March has been officially designated Women’s History Month, an annual event which celebrates the many accomplishments of women in all fields of endeavor. To aid you in your lessons as you observe Women’s History Month, you can download and share with your students these free colorful STEM Role Models posters and information about each of these inspirational women from this website: STEM Posters. Enjoy!
Dr. Annie Webb Blanton, the principal founder of the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society.
Because of my induction into the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society last weekend, I have been thinking a great deal about the organization’s principal founder, Texas educator Dr. Annie Webb Blanton. I have written about her before, but due to her remarkable achievements, I thought I would revisit the topc.
Annie was born on August 19, 1870, in Houston, one of seven children of Thomas Lindsay and Eugenia (Webb) Blanton. Her twin sister, Fannie, died as a child. As a young girl, Annie attended school in Houston and La Grange. After graduating from La Grange High School in 1886, she taught in a rural school in Fayette County. When her father died in 1888, Annie relocated to Austin, where she taught in both elementary and secondary schools. As she worked to support herself, Annie continued her studies at the University of Texas, where she graduated in 1899.
Shortly after her graduation from college, Annie was selected to serve on the English faculty of North Texas State Normal College, now known as the University of North Texas. She served in this capacity from 1901 to 1918. While there, she became active in the Texas State Teachers’ Association. She earned a reputation for being a strong believer in equal rights for women. During this time she also wrote a series of grammar textbooks. In 1916, Annie was elected president of the teachers’ union, the first woman to occupy the position.
In 1917 Texas suffragists found a strong supporter in Governor William P. Hobby, so they threw their considerable energy into his 1918 bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. In that election, the suffragists also encouraged Annie to run for the office of state superintendent of public instruction. The campaign was a bitter one, with false accusations made against the veteran teacher, but in the 1918 primary, Texas women were allowed to vote for the first time, so Annie was elected by a wide margin. Her victory in the general election in November made her the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office.
During her tenure as state superintendent, Annie inaugurated a system of free textbooks, revised teacher certification laws, raised teachers’ salaries, and made improvements to rural education. Annie was re-elected in November of 1920, when voters also passed the Better Schools Amendment, which she had proposed as a means of removing constitutional limitations on tax rates for local school districts. She served as state superintendent through 1922.
When her term ended, Annie returned to the University of Texas, where she received her Master’s degree in 1923. She taught in the UT Education Department until 1926, then took a leave of absence to earn her Ph.D from Cornell University. After returning to the University of Texas in 1927, she remained a professor of education there for the rest of her life.
During her lifetime, Annie published a number of books about education, including Review Outline and Exercises in English Grammar (1903), A Handbook of Information as to Education in Texas (1922), Advanced English Grammar (1928), and The Child of the Texas One-Teacher School (1936). In 1929 she founded the Delta Kappa Gamma society, an honorary society for women teachers, which in 1988 had an international membership of 162,000. She also was active in national educational groups and served as a vice president in the National Education Association in 1917, 1919, and 1921.
Annie Blanton never married, and she had no children of her own. She died in Austin on October 2, 1945, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Public schools are named for her in Austin, Dallas, and Odessa, and a women’s dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin has also been named after her.
Annie Blanton: a true chalkboard champion.
Author and retired educator Terry Lee Marzell inducted into prestigious Delta Kappa Gamma International Society.
Author Terry Lee Marzell was inducted into the prestigious Delta Kappa Gamma International Society on Saturday, March 2, 2019, in an impressive ceremony held at Sierra Lakes Golf Course in Fontana, California.
The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (DKG) has a long and rich history. The organization was founded in 1929 by Dr. Annie Webb Blanton and a group of eleven of her colleagues at the University of Texas, Austin. Dr. Blanton, who was a professor at the university and had served as state superintendent of public instruction in Texas, and her fellow women educators were prohibited from meeting together professionally, yet they believed there was a pressing need for an organization in which women educators could assist each other in their efforts towards becoming better teachers.
The organization has declared seven purposes. In brief, these are: To unite women educators in fellowship; to honor women who have excelled in the field of education; to advance women as professional educators; to support legislation that is in the best interests of education and women educators; to provide scholarships for outstanding women educators to further their study of the teaching profession; to stimulate personal and professional growth; and to involve women in international educational issues.
Since 1929, the DKG organization has spread to over all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and 17 international countries. Terry Marzell has been named one of 37 charter members of the newly-formed Kappa Beta chapter, which will serve Corona, Norco, Chino, and Chino Hills area.
To learn more about DKG, click on this link: Delta Kappa Gamma.
Eighth grade teacher, poet, and author Elizabeth Acevedo.
There are many examples of excellent teachers who have earned acclaim in arenas outside the classroom. One of these is Elizabeth Acevedo, an eighth grade schoolteacher who is also a poet and author of young adult novels.
Elizabeth, who identifies as Afro-Latina, was born to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republican. She was raised in New York. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts from George Washington University. She earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland.
As a 2010 Teach for America Corps participant, Elizabeth went into the classroom following her college graduation. She taught eighth grade in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
Elizabeth’s books include, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths published in 2016, and With the Fire on High published in 2019. Her first novel, The Poet X (2018), The Poet X, was published in 2018, and instantly became a New York Times Bestseller. The novel won the 2018 Boston Globe-Hornbook Award, the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and the 2019 Michael L. Printz Award.
Today, Elizabeth lives in Washington, DC. She is involved in a variety of poetry workshops at high schools and universities. She also works as a visiting instructor at an adjudicated youth center in Washington, DC, where she works with incarcerated women and with teenagers. In addition, she attends a lot of poetry slams as a host or judge, and she was once a coach.
“Being around teenagers all the time makes me aware of the emotional scale that they’re on and how they’re responding to things,” Elizabeth says. “If nothing else, it’s a reminder of how brilliant they are,” she asserts. “Some adults write down to young people, but, if you listen to them, they’ll tell you what they need. Oftentimes, I think they’re more able to handle difficult subjects than we give them credit for,” she concludes.
