Tag Archives: Best Practices

Celebrating Retired Teachers Week

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This week, educators all around the state of California are celebrating Retired Teachers Week. The celebration will span the week of November 1-7. This year is the 22nd year that the celebration is being observed.

After years, and sometimes decades, of giving selflessly to their students, their schools, and their communities, California’s retired teaches continue to give back through their wallets and their passion for volunteer work. Though some people would say that retired teachers and their pensions are a drain on the economy, facts and figures show that the opposite is true. Retired teachers pay $1.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. In addition, they donate nearly 2 million hours in volunteer work which has been valued at nearly $61 million. Furthermore, members of the California Retired Teachers Association (CalRTA) have donated more than $600,000 in grants, scholarships, and donations to schools and current and future teachers last year.

CalRTA has had a long history of working on behalf of the state’s retired educators. The organization was founded in 1929, while the Great Depression was in full swing, when a small group of teachers organized to fight for retirement security for the state’s retired educators. “Our early leaders showed us what dedication, compassion, and determination can accomplish,” observed Dr. James Mahoney, CalRTA State President. “Today we’re trying to live up to their example as we continue our fight for retirement security while also giving back to our local communities and protecting public education.”

To learn more about the California Retired Teachers Association, follow this link to their website calrta.org.

Celebrating the Dia de los Muertos…

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Today, all throughout the American Southwest and elsewhere, our Mexican American students are celebrating the Dia de los Muertos, also known as the Day of the Dead. The annual observance is a special day set aside to remember and honor the memory of beloved relatives who have passed away.

Here is a wonderful article that explains in detail the origins and practices of the Dia de Los Muertos. To see more photos, visit the School Arts Room, an art education blog for K-12 art teachers. Enjoy!

Photo credit: School Arts Room.

Kamehameha schools preserve Native Hawaiian culture

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Kamehameha Schools, Maui campus located in Pukalani, Maui. (Photo credit: Kamehameha Schools)

While conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned a great deal about numerous types of schools that I had never heard about in my thirty-odd years as an educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? One type of school I learned about that I found particularly intriguing is the Kamehameha School located in the beautiful state of Hawaii.
Kamehameha Schools were first established in 1887 at the bequest of Bernice Bishop, also known as Princess Pauahi, a member of the Hawaiian royal family when the state was still a territory. Princess Pauahi and her beloved husband, an American named Charles Reed Bishop, had no children of their own, and so when she passed away in 1882 at the age of 52, she directed that her vast estate should be used to benefit and educate underprivileged Native Hawaiian children. Two schools were built: one for boys and one for girls. Eventually the two schools were merged to form a co-ed school, now located on a six-hundred-acre campus on the main island of Oahu overlooking Honolulu Harbor. Other branches of the school have been built on neighboring Hawaiian islands.
Kamehameha Schools serve the important function of preserving Native Hawaiian culture, history, and language. One of the ways this is done is through the annual choral competition known as the Kamehameha Song Contest, where traditional Hawaiian songs and dances as well as new compositions in the genre are performed by the students. This is a wonderful tradition that goes back 45 years.
When I think of Chalkboard Champions, my first thought is of teachers, of course, but individuals such as Princess Pauahi who support schools financially and with their volunteer hours are also heroes to our students!

Read more about Kamehameha Schools in my book Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

Industrial schools educated abandoned, orphaned children

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Ohio Reform Farm, also known as Boys Industrial School, established in 1857.  (Photo credit: Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff historical Society)

Many times while I am reading biographies about remarkable teachers or conducting other research, I come across a description of a type of school that I am unfamiliar with. I always enjoy learning about various types of schools, and I am eager to share my newly-acquired knowledge with others.

One school I have been reading about is the industrial school. An industrial school was an institution commonly established around the turn of the twentieth century. Although these schools were popular way back in history, they are not unheard of today.
An industrial school is a boarding school that provided for the children’s basic needs for housing, food, and medical care. Often these schools were established to provide a means for caring for children who had been orphaned, neglected, or abandoned. Sometimes these institutions provided for those youngsters who were deemed incorrigible.
Today, these children are typically cared for through adoption or placement in foster homes, and they are educated in regular public schools. But in the past century, industrial schools served a valuable service for these needy kids.
In the industrial school, students were taught vocational skills that would allow them to seek gainful employment once they came of age. Girls typically received training in the domestic arts or needle trades, and boys were taught vocational skills such as carpentry, shoe-making, or box-making. In addition, the young people were taught fundamental literacy skills in such subjects as reading, writing, and mathematics.
You can read more about various industrial schools in my book, Chalkboard Champions, available from amazon.

The normal school: A place to train Chalkboard Champions

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Framingham University, the first state supported normal school where future teachers were trained in pedagogy and curriculum design.

As I conduct my research about the numerous talented and dedicated Chalkboard Champions in American history, I sometimes come across terms that describe institutions of learning that were unfamiliar to me before I did my research. This was the case when I first came across the term “normal school.”

From my study, I learned that a normal school is an educational institution which provided training for high school graduates who had decided to become teachers. Today, these institutions are typically called “teachers’ colleges.” Much like teacher training colleges today, the original normal schools offered advanced courses in subjects that teachers would be expected to teach to their students. The school also provided instruction on how to organize and present lessons, what today we would call pedagogy and curriculum design. The term “normal school” derived from the intention of establishing teaching standards or norms.

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in 1823 by Samuel Read Hall in Concord, Vermont. Samuel Read Hall was an educator who, while serving as a headmaster of an academy, quickly discerned that the teachers in his employ needed to normalize or standardize their base of knowledge and their instructional practices. And so the first normal school in the United States was formed, based on models already founded in France and Germany.

The first state-sponsored normal school was established in 1839 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1839. That educational institution later became Framingham State University, and is depicted in the sketch above.

Originally, both public and private normal schools offered a two-year course beyond the high school level, but in the 20th century, teacher training requirements were extended to a minimum of four years.

To read more about normal schools, see this link to the New World Encyclopedia