Larisa Hovannisian, the Arizona special education teacher who founded Teach for Armenia

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Larisa

Larisa Hovannisian, the Arizona special education teacher who founded Teach for Armenia.

Sometimes a classroom teacher can make the most incredible strides for positive social change. One such educator is Larisa Hovannisian, an Arizona special ed teacher of Armenian descent who founded Teach for Armenia.

Larisa was born on October 21, 1988, in Yerevan, Armenia. Her mother is Armenian and her father is Irish American. When she was just a baby, Larisa’s family moved to California, where they lived for several years. Then the family spent several years living in Russia.

After her high school graduation in Moscow, Larisa returned to the United States, where she enrolled in St. Norbert College, a Catholic liberal arts college located in De Pere, Brown County, Wisconsin. There she earned her Bachelor’s degree in International Business and French, with a minor in Graphic Design. Her goal was to pursue a career in advertising.

But then the path of her life took a different turn. “My best friend from college, who graduated a year before I did, told me about a program called Teach for America,” Larisa once revealed. “Its goal was to recruit young and passionate college graduates and to place them for two years into the most disadvantaged schools in the country. That is how I ended up in Phoenix, Arizona,” she continued. There she worked with special education children with moderate to severe disabilities. Her placement lasted from June, 2010, until May 2012. While teaching, Larisa also earned a Master’s degree in Special Education from Arizona State University.

Once her two-year obligation for Teach for America was fulfilled, Larisa returned to her native Armenia. She became inspired to found a program similar to Teach for America in her homeland. Larisa founded and became the Chief Executive Officer for Teach for Armenia, a nonprofit organization that recruits college graduates and working professionals to serve as full-time teachers in Armenia’s poorest schools. “I have long believed that change—true, meaningful change—begins in our schools,” Larisa once declared.

Larisa Hovannisian: a true chalkboard champion.

 

Remembering Chalkboard Hero Michael Landsberry

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Michael Landsberry

Junior high school mathematics teacher and veteran Michael Landsberry sacrificed his life to save as many as 30 students from a teen gunman.

Sometimes it is sobering to remember what a heavy responsibility we teachers have when it comes to protecting our students from harm. And there are many examples of heroic educators who have paid the ultimate price to protect their kids. One such hero is Michael Landsberry, a junior high school math teacher from Reno, Nevada.

Following his graduation from high school in 1986, Michael served in the United States Marine Corps where he had risen to the rank of corporal. He served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and later became a member of the Nevada Air National Guard.

After his discharge, Michael attended college at Nevada State University, Reno, on the GI Bill. There he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics in 2001. Following his college graduation, Michael accepted a teaching position at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, a suburb of Reno, Nevada. In addition to being a math teacher, he also coached basketball, cross country, track, and volleyball, and he served as the girls soccer coach at Sparks High School. Michael quickly became a beloved teacher known for pushing his students, but doing it with love and compassion.

On October 22, 2013, Michael was getting ready for the morning bell, when a 12-year-old student suddenly opened fire on his classmates. After the first student was shot, the chalkboard champion’s military training in kicked in. He calmly walked toward the shooter, putting his hands up in a motion to try to talk the youngster into giving up his gun. The student shot him in the chest at point blank range. Michael later succumbed to his injuries, but his heroic actions gave the other students on the playground time to run to safety. He is credited with saving as many as 30 lives that day.

For his heroism, Michael’s name has been inscribed on the Memorial to Fallen Educators at the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas.

Herman Silas Pepoon: Medical doctor, scientist, and talented classroom teacher

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Herman Silas Pepoon

Herman Silas Pepoon, medical doctor and talented classroom teacher.

Many talented and dedicated educators came to the teaching profession after having first experienced success in some other career. This is true of Herman Silas Pepoon, a medical doctor who gave up his practice to became a high school science teacher.

Herman was born on January 21, 1860, in Warren, Joe Daviess County, Illinois. Herman earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Ubana-Champaign in 1881. After he earned this degree, he studied medicine, earning his medical degree in 1883 from Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago.

After earning his MD, Herman established a medical practice first in Nebraska, and later in Illinois. After ten years, in 1892, he gave up his medical practice and accepted a job as a science teacher at Lakeview High School, a public high school located on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. He taught there from 1892 to 1930. In addition to his classroom duties, Herman taught courses in botany for young people and local teachers at Chicago’s Academy. He also led field trips and gave public lectures. A prolific writer, in 1927 Herman published An Annotated Flora of the Chicago Area, an acclaimed identification source for local plants. He also published a botanical teaching manual entitled Studies of Plant Life: A Series of Exercises for the Study of Plants in 1900 with co-authors Walter R. Mitchell and Fred B. Maxwell. Over the years, Herman published numerous articles on botany, forestry, and ecology in respected scientific journals.

After he retired from teaching, Herman became a life member of the Chicago Academy of Sciences (CAS), which named him Honorary Curator of Botany for the institution in 1930. He also worked with the Illinois Natural History Survey helping with the collection and study of vascular plants.

This chalkboard champion passed away at the age of 81 on December 26, 1941. He is interred in Acacia Park Cemetery in Chicago.

Ann Clark: Teacher and author of books for Native American children

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Ann Clark

Ann Clark: Classroom teacher and acclaimed author of books for Native American children.

Throughout our country’s history, there have been many examples of dedicated educators who have worked with underprivileged student populations. One such teacher was Ann Nolan Clark.

Ann Clark was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on December 5, 1896. When she was 21, she graduated from New Mexico Normal School, known today as New Mexico Highlands University, located in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

After her college graduation, Ann inaugurated her teaching career as a professor of English at Highlands University. But the young educator wanted to work with younger students. In 1923,  she accepted a position teaching reading to Native American children in a one-room schoolhouse at the Black Rock School in Zuni. Later she taught in a school at Tesuque. Little did she know that this position would last twenty-five years.

While teaching in the Indian schools, Ann observed that the Native American children learned more easily when their primers were geared towards their own life experiences, so she began writing primers with characters and situations that honored the the Pueblo way of life. Many of these primers were later published by mainstream publishing companies. Eventually, Ann broadened her scope and wrote children’s books with Navajo, Sioux, Finnish, and Hispanic characters. In addition to these stories, the prolific teacher also published a number of professional articles under the pseudonym Marie Dunne.

Between 1940 and 1951, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs published fifteen of Ann’s books. Her book In My Mother’s House, illustrated by Pueblo artist Velino Herrera, earned a Caldecott Honor Book Award in 1942. During the 1940s, Ann also wrote multi-cultural books for the Haskell Foundation and the Haskell Indian Nations University at Lawrence, Kansas. One of them was The Slim Butte Raccoon, illustrated by Andrew Standing Soldier.

In 1945, the Institute for Inter-American Affairs funded an educational trip for Ann to travel to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. Her experiences on this trip led her to write such books as Magic Money, Looking-for-Something, and Secret of the Andes, which garnered her the 1953 Newberry Medal. Ann earned other awards as well. She was given the Distinguished Service Award by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1962, and the Regina Medial by the Catholic Library Association in 1963.

This remarkable educator passed away on December 13, 1995. During her lifetime, she published over forty books, 31 of them about Native American culture.