Tag Archives: Elementary Teachers

The Music Lives On, Due to Chalkboard Champion Hortense Parker Gilliam

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hparker2Throughout history, our lives have been genuinely enriched by legions of music teachers who have perpetuated the love of music in our young people. One such music teacher was Hortense Parker Gilliam, an elementary school music teacher who is the first known African American graduate of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

Hortense Parker was born in Ripley, Ohio, in 1859, the fourth of six children born to John Parker and Miranda (Boulden) Parker, a free black couple. Her mother was born free in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was born into slavery, but in 1845 he was able to buy his freedom. John Parker became a noted abolitionist, inventor, and industrialist. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, John guided hundreds of slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad. In fact, the Parker home has been renovated and is now designated a National Historic Landmark.

Hortense’s parents were determined that all of their children should get an education. As children, Hortense and her two younger sisters received a standard education in traditional subjects, and they also studied music. After her high school graduation in 1878, Hortense enrolled in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, now known as Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Her expenses were paid by a wealthy patron. The institution did not know she was a woman of color until she arrived on campus, but they did not cast her out. On the contrary, Hortense lived on campus in a dormitory along with 250 other students. Unlike many institutions of her day, Mt. Holyoke did not require its black students to live off campus. Hortense was remembered by her classmates as “a quiet ladylike girl, noted especially for her musical ability.” Because of her exceptional musical abilities, faculty and fellow students alike often asked her to play the piano in the seminary in the evenings after classes were done. She had aspirations to continue her music education in Europe upon her graduation, but unfortunately her patron passed away during her senior year. She graduated in 1883, the first known African American student to graduate from that institution.

After graduating from college in 1883, Hortense taught music and piano at Lincoln Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1906-1913. That same year she married James Marcus Gilliam, a graduate of Cornell University, and moved with him to St. Louis, where she taught music. During her long career, she also taught music at schools in New York and Indiana.

As the first African-American graduate of Mt. Holyoke, Hortense was featured in Our Path: Students of Color at Mt. Holyoke at the 2007 Alumnae Student Conference there. This chalkboard champion passed away on December 9, 1938, near St. Louis, Missouri.

Teaching in the School with No Name: The Remarkable Stacy Bess

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about-staceyHere is a teacher who is truly inspirational: Stacey Bess of Salt Lake City, Utah. As a first-year teacher, Stacey landed in a classroom set up in a storage shed in an area homeless shelter. The facility was literally referred to as the School With No Name. As you can imagine, her students wrestled with a variety of issues, including unstable living arrangements, domestic abuse, poverty, and alcohol and drug-abusing parents. Not the most desirable circumstances for learning. But this remarkable teacher created a safe and loving classroom environment for her kids. She went to battle with the local school board for a more suitable teaching space and better resources. And, oh, yeah, she raised her own family and defeated cancer at the same time.

You can read the story of the dynamic Stacey Bess in Beyond the Blackboard, available through amazon.com.

Pioneer Educator Olive Mann Isbell

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P_32405Pioneer and educator Olive Mann Isbell is a little known figure from California history, but she contributed to our state in a very big way. She is credited as being the first teacher in a school conducted in English in California.

In 1846, when Olive was only 22 years old, she and her husband, Dr. Isaac Isbell, traveled west in a Conastoga wagon as part of the Aram-Imus wagon train. The California territory had recently been severed from Mexico, and the Isbells arrived just as the Mexican army was poised to attack in an attempt to reclaim the land. To attempt to keep them safe, Olive and over two hundred American women and children were barricaded inside Mission Santa Clara de Asis, while the men were quickly drafted to defend the dilapidated fort. Inside the shelter, Olive, sensing the anxiety of the children, decided to organize a school to occupy their attention. The newly-arrived pioneer was well-suited to this work, being the niece of the famous educator Horace Mann and an experienced teacher from her home state of Ohio. With little more than a stick and sooty chalk, Olive conducted her lessons by day, and at night she nursed her fellow pioneers to health and melted down whatever metals she could find to make bullets.

When  Mexico finally laid down their arms and signed a truce with the United States on January 3, 1847, Olive’s Santa Clara Mission School became recognized as the first American school on California soil. This mission school property now belongs to the University of Santa Clara.

You can read more about this amazing educator in my new book, Chalkboard Heroes, now available from amazon.com.

Teacher Gabriel J. Campana: The Mayor of Williamsport, Pennsylvania

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GabePhotoHow astonishing is it that so many politicians were once school teachers? Such is the case for Gabriel J. Campana, an elementary school educator who has been the mayor of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, since 2008.

Gabriel was born July 6, 1963, in Williamsport, one of eleven siblings. His father, Dr. Louis F. Campana, was a local physician, and his mother, Rose Campana, is a retired nurse. As a teenager, Gabriel attended St. John Neumann Academy, a local parochial school, where he graduated in 1981.  Following his high school graduation, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and his master’s degree from Wilkes University, a private institution located in Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania. He earned a doctorate degree in administration from the University of Sarasota.

MayorCampana_CLC1For twenty years, Gabriel served as a fifth grade teacher at Stevens Elementary School in his home town of Williamsport. In addition to this teaching experience, he taught master’s degree classes at the College of New Jersey and he served as an adjunct assistant professor at Gratz College. In 2005, this remarkable educator was a recipient of the YMCA Racial Justice Award, and he has been named in Who’s Who in American Education.

The talented educator also served on  his home town’s city council. In November of 2007, he was elected the thirty-ninth mayor of the town of Williamsport. He ran on a platform of public safety and economic development. During his tenure as mayor, Gabriel continued to find time to work with young children. He is pictured here visiting Penn College’s Children’s Learning Center during the Week of the Young Child in 2008. The former teacher read a popular book aloud to the children and then gave a copy of the book to each youngster.

Still living on the same block where he grew up, Mayor Campana lives with his wife, Sonia, and their five children.

Reflections about Heroes: Twelve Courageous Educators who Have Earned the Title

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superteacher_colorIt seems to be a universal practice in classrooms to ask students to think about, talk about, and write about the topic of heroism. Teachers frequently ask, “Who are our heroes?” “What are the qualities of a hero?” “What actions are considered heroic?” Often, a common response to these questions is a hero is an individual who goes above and beyond the usual, the expected, or the required, and that a heroic act involves significant courage, risk, and sacrifice.

In my next book, Chalkboard Heroes, which will be available in about three months, you will find the stories of twelve courageous teachers in American history who took considerable risks and made substantial sacrifices. For example, there are the countless teachers who protect our country by serving in the armed forces and the National Guard. If the times call for it, they valiantly march off to war. Henry Alvin Cameron who fought in World War I and Francis Wayland Parker, a Civil War veteran, are but two of these soldier teachers. There are the social reformers, the chalkboard heroes who endanger their personal safety to bring about improved conditions and better lives for America’s disenfranchised citizens. Teachers like Dolores Huerta, the champion of migrant farm workers; Robert Parris Moses, the 1960’s civil rights activist; Prudence Crandall, who defied prevailing social convention to open a school for African American girls; Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffragist; and Zitkala Sa, who campaigned tirelessly for the constitutional rights of Native Americans. There are the courageous pioneers who take great risks to blaze a trail for others to follow. Educators like Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space; Willa Brown Chappell, the pioneer aviatrix who taught Tuskegee airmen to fly; Etta Schureman Jones, the Alaskan pioneer who landed in a POW camp in Japan during WWII; and Olive Mann Isbell, who immigrated to the West and established the first English school in California—while the Mexican American War raged all around her. And then there are the teachers who lay down their lives to protect the students whose safety has been entrusted to their care. Teachers like Dave Sanders, the chalkboard hero of Columbine High School.

These twelve are but a few of the countless heroic teachers in American history. Their stories are perhaps all the more remarkable when we consider that in our society, teaching is usually considered a safe profession, classrooms are typically considered safe places, teachers are not usually recognized as risk-takers. The accounts of the twelve chalkboard heroes presented here show us that these perceptions are not at all a reflection of reality.