Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

Ellen Gray Massey: English teacher, author, and public speaker

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Ellen Gray Massey: High school English teacher and successful author.

I love to share stories about talented classroom teachers who make a name for themselves in professions other than teaching. One of these is Ellen Gray Massey, a high school English teacher who was also a successful author.

Ellen Massey was born November 14, 1921.  She was raised near Nevada, Missouri. Young Ellen earned her Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Maryland. Following her college graduation, she returned to Missouri, where she settled in the small Ozarks town of Lebanon. There Ellen taught high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors. In addition, she served as the adviser for their school magazine, Bittersweet. Her career as a teacher spanned 23 years.

I love Ozarkers’ self-sufficiency, wit, and pioneer spirit,” Ellen once declared. “When I heard students say there wasn’t anything interesting in the area, I wanted them to appreciate their heritage,” she continued. Former student Kirk Pierce was one student who benefited from the effort. “She really got us interested in our family history,” he recalled. Kirk later wrote historical features for the local paper, Lebanon Daily Record.

Once Ellen retired from teaching in 1986, she published local color stories in a series of books that eventually numbered 29. She also published short stories and articles celebrating her home town. In addition, she became a sought-after public speaker. She delivered 428 public speeches, 120 of them for the Missouri Humanities Council. Most of her talks were given in Missouri, but she also spoke to groups in Arkansas, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, DC, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Washington state. She also taught classes on Ozarks Heritage and Ozarks Adventures programs in Branson, Missouri. In addition, she taught 33 graduate education courses at Drury University of Springfield, Missouri.

For her work as an author, Ellen earned many accolades. She garnered the coveted Western Writers Spur Award in the Juvenile Fiction category in 2014. The Missouri Writers Guild honored Ellen with 12 first place writing awards in several categories. In 1995, she became one of the first inductees into the Writers Hall of Fame of America.

Ellen Massey passed away on July 13, 2014. She was 92 years old. She is buried in Mount Rose Memorial Park in Lebanon. To read more about this amazing chalkboard champion, click on this article about her published on the website of the Truman University.

Former English teacher Samira Ahmed earns success as an author of young adult novels

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Former high school English teacher Samira Ahmed earns success as an author of young adult novels.

There are many classroom teachers who have achieved success in arenas outside of the classroom. One of these is Samira Ahmed, a former high school English teacher who has established herself as an author of popular young adult novels.

Samira was born in Bombay, India. She was raised in Batavia, Illinois, and in Chicago, Illinois. As a youngster, Samira says she spent countless hours at her local library nestled in an overstuffed armchair next to an old Victorian fireplace with her nose in a book. Her favorites were Agatha Christie novels and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

As a young woman, Samira earned both her Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature and her Master’s degree in English at the University of Chicago. After earning her college degrees, Samira accepted her first teaching position at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois. She taught high school English there from 1994 to 1999. Next, she worked as the Humanities Department Chair at Young Women’s Leadership School in New York City from 1999 to 2000. From 2005 to 2007, she was employed as the Director of External Affairs for New Visions for Public Schools in New York City.

Samira published her first novel, Love, Hate & Other Filters, in 2018. The book is about a Muslim Indian-American teenager and her attempts to cope with Islamophobia. The novel was praised by Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal. Her second book, Internment, features a setting in the future where Muslims are sent to internment camps as the result of a law passed by an Islamophobic president. This novel received praise from Kirkus Reviews and Entertainment Weekly. This Fall, Samira will publish her third book, Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know. The novel is a literary mystery inspired by a poem by Lord Byron and a painting by Eugene Delacroix. The plot follows a young Muslim girl that leads the readers through parts of forgotten Paris.

To learn more about this chalkboard champion and successful author, visit her website at Samira Ahmed.

Missouri English teacher and author of romantic novels Michele Dunaway

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Michele Dunaway of St. Louis, Missouri. She is an English and Journalism teacher and successful author of romantic novels.

There are many examples of excellent classroom teachers who earn accolades in fields outside of education. Michele Dunaway, an author of romantic novels, is one of these.

Michele was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 14, 1965, the elder of two siblings. The successful author says she knew she wanted to be a teacher and an author by the time she was a third grader at Mary Queen of Peace School in Webster Groves. As a teenager, Michele attended Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri. 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, a private nonprofit university located in Webster Groves, Missouri, in 1996. While completing her education, Michele served on Kirkwood High School’s newspaper staff, her college paper, and a local music newspaper 

Michele inaugurated her teaching career as a junior high school teacher in Fenton, Missouri, where she worked from 1994 to 2000. She taught high school in Brentwood, Missouri from 2000 to 2001. She has taught high school English at Pacific High School in Pacific, Missouri, since 2001. She has also taught journalism at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles County.

When she was young, Michele often experimented with writing, but she didn’t attempt to publish until 1999. At that time Michele met with an editor who requested some samples of her work. Once the teacher provided it, the editor was eager to publish them. Her novels include A Little Office Romance, Taming the Tabloid Heiress, The Simply Scandalous Princess, Catching the Corporate Playboy, Sweeping the Bride Away, The Playboy’s Protegee, and About Last Night….

For her work Michele has earned many accolades. She was named the Missouri Interscholastic Press Association High School Journalism Teacher of the Year for 2012. To learn more about this amazing educator and author, read the article at the Webster Kirkwood Times. You can also check out her website at micheledunaway.com.

 

Eighth grade teacher, poet, and author Elizabeth Acevedo

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Elizabeth Acevedo

Eighth grade teacher, poet, and author Elizabeth Acevedo.

There are many examples of excellent teachers who have earned acclaim in arenas outside the classroom. One of these is Elizabeth Acevedo, an eighth grade schoolteacher who is also a poet and author of young adult novels.

Elizabeth, who identifies as Afro-Latina, was born to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republican. She was raised in New York. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts from George Washington University. She earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland.

As a 2010 Teach for America Corps participant, Elizabeth went into the classroom following her college graduation. She taught eighth grade in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Elizabeth’s books include, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths published in 2016, and With the Fire on High published in 2019. Her first novel, The Poet X (2018), The Poet X, was published in 2018, and instantly became a New York Times Bestseller. The novel won the 2018 Boston Globe-Hornbook Award, the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and the 2019 Michael L. Printz Award.

Today, Elizabeth lives in Washington, DC. She is involved in a variety of poetry workshops at high schools and universities. She also works as a visiting instructor at an adjudicated youth center in Washington, DC, where she works with incarcerated women and with teenagers. In addition, she attends a lot of poetry slams as a host or judge, and she was once a coach.

“Being around teenagers all the time makes me aware of the emotional scale that they’re on and how they’re responding to things,” Elizabeth says. “If nothing else, it’s a reminder of how brilliant they are,” she asserts. “Some adults write down to young people, but, if you listen to them, they’ll tell you what they need. Oftentimes, I think they’re more able to handle difficult subjects than we give them credit for,” she concludes.

 

Teacher Ann Turner Cook: The baby face of Gerber Foods

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Did you know that the iconic image of the healthy, happy baby with the sparkling eyes and the inquisitive look on Gerber baby products grew up to become a high school English teacher? That’s right!

Ann Turner Cook

Teacher Ann Turner Cook: She was the face of Gerber Foods

The name of that irresistible baby is Ann Turner Cook. She was born on November 20, 1926, the daughter of Leslie Turner, a syndicated cartoonist who drew the comic strip Captain Easy for more than a decade. In 1928, when Ann was only five months old,  the Gerber company announced they were seeking images of a baby to use on the packaging of their upcoming line of baby foods. Artist Dorothy Hope Smith, a neighbor of the Turner family, submitted a charcoal sketch of Ann, promising to finish the drawing if it was selected. Smith’s drawing competed with thousands of entries, including many elaborate oil paintings, but the judges fell in love with this baby’s cherubic face and, when choosing it as the winner, insisted that the simple illustration remain a sketch. The image was trademarked in 1931, and it has been used on Gerber baby food packaging ever since.

When she grew up, Ann attended the University of South Florida and other post-secondary schools, where she studied education, English, and journalism. She earned several degrees, including a Master’s degree in English Education. After completing her education, Ann became a teacher at Oak Hill Elementary in Tampa, Florida, later transferring to the English Department at Madison Junior High School. In 1966, she accepted a position at Hillsborough High School, also in Tampa, where she taught literature and creative writing. In 1972, her students dedicated their school yearbook, the Hillsborean, to their beloved teacher, who had personally sponsored the book. In it, her students described her as “a teacher who really communicates with the students,” and who, “without any complaints, has stayed late, worked nights, and with quiet efficiency supported her staff in their monumental task.”

Ann’s career as an educator spanned twenty-six years. After retiring, this talented teacher became a successful novelist. A member of the Mystery Writers of America, she is the author of the Brandy O’Bannon series of mystery novels set on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The adventures of Florida reporter and amateur sleuth Brandy O’Bannon are described in Trace Their Shadows, published in 2001, Shadow Over Cedar Key, published in 2003, and Micanopy in Shadow, published in 2008.