Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

Teacher Miriam Del Banco earned acclaim as an author and poet

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Teacher and principal Miriam Del Banco was also an acclaimed author and poet. She is pictured here in 1931. Photo credit: Public Domain

I am always excited to share the story of a talented educator who has earned accolades for their work as writers. One of these is Miriam Del Banco, a teacher and principal who earned acclaim as an author and poet.

Miriam Del Banco was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 27, 1858. Her father was a respected rabbi and her mother was a homemaker. Sadly, Miriam’s father passed away when she was just an infant, and and Miriam went to live with an uncle in St. Louis, Missouri. She enrolled in school there, and even as a child, she displayed remarkable talent as a poet.

When she grew up, Miriam attended Missouri State Normal School (now known as Missouri State University) in Springfield. She earned her PhD from DePaul University in 1921.

Once she completed her initial degrees, Miriam relocated to Chicago, where her mother was already living. In 1885, she accepted a position as a public school teacher in Chicago schools. Four years later she became an assistant principal at Von Humboldt School, and in 1904 she was named the principal of McClellan Elementary School. In 1908 she became the principal of Motley Public School.

In addition to her work as an educator, Miriam was also a prolific writer and translator. She translated Kayserling’s “Die Jüdischen Frauen,” which appeared serially in the columns of the Jewish Advance and was published in Chicago in 1881 and Alberti’s “Ludwig Börne,” which appeared in the Menorah, published in 1888-1889. Miriam also published articles in educational journals and she wrote many poems, both Jewish and secular in content, that were published to high acclaim. A collection of her work entitled Poetry and Prose was published posthumously.

During her lifetime, Miriam was a member of the Principal’s Club; the Ella Flagg Young Club; the National Education Association; and the Wild Flower Preservation Society.

Miriam passed away on November 6, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois. She was 61 years old.

Former teacher Pat Conroy earns accolades as author of novels and memoirs

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Former classroom teacher Pat Conroy earned acclaim as an accomplished write of memoirs and novels. Photo credit: Pat Conroy

Many outstanding classroom teachers have also made a name for themselves as successful authors. One of these was (Donald) Patrick Conroy, who has written a number of highly-acclaimed memoirs and novels, two of which were made into movies that were nominated for Academy Awards.

Pat was born on Oct. 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Georgia, the first of seven children born to a fighter pilot in the Marines and his wife. During his childhood, Pat’s family moved frequently to military bases throughout the South, eventually landing in South Carolina. After his high school graduation he earned his Bachelor’s degree from The Citadel, a military college located in Charleston, South Carolina.

Once he earned his degree, Pat accepted a teaching position at his alma mater, Beaufort High School. There he taught English and psychology. In 1969 he took a job teaching underprivileged students in grades five through eight in a one-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie, a small island about three miles off the South Carolina mainland.

Pat found teaching conditions on Daufuskie very challenging. He discovered that as far as education was concerned, the students had been severely neglected, and nearly all the students were illiterate. After just a year of teaching on Daufuskie, Pat was fired for using unconventional teaching strategies, including his use of experiential learning practices and his refusal to use corporal punishment, and for his confrontations with administrators. He wrote a 1972 memoir about this experience entitled The Water is Wide. The volume earned an award from the National Education Association for its honest depiction of institutionalized racism in public schools. In 1974, the book was adapted into the movie Conrack directed by Martin Ritt and starring Jon Voight.

This former teacher also wrote The Boo (1970); The Great Santini (1976); The Lords of Discipline (1980); Beach Music (1995); and The Prince of Tides (1986); the memoir My Losing Season (2002); The Pat Conroy Cookbook (2004); South of Broad (2009); a collection of essays entitled My Reading Life (2010); the memoir The Death of Santini (2013). His novels The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini were made into films, and both were nominated for Academy Awards.

Sadly, this Chalkboard Champion succumbed to pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2016, in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was 70 old. He is interred in a small cemetery on St. Helena Island near the Penn Center, where as a teenager he first met Martin Luther King and where he was honored in 2011 for his dedication to social justice.

Michele Dunaway: English teacher and author of popular romance novels

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Michele Dunaway, an English and Journalism teacher from St Louis, Missouri, has published more than 29 popular romance novels. Photo credit: Michele Dunaway

Students who were in the classes of Michele Dunaway, an English and Journalism teacher from Missouri, may be surprised to learn that their teacher is a popular author of romance novels. In fact, she has published over 29 romance novels and she has sold over 1.7 million books globally.

Michele was born on July 14, 1965, in St. Louis, Missouri. She says she decided she wanted to be a teacher and an author by the time she was in the third grade at Mary Queen of Peace School in Webster Groves. And she was writing, even at that young age. After she earned her diploma from Kirkwood High School in 1983, Michele launched into her college courses so she could achieve her goals. She earned her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri at St. Louis in 1987. She earned her Master’s degree at Webster University in 1996.

Once she earned her degrees, Michelle accepted a position as a middle school teacher in Fenton, Missouri. She worked there from 1994 to 2000. Next she taught for one year at the high school level in Brentwood, Missouri, and then she relocated to teach English at Pacific High School in Pacific, Missouri.

Michele published her first novel, A Little Office Romance, in 2000. The volume was the first in a long line of romance novels. Many of her books have a setting in her native St. Louis.

In 2012, Michele was named the High School Journalism Teacher of the Year by the Missouri Interscholastic Press Association. She is a member of the Romance Writers of America.

With all this success, would Michele quite teaching? “Writing is a job and a hobby so I’m always working,” she declares. “I also know that I will teach for a long time—it’s a myth that writers can immediately quit their day jobs, not that I want to do that right now anyway,” she continues. “I love to teach and write, so I’m living the best of both worlds,” she concludes.

You can read more about this Chalkboard Champion at her website.

Pat Conroy’s award-winning memoir about his teaching experiences on remote SC island

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Periodically I come across a book about teachers that I’d like to share with you, and I have one to share today. The book is The Water is Wide by former teacher Pat Conroy (1945—2016). The award-winning memoir was published in 1972, the first of several acclaimed works he authored.

In 1969, Pat taught African American students in grades five through eight in a two-room school house on a remote island off the coast of South Carolina. He was a young, idealistic teacher, but not entirely inexperienced, since he had previously taught English and psychology courses at his high school alma mater, Beaufort High School, in Beaufort, South Carolina. And remember, he was teaching at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this memoir. I found it to be an interesting study in what were, in 1969, highly innovative instructional methods. Many of these methods have become accepted and commonplace in today’s classrooms, but in those days they were quite controversial. I was especially interested in Pat’s experiments with experiential learning (a topic which just happens to be the subject of my own Master’s thesis), student-driven curriculum, the introduction of speakers, and an informal classroom environment.

Most importantly, Pat treated his students with unconditional positive regard, and refused to utilize a paddle to maintain classroom discipline. By contrast, his principal, who taught the younger students in the two-room school house, espoused a more traditional teaching style, including textbook-driven instruction, drill tasks, and strict and rigid discipline—which included corporal punishment. And, quite frankly, she didn’t appear to even like her students. She certainly didn’t treat them with any respect. Naturally, Pat’s instructional style caused friction between himself and the school district bureaucrats. I’ll leave it to you to discover how this friction was addressed.

The Water is Wide garnered a humanitarian award from the National Education Association in 1974 and an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1973. Two movies based on the book, Conrack starring John Voight in 1974 and a Hallmark production in 2006.

Learn more about Pat Conroy’s life at his website, patconroy.com. You can purchase The Water is Wide on amazon.com.

 

Teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner authored The Boxcar Children Mysteries

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Gertrude Chandler Warner of Connecticut was an elementary school teacher who became famous for writing The Boxcar Children Mysteries. Photo credit: Gertrude Warner Museum

There are many talented classroom teachers who have also made a name for themselves as popular authors. One of these is Gertrude Chandler Warner of Connecticut, an elementary school teacher who became famous for writing the children’s stories known as The Boxcar Children Mysteries.

Gertrude was born on April 16, 1890, in Putnam, Connecticut. She decided at a very young age that she wanted to be an author. From the age of five, she wrote stories for her grandfather, and each Christmas she gifted one of these stories to him. As a youngster, Gertrude suffered from frequent illnesses, and for this reason she never finished high school. In her sophomore year, she completed her secondary education with the assistance of a tutor.

In 1918, when World War I was in full swing, Gertrude was hired to teach first grade, primarily because many men teachers were being called to serve in the military. The position served to be a good fit for Gertrude, who continued to teach until 1950. During these years, she spent her summers completing education courses at Yale University.

All her life, Gertrude was a nature-lover. As a child, she developed butterfly and moth collections, pressed wild flowers, learned about the birds in her area, and tended a garden. She incorporated these interests in her classroom lessons, and she also developed nature themes in her books.

In 1924, while convalescing at home from a lengthy illness, Gertrude developed the idea for a children’s book. This is how she came to write the first installment of The Boxcar Children. The story was published by Rand McNally and Company in 1924. Not only did Gertrude write the original story, but she also wrote the next 18 books in the series.

After her retirement from the classroom, Gertrude became a volunteer for the American Red Cross, the Connecticut Cancer Society, and other community service organizations. This talented educator and author passed away on August, 20, 1979, at the age of 89. She is interred at Grove Street Cemetery in her home town of Putnam, Connecticut.

To learn more about Gertrude Chandler Warner, click on this link to The Boxcar Children Museum.