Tag Archives: Celebrity Teachers

Remembering Christa McAuliffe: The First Teacher in Space

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$ROLQWTAWithout a doubt, one of the saddest days of my teaching career was the day our nation lost the first educator to go into space, New Hampshire history teacher Christa McAuliffe. Fairly new to the profession, I was so proud that a fellow teacher had been selected as the first civilian in space, and a little star-struck by the professionalism, intelligence, and infectious enthusiasm of the chosen candidate, selected from among 11,000 other highly-qualified applicants.
While on her mission, Christa planned to write a journal of her experiences as an astronaut from the perspective that even an ordinary citizen can take center stage in the making of history. She was to have been the perfect example of that. Additionally, she was scheduled to perform lessons and simple scientific experiments aboard the space shuttle which would be viewed by students in classrooms all over America.
Tragically, Christa was one of seven astronauts killed when the space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after lift-off. The journal she never got to finish was replaced by A Journal for Christa: Christa McAuliffe, Teacher in Space, written by Grace George Corrigan, Christa’s grief-stricken mother. The book is a tender tribute to an extraordinary teacher.A Journal for Christa can be ordered form amazon. I have also included a chapter about Christa McAuliffe in the book I am currently writing, tentatively entitled Chalkboard Heroes.

Chalkboard Champion John Houston Ingle Was Also a Successful Actor

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John IngleMany chalkboard champions have enjoyed successes in professions in addition to education. One such teacher is John Houston Ingle, who is probably best known as a Hollywood actor who played the part of Edward Quartermain on the TV soap opera General Hospital. He has also appeared in episodes of The Office, The Golden Girls, Night Court, and Boy Meets World. He has also appeared in films such as Death Becomes Her, Robocop 2, The Land Before Time, and Heathers.

This talented educator was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1928. He graduated from Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, California. After high school, John graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He began his career as an educator teaching English and theater in 1955 at  Hollywood High School, and then transferred to Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California in 1964. During his tenure there, his students included Nicolas Cage, Richard Dreyfuss, Barbara Hershey, Swoozie Kurtz, Stefanie Powers, and David Schwimmer. He also taught at UCLA. John retired from the teaching profession in 1985.

John Houston Ingle, chalkboard champion and Hollywood actor, passed away in 2012 at the age of 84.

Chalkboard Champion and Actress Myra Davis Hemmings

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Many chalkboard champions have enjoyed successes in fields other than education. One such individual is Myra Davis Hemmings, a teacher of English and drama at Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio, Texas. Myra’s career as an educator spanned fifty-one years, but she can also boast about significant accomplishments in theater and film.

This gifted teacher and actress was born in Gonzales, Texas, in 1887, the daughter of Henry Davis and Susan (Dement) Davis. After graduating from Riverside High School in San Antonio, Texas, in 1909, Myra enrolled in Washington D.C.’s all-black Howard University. During her college years, Myra had the distinction of being president of both the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. She graduated from Howard in 1913 and immediately began her career in the classroom.  Later, Myra returned to the university to earn her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Speech Department in 1947. In her later years, she was a national vice president, a former regional director, and an active member of the National Council of Negro Women. She was also a member of the NAACP.

In 1922, Myra married John W. Hemmings, a former Broadway actor. As a drama teacher, Myra directed plays from the 1920s to the 1950s at the Carver Community Cultural Center in San Antonio. She also became active as a director in the San Antonio Negro Little Theater.She and her husband helped to organize the Phyllis Wheatley Dramatic Guild Players. In addition to all this, the talented teacher appeared in three films.

Myra  Davis Hemmings passed away in San Antonio in 1968. She was 73 years old. Both the classroom and the theater miss this chalkboard champion greatly.

Talented Musician Conrad Johnson Chooses Career as a Music Educator Instead of Fame and Fortune

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94fd76bf924cd4922268ec9fd6206a54[1]Many music teachers and jazz aficionados have probably heard of Conrad Johnson, Sr., a music educator from Houston, Texas. In addition to his role as a remarkable educator, Conrad was a phenomenal musician.

Conrad once played with the legendary Count Basie, and Erskine Hawkins once tried to persuade him to join his orchestra. Conrad declined the fame and fortune because he didn’t want to leave his family or his give up teaching. “Conrad Johnson is one of Houston’s unsung cultural heroes,” says Rick Mitchell, former pop music critic for the Houston Chronicle. “He could have made a national name for himself with his two big bands. Instead he chose to devote his career to educating Houston’s future musicians. He is retired from the school system, but he’s still hard at work as an educator.”

Born in Victoria, Texas, the young Conrad was nine years old when his family moved to the port city of Houston. After graduating from Yates High School, Conrad attended Houston College for Negroes, and then Wiley College in Marshall in eastern Texas, where he graduated in 1941. He started his career as a music educator at Kashmere High School that same year.

Conrad made a lasting contribution to music when he formed the Kashmere Stage Band, an internationally-known school orchestra that won a number of awards during its decade-long existence. His kids always called him “Prof.” Under Prof’s tutelage, the student musicians in the Kashmere Band won forty-two out of the forty-six competitions they entered between 1969 and 1977. They recorded eight albums featuring more than twenty original compositions by Conrad, and they went on tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe.

In 1978, following a thirty-seven-year career, Conrad retired from his position at Kashmere High School. In his retirement, he continued to remain active in shaping music in Houston by conducting summer programs and in-home tutoring. In 2000, the talented educator was inducted into the Texas Bandmasters Hall of Fame. The Conrad O. Johnson School of Fine Arts, a magnet school at Kashmere High School, is named after him. This wonderful teacher and musician passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.

 

The Original "Betty Crocker" Was an English Teacher

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41591_111682522225950_8580_n[1]Betty Crocker was an icon of American housewifery in the 1950s, but did you know her image was actually that of Adelaide Hawley Cumming, an English teacher? This remarkable educator portrayed the fictional Betty Crocker on television in a half-hour show called The Betty Crocker Show, and she also starred in walk-on commercials on the Burns & Allen Show, where comedian George Burns would say to his wife, “I don’t know how to bake a cake, Gracie, but here is Betty Crocker to show us how.”

Adelaide was born in 1905 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. A vaudeville performer and broadcast pioneer, Adelaide majored in piano and voice at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, New York. Following her graduation from college, she taught music for two and a half years at the Alabama College School of Music in Montevallo, Alabama. From 1937 to 1950 she was the host of the Adelaide Hawley Program, first on NBC radio and then on CBS. At the height of her career, Adelaide was a nationally recognized figure, second only to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. According to Adelaide’s daughter, Marcia Hayes, the teacher/actress was a feminist in her private life, and was not especially fond of cooking. “I am merely the manifestation of a corporate image,” she once told autograph-seeking fans. She practiced her autograph as Betty Crocker by copying the signature from the top of the cake mix box.

When General Mills replaced her with a more updated image in 1964, Adelaide went back to school, earning a doctorate in speech education from New York University in 1967. She taught English to second-language learners in Washington state until her death at age 93 in 1998, a career as an educator that spanned nearly thirty years.