Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

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.

Teacher and African American Folklorist Daryl Cumber Dance

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Daryl Cumber Dance

Former English teacher and celebrated African American folklorist Daryl Cumber Dance

I always enjoy sharing stories about talented educators who have accomplished impressive successes in their field. One of these is Daryl Cumber Dance, a former high school English teacher who is best known for her work in African American folklore studies.

Daryl Veronica Cumber Dance was born on January 17, 1938, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Allen Cumber, was a joiner and entrepreneur, and her mother, Veronica Bell Cumber, was an elementary school teacher.

As a young girl, Daryl attended Ruthville High School in Ruthville, Virginia. After her high school graduation, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in English from Virginia State College in1957. She earned her Master’s degree in English in 1963, and in 1971 she earned her Doctorate in English.

After earning her undergraduate degree, Daryl accepted a teaching position at Armstrong High School in Richmond, where she worked until 1962. At that time, she became a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she taught from 1972 to 1993. In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of Richmond, and in 2013, she accepted a position at historical Black Howard University.

Daryl is best-known for her work in African American folklore studies. In this field, she has authored nine books and contributed to many others, including Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans (1978); Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical and Critical Sourcebook (1986); Honey, Hush! An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor (1998); and From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore (2002).

For her work as a folklorist, Daryl has garnered many honors. Among these are the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education’s Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award; the Sister Circle Book Award for Outstanding Anthology; the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers Annual Conference; and The Sojourner Truth Award from The African American Studies Program of George Mason University.

Daryl Cumber Dance: a true chalkboard champion.

Herman Silas Pepoon: Medical doctor, scientist, and talented classroom teacher

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Herman Silas Pepoon

Herman Silas Pepoon, medical doctor and talented classroom teacher.

Many talented and dedicated educators came to the teaching profession after having first experienced success in some other career. This is true of Herman Silas Pepoon, a medical doctor who gave up his practice to became a high school science teacher.

Herman was born on January 21, 1860, in Warren, Joe Daviess County, Illinois. Herman earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Ubana-Champaign in 1881. After he earned this degree, he studied medicine, earning his medical degree in 1883 from Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago.

After earning his MD, Herman established a medical practice first in Nebraska, and later in Illinois. After ten years, in 1892, he gave up his medical practice and accepted a job as a science teacher at Lakeview High School, a public high school located on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. He taught there from 1892 to 1930. In addition to his classroom duties, Herman taught courses in botany for young people and local teachers at Chicago’s Academy. He also led field trips and gave public lectures. A prolific writer, in 1927 Herman published An Annotated Flora of the Chicago Area, an acclaimed identification source for local plants. He also published a botanical teaching manual entitled Studies of Plant Life: A Series of Exercises for the Study of Plants in 1900 with co-authors Walter R. Mitchell and Fred B. Maxwell. Over the years, Herman published numerous articles on botany, forestry, and ecology in respected scientific journals.

After he retired from teaching, Herman became a life member of the Chicago Academy of Sciences (CAS), which named him Honorary Curator of Botany for the institution in 1930. He also worked with the Illinois Natural History Survey helping with the collection and study of vascular plants.

This chalkboard champion passed away at the age of 81 on December 26, 1941. He is interred in Acacia Park Cemetery in Chicago.

Ann Clark: Teacher and author of books for Native American children

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Ann Clark

Ann Clark: Classroom teacher and acclaimed author of books for Native American children.

Throughout our country’s history, there have been many examples of dedicated educators who have worked with underprivileged student populations. One such teacher was Ann Nolan Clark.

Ann Clark was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on December 5, 1896. When she was 21, she graduated from New Mexico Normal School, known today as New Mexico Highlands University, located in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

After her college graduation, Ann inaugurated her teaching career as a professor of English at Highlands University. But the young educator wanted to work with younger students. In 1923,  she accepted a position teaching reading to Native American children in a one-room schoolhouse at the Black Rock School in Zuni. Later she taught in a school at Tesuque. Little did she know that this position would last twenty-five years.

While teaching in the Indian schools, Ann observed that the Native American children learned more easily when their primers were geared towards their own life experiences, so she began writing primers with characters and situations that honored the the Pueblo way of life. Many of these primers were later published by mainstream publishing companies. Eventually, Ann broadened her scope and wrote children’s books with Navajo, Sioux, Finnish, and Hispanic characters. In addition to these stories, the prolific teacher also published a number of professional articles under the pseudonym Marie Dunne.

Between 1940 and 1951, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs published fifteen of Ann’s books. Her book In My Mother’s House, illustrated by Pueblo artist Velino Herrera, earned a Caldecott Honor Book Award in 1942. During the 1940s, Ann also wrote multi-cultural books for the Haskell Foundation and the Haskell Indian Nations University at Lawrence, Kansas. One of them was The Slim Butte Raccoon, illustrated by Andrew Standing Soldier.

In 1945, the Institute for Inter-American Affairs funded an educational trip for Ann to travel to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. Her experiences on this trip led her to write such books as Magic Money, Looking-for-Something, and Secret of the Andes, which garnered her the 1953 Newberry Medal. Ann earned other awards as well. She was given the Distinguished Service Award by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1962, and the Regina Medial by the Catholic Library Association in 1963.

This remarkable educator passed away on December 13, 1995. During her lifetime, she published over forty books, 31 of them about Native American culture.