Tag Archives: Pioneer Teachers

Alabama teacher, school counselor Evelyn Anderson championed the rights of the mobility-impaired

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Alabama teacher, school counselor, and paraplegic Evelyn Anderson was a Chalkboard Champion for the mobility-impaired. Photo Credit: the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame

It is always an inspiration to read stories about individuals who have overcome challenges to achieve success in their life. One of these is Evelyn Anderson, a classroom teacher and paraplegic from Alabama who championed the rights of the mobility-impaired.

Evelyn was born on Aug. 2, 1926, in Greensboro, Alabama. She was only four years old when she was hit by a stray .22 caliber bullet, and the incident left her spine severed. For the rest of her life, she was confined to a wheelchair or a gurney. On this “rolling table” she would lie prone, with her lower body covered, propped up on an elbow. Despite her challenges, Evelyn graduated with honors from Judson College, with a double major in Art and History.

After she earned her degree, Evelyn began teaching art at Greensboro High School in 1948. In the beginning, her employment was unofficial because Alabama law prohibited severely handicapped individuals from working as teachers. However, due to Evelyn’s inspiration, legislation to repeal the discriminatory law was enacted in 1953. The following year, the trailblazing educator became the first severely handicapped teacher hired by Alabama public schools. In addition to this victory, she inspired the city of Greensboro to provide accommodations for mobility-impaired individuals, even before required by law.

After teaching for a few years, Evelyn returned to college and in 1964 earned a Master’s degree in Counseling from the University of Alabama. She then taught English and Spanish and served as a guidance counselor at Greensboro High School.

In addition to her work in the classroom, Evelyn worked to make major contributions to her community. 1977, she served on the Alabama Governor’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. She was also a founding member of the Greensboro Friends of the Library.

Throughout her life, Evelyn earned many accolades for her work as an educator. In 1974, she was named an Outstanding Educator, and the following year, she was honored as the Outstanding Counselor of the Year. In 1977, she was recognized as the Alabama Handicapped Professional Woman of the Year.

After a career that spanned over 30 years, both official and unofficial, Evelyn retired in 1982. In 1976, Alabama Educational Television aired a short documentary film about her life as an educator and champion for disabled children. In 2011, she was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame.

Evelyn Anderson passed away on Oct. 7, 1998, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, following a brief illness. She was 72 years old. You can read more about this Chalkboard Champion at Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame.

 

Innovative educator Mary Catherine Swanson: Founder of AVID

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Innovative educator Mary Catherine Swanson developed the AVID program to help minority students  develop the skills necessary to succeed in college. Today, the program is employed globally in at least 16 countries.  Photo Credit: www.avid.org

Back in 1980, Clairemont High School in San Diego, California, suddenly faced a court-ordered integration order. Teachers at the predominantly white, suburban, middle-class school knew that their incoming minority students would need extensive remediation. As Clairemont’s staff scrambled for ways to meet the needs of these students, one innovative staff member came up with a groundbreaking idea. That staff member was English teacher Mary Catherine Swanson.

Mary Catherine believed strongly that with appropriate academic tools and support, minority and other under-represented students could succeed in a rigorous academic atmosphere just as well as their Clairemont classmates. To meet their needs, she developed an innovative instructional program called Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID). The program trained students in strategies for note-taking and test-taking, offered peer mentoring and tutoring, and sponsored cultural field trips.

Mary Catherine’s efforts produced astonishing results. Since the program’s inception, over 400,000 students have participated in the training. The program is so successful that today over 7,000 high schools in 47 states and 16 countries around the world have implemented it. Statistics show that of those students enrolled in AVID, 95% go on to enroll in a four-year college, and 85% of them graduate. To learn more about the AVID program, go to www.avid.org.

The overwhelming success of Mary Catherine’s work has earned her many honors. Among them are an A+ Award for Reaching the Goals of America 2000 from the US Department of Education; the EXCEL Award for Excellence in Teaching; and the Salute to Excellence from the American Association for Higher Education. She has also been recognized with the UC San Diego Remarkable Leader in Education Award and the Distinguished Achievement Award by the UC Davis Cal Aggie Alumni Association. She has also been recognized with honorary doctorates from UC San Diego and the University of LaVerne. Both CNN and Time Magazine named her America’s Best Teacher in 2001, and she was one of three 2001 recipients of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr., Prize in Education. Furthermore, Mary Catherine’s contribution to American education has been recognized by Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, who wrote, “I don’t know any single person in the country who has done more for our school children than AVID founder Mary Catherine Swanson.”

Mary Catherine Swanson retired in 2006, but she will always be known as a genuine Chalkboard Champion.

California’s Eliza Robbins Crafts was a pioneer educator and local history author of the Wild West

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Eliza Robbins Crafts was a pioneer educator and local history writer in the early days of San Bernardino County, California. Photo Credit:

There are many intriguing stories about intrepid pioneer educators who helped to settle the Wild West during the late 1800’s. One of them was Eliza Robbins Crafts, a teacher and writer who had an unmistakable impact on the settling of the San Bernardino area of Southern California.

Eliza was born Eliza Russell on Nov. 29, 1825, in Unadello Center, Otsego County, New York. As a young girl, she attended Madam Willard’s Female Seminary. She graduated from the school in 1847. The education she earned there was far greater than the typical young woman of her day. Once she completed school, Eliza migrated to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she worked as a teacher on a sugar plantation. There she met and married Ellison Robbins, a fellow educator from her home state of New York. Before long, the couple relocated to Santa Clara, California, where they taught school for three years. In 1858, the couple was persuaded to relocate to San Bernardino, where they were hired to lead the school system. The system was comprised of two one-room adobe structures that were built next door to each other. One was named Washington and the other was named Jefferson.

Unfortunately, Ellison succumbed to pneumonia in 1864. He was only 43 years old. Shortly thereafter, Eliza married Myron Harwood Crafts. But that marriage did not last long, as in 1886 Myron also succumbed to pneumonia. At the time, Eliza was 61, and found the estates she inherited from Ellison and Myron too much for her to handle. She sold her assets and moved to Redlands to live with her daughter, Rosabelle. During the next few years, Eliza authored a local history book entitled Pioneer Days in the San Bernardino Valley, which was published in 1906. The book contained a description of life in San Bernardino County in the early days, the disastrous flood of 1862, the Civil War years, the assassination of President Lincoln, and how the residents defended themselves when they received news that a marauding band of Southern sympathizers was headed their way.

Eliza Robbins Crafts was 85 years old when she passed away in February of 1910. She is interred at Hillside Memorial Park in Redlands, California. She will always be known in the San Bernardino area as a pioneer educator and local history author. To read more, click on this link to the online article published about her by the Redlands Area Historical Society.

 

Teacher Clara Comstock: She helped with Orphan Trains

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Clara Comstock

Teacher Clara Comstock, second from right, with a colleague and a group of homeless children she escorted on an Orphan Train. Circa 1910. Photo credit: Children’s Aid Society

In American history there are many examples of dedicated educators going above and beyond in order to help young students, both inside the classroom and in their personal lives. One of these was Clara Comstock, a hardworking teacher from New York.

Clara was born on July 5, 1879, in Hartsville, New York, the daughter of hardy pioneer stock. Her father was a farmer and blacksmith. As a young girl, Clara was educated at the Canisteo Academy in the neighboring town of Canisteo, New York. She graduated in 1895 at the age of 16 and spent the next several years working on her teacher’s training courses.

Clara inaugurated her career as a teacher in 1903 at the Brace Memorial Farm School in Valhalla, New York. Her students were New York City “street Arabs,” homeless boys that were orphaned, abandoned, or removed from their homes because their parents were deemed unfit or unable to adequately care form them. At the Farm School, these kids were taught fundamental literacy skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics, some vocational training, including carpentry, shoe-making, and box-making.

After a few years, in order to be of greater service to homeless kids, Clara accepted a position with the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), an organization which still exists today to benefit needy children. The CAS organized the famous Orphan Trains, small groups of children that were transported west and placed in foster homes on farms and in rural communities. Clara escorted many of these groups, conducted background checks on prospective foster parents, and made periodic checks on the children she placed. She did this work until her retirement in 1928, then she spent another two decades working for the CAS in-state foster care program.

During her lifetime, Clara placed more than 12,000 homeless children in homes, painstakingly keeping track of each one of them until they reached adulthood. She kept a personal diary and filled several trunks with meticulous records of the children she worked with. Decades later, these records became invaluable resources for Orphan Train riders who were seeking information about their origins.

You can read more about this amazing and dedicated teacher and the orphan train system in my book Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

Francis Wayland Parker: Pioneer of the Progressive Movement in Education

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New Hampshire’s Francis Wayland Parker, educator and Civil War veteran, was a pioneer in the Progressive Movement in education.  Photo credit: Public Domain.

At the turn of the of the 20th century, one of the most celebrated pioneers of the Progressive Movement in education was Colonel Francis Wayland Parker of New Hampshire.

In a time when modern ideas were not popular, this innovative educator promoted a philosophy that education should not emphasize standardization, rote memorization, and isolated drill. Rather, he advocated a curriculum that addressed the development of the whole student, including the child’s intellectual, physical, and moral growth. He created a model program that was strong on language development and geared towards teaching students to think and make decisions independently. Today we would recognize his strategies as teaching critical thinking skills and creative problem-solving.

Francis Parker was born on October 9, 1837, in Bedford, New Hampshire. At the tender age of 16 he became the village teacher, and when the Civil War broke out seven years later, this young educator enlisted as a private in the 4th New Hampshire Volunteer Army. It wasn’t long before he was promoted to lieutenant, then to lieutenant colonel, and then to commander. In May, 1865, Colonel Parker was captured by Confederate forces and held as a prisoner of war in North Carolina.

When the war was over, this Civil War veteran resumed his teaching career, first as a classroom teacher, and then as a principal. In 1872, the continuously evolving educator traveled to Germany to study pedagogy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. When he returned, he became the coordinator of a highly-acclaimed teacher-training institution In Chicago, Illinois.

Colonel Parker is an American hero in so many ways, and is undoubtedly a Chalkboard Champion in the truest sense of the word. You can read more about this remarkable historical figure in my second book, Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor, available from amazon.