composer, playwright, actor, and former teacher Lin-Manuel Miranda

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Composer, lyricist, singer, actor, playwright, and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda is also a former English teacher.

Almost everyone has heard of composer, lyricist, singer, actor, playwright, and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda. He’s probably best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musical Hamilton. But did you know that he was once a junior high school English teacher?

Lin-Manuel was born Jan. 16, 1980, in New York City, the son of Puerto Rican parents. His father, Luis Miranda, Jr., was a political consultant father. His mother, Luz Towns-Miranda, was a clinical psychologist. Lin-Manuel has one sister, also named Luz. The family lived in the Hispanic neighborhood of Inwood in Manhattan.

The Miranda children were raised in a musically-oriented family. Both siblings took piano lessons. The music of Broadway featured prominently in the home, but Lin-Manuel also developed an appreciation for hip-hop, including the music of the Beastie Boys, Boogie Down Productions, and Eric B. & Rakim.

During his pre-teen and teenage years, Lin-Manuel attended Hunter College’s elementary and high schools. During these years, he performed in student stage productions. Once he graduated from high school, he enrolled at Wesleyan University, where he majored in theater studies.

After college, Lin-Manuel accepted a teaching position. He taught seventh grade English for one year. Then he became a substitute teacher at his alma mater, Hunter College High School. That’s where he was working when his musical In the Heights caught the interest of Broadway producers.

“Hunter had asked me to stay on to continue to teach part time,” the former teacher remembered. But here came a chance to follow his dreams on Broadway. He asked his father, “What should I do? Should I keep teaching or should I just kind of sub and do gigs to pay the rent, and really throw myself into writing full time?”

His father responded with a heartfelt letter. “I really want to tell you to keep the job — that’s the smart ‘parent thing’ to do — but when I was 17, I was a manager at the Sears in Puerto Rico. I basically threw it all away to go to New York, [and] I didn’t speak a lot of English. It made no sense, but it was what I needed to do,” Lin-Manuel recalled the letter said. “It makes no sense to leave your job to be a writer, but I have to tell you to do it,” the elder Miranda advised. “You have to pursue that if you want.” The former teacher’s success is, as they say, history.

Since then, Lin-Manuel has garnered three Grammy Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship. He was also honored at Kennedy Center in 2018. But one of his favorite trophies is the one he earned when he was a junior in high school. “Because I got straight C’s in math all through high school,” he once confessed. The award, he said, “is on my shelf next to my Grammy.”

To read more about the life of Lin-Manuel Miranda, follow this link to Biography.

Peggy Bennett: Special Ed teacher and Minnesota politician

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Former Special Education teacher Peggy Bennett also serves as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Many excellent classroom teachers also serve as successful politicians. One of these is Peggy Bennett, a Special Education teacher who is currently in office as a member of the House of Representatives for Minnesota.

Peggy was born July 3, 1958. She grew up in White Bear Lake, Ramsey County, Minnesota. As a young girl, she attended Westonka High School in Mound, Minnesota. Following her high school graduation, she enrolled in Crown College in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota. There she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Education in 1980. She earned a Master’s degree in Special Education from St. Cloud State University in 1981.

After she earned her degrees, Peggy accepted a position as a Special Education teacher in Albert Lea in 1981. She taught a K-1 transition class for Special Education and regular education students for seven years before becoming a first grade teacher. In 2011, Peggy garnered the Albert Lea Area Teacher of the Year award. By the time she retired in 2015, her career as an educator spanned a total of 33 years.

While in the classroom, Peggy often brought her dog, Colter, to school. The shepherd pup helped her teach first grade students how to read. Colter was even featured on an episode of Fox and Friends in June 2014.

In 2018, the talented educator was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives on the Republican ticket to represent District 27A. Representative Bennett was first elected in 2014, earning 53% of the votes in a three-candidate race, and again in 2016 with 61.7% of the votes.

As a representative, Peggy serves as the Assistant Minority Leader. She is a member of the Committees for Education Policy, Education Finance, and Capital Investment. She has focused her efforts on access to and affordability of health care, mental health for students, foster care, and increasing student access to trades education.

The inventive Jeremiah Murray uses “meat sweats” to teach history lesson

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US History teacher Jeremiah Murray shows up to class wearing “meat sweats” as a visual assist to teach concepts related to his course material.

Some educators will do anything to teach a lesson in their class. This is certainly true of Jeremiah Murray, a US History teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Eastvale, California.

Jeremiah showed up at school this week in a set of Arby’s “meat sweats,” which he says are really difficult to obtain. “This may seem weird, but I have been trying to get these meat sweats from Arby’s for about two years,” confessed the inventive educator. “I have asked Arby’s on multiple occasions from multiple platforms, only to always be denied,” he continued. “I wanted them for when I teach about the Progressive Era and the Meat Inspection Act,” he explained.

Evidently one of Jeremiah’s students reached out to Arby’s, bombarding the company with daily emails until she finally got a response to the request. “It came with a handwritten note from corporate Arby’s thanking me for impacting students, and a gift card,” Jeremiah says. And all the credit goes to the student, the teacher claims. “She literally got me something that cannot be bought,” he said. “And the kicker, the student didn’t even seek credit. She said it was from the whole class,” he said.

“I absolutely love what I do and am incredibly blessed to have all of my amazing students,” Jeremiah concluded.