Duke Southard: Teacher, coach, and award-winning author

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I often meet talented educators who have also become successful authors. This is certainly the case with Duke Southard, an English teacher and coach from New Hampshire who is also an award-winning author.

Duke’s credentials are impressive. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Villanova University, a private research university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned his Master’s degree from Rowan University, located in Glassboro, New Jersey. In addition, Duke completed the requirements for a Certificate of Advanced Study in Media Technology from Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Duke’s career as an educator began in 1962, when he accepted his first position as an English teacher and coach at Burlington City High School in Burlington, New Jersey. “The one important lesson I learned from a principal early on was to vary assignments at least every five years so that boredom and complacency did not set in,” recollects Duke. “Don’t have one great year of teaching, then use the same plans and approaches for the next thirty years trying to duplicate it.”

In addition to teaching, Duke coached football and track in New Jersey for eight years before moving to Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He then accepted a position as a coach and Library/Media Director for the Governor Wentworth School District. In 1988, he relocated to Conway in New Hampshire to become the Library Media Specialist in the K-12 Conway School District.

After a 36-year career, Duke retired in 1998. “I loved my career in teaching and coaching,” says Duke. “While it had a few difficult times, such as teaching in a predominantly black city high school in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated, I always felt indebted to my students, who supplied so much joy in my life.” For his outstanding contributions as a media professional and school librarian, Duke has been honored with an “EDie”, the New Hampshire Excellence in Education Award.

Since his retirement, Duke has published four novels and two nonfiction books. All of his novels have been selected as finalists for prestigious book awards, including the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards in 2013, 2014, and 2015. His short works have won first place and finalist awards in many competitions, including the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards and the Society of Southwestern Authors Writing Contests. His personal essay, “The Fallacy of Closure,” garnered first place in the 2016 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition

Duke currently lives in Green Valley, Arizona, where he is often engaged as a public speaker for schools, libraries, and community groups. You can view Duke’s works on amazon.com or visit his website at www.dukesouthard.com.

Hawaii’s Pat Saiki: History teacher and former member of US House of Representatives

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Many fine educators go on to successful careers in politics. This is certainly true of Patricia Hatsue (Fukuda) Saiki, a history teacher from Hawaii who has served in the both her Hawaii State House of Representatives, Hawaii State Senate, and in the US House of Representatives.

Pat was born on May 28, 1930, in the city of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. She was the oldest of three girls born to Kazuo and Shizue Fukuda. Her father was a tennis coach at Hilo High School and her mother was a seamstress.

Pat graduated from Hilo High School in 1948. Following her high school graduation, she enrolled at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1952. She then became a history teacher at Punahou School, a private co-educational college prep school in Honolulu. She also taught at Kaimuki Intermediate and Kalani High, both public schools in Honolulu. At one point, Pat taught in Toledo, Ohio, where she had moved with her husband, Stanley M. Saiki, so that he could complete his medical school residency.

A talented classroom teacher, Pat originally decided to go into politics when she became dissatisfied with working conditions that she and her fellow teachers in Hawaii faced. With her colleagues, she worked with the Hawaii Government Employees Association to establish a teachers’ chapter. Her colleagues then elected her to be the president of that chapter. In 1968, Pat joined the Republican Party and ran successfully for a seat in the Hawaii State House of Representatives, a post she held until 1974. It was at that time that the former educator was elected to the Hawaii State Senate, where she served her district until 1982. Later, Pat was elected to the US Congress, a post she held from 1987 to 1991. After she left Congress, she was appointed by President George HW Bush to be the Administrator of the Small Business Administration. She served in this capacity from 1991 to 1993.

In 1993, Pat returned to the teaching profession when she became a professor at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Today, Pat devotes her energy to advocate for women, minorities, and the elderly.

To read more about this amazing educator, see the articles about her at Densho Encyclopoedia and at US House of Representatives.

 

Sue Burns: The math teacher who became integral to the San Francisco Giants

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Sometimes in history talented educators make their mark in arenas other than the classroom. This is the case with Sue Burns, a math teacher who became an integral and beloved part of the San Francisco Giants franchise.

Sue was born in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 9, 1950. She earned her degree at California State University, East Bay, located in Hayward, California. Following her college graduation, she accepted a position as a math teacher at the Woodside Priory School, a private coeducational Catholic prep school located in Portola, Valley, California. She was employed there from 1983 to 1992.

Sue met and married Harmon Burns, an investor in a financial group that purchased the San Francisco Giants baseball team in 1992. Sadly, Harmon died of heart failure in 2006. Upon his death, Sue became the majority shareholder of the team and assumed the role of senior general partner. The former schoolteacher was extremely popular within the Giants organization. She attended almost every game, and often sat with Nikolai Bonds, the son of Giants outfielder Barry Bonds. In addition, Sue often traveled with the team when they went on the road and to Arizona for spring training.

In July, 2009, Sue discovered she had lung cancer. She succumbed to the disease a week later, on July 19, at the age of 58.  “Sue was a remarkable mother, grandmother, and friend whose loving and nurturing spirit touched everyone in the Giants family,” expressed Giants official Bill Neukom at the time of her passing. “Her unwavering loyalty to her beloved orange and black could be felt throughout the entire organization.”

To read more about this amazing lady, click on The Mercury News.

The instructional strategies Miracle Worker Anne Sullivan Macy used to teach Helen Keller

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Anne Sullivan Macy with Helen Keller Photo Credit: Public Domain

Anne Sullivan: this teacher’s name is synonymous with Miracle Worker. Anne is the remarkable teacher who worked with Helen Keller, an extremely intelligent blind and deaf child from Tuscumbia, Alabama. The relationship between the teacher and the student is explored in the play The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, an iconic piece of American literature that is frequently taught in public schools. This award-winning play depicts the exact moment at which, due to Anne’s expert instructional efforts, Helen was able to grasp the concept of language. This knowledge unlocked a world of isolation for the little girl, allowing her to connect with her fellow human beings, and making it possible for her to earn a university degree at a time when educating women was rare. The scene is sweet. But what strategies, exactly, did the miracle-working teacher use in order to achieve this breakthrough? After extensive reading on the subject, I think I may be able to identify a few of them.

First of all, Anne read every bit of published material available in her day about the education of handicapped students. Knowledge of pedagogy is the first step to effective practice. In addition to this, Anne had the “advantage” of personal experience, as she herself had wrestled with severe vision impairment as a result of trachoma. I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all met an educator who is particularly effective at working with students who are facing the same challenges the teacher himself faced as a youngster.

Second, Anne was a keen observer, and she made it a point to watch the normal processes of language acquisition. She then replicated those processes as best she could to fit the particular circumstances and needs of her student. Today, we would probably call this strategy recognizing brain-based learning, and coordinating teaching strategies to fit the way the brain naturally learns.

Also, experts generally agree that much of Anne’s success in teaching Helen language was attributed to the fact that the teacher always communicated to her student with complete sentences. Concrete nouns such as water or spoon, verbs such was pump or run, or adjectives such as hot or smooth,  may be easy to convey. But abstract ideas such as beauty or truth, or certain parts of speech such as pronouns and some prepositions are much more difficult to impart to an individual unable to see or hear. Yet Annie always used these words in her everyday communication with Helen anyway.

Fourth, Anne was especially adept at incorporating experiential learning into her lesson plans. The effectiveness of “learning by doing” has been well documented, but in a day and age when most instruction consisted of rote memorization without necessarily comprehending, Anne’s insistence on teaching through constructed experience was truly innovative. Wading through the creek water, climbing the tree, holding the chick as it hatched from the egg—experiences like these were the staples of Anne’s instructional program.

To learn more about Anne Sullivan Macy, I have included an abbreviated but concise biography of this amazing teacher in my book, Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Teachers who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students, which can also be found at amazon.com at the following link: Chalkboard Champions.