Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

Elaine Goodale Eastman: The New England Teacher that Advocated for Her Native American Students

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imgresElaine Goodale Eastman, originally from Massachusetts, was a talented teacher who established a day school on a Sioux Indian reservation in the territory of South Dakota. She believed very strongly that it was best to keep Native American children at home rather than transport them far away from their families to Indian boarding schools. She hadn’t taught on the reservation very long when she was promoted to the position of Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. In this capacity, she travelled throughout the five Dakota reservations, visiting the more than sixty government and missionary schools within her jurisdiction, writing detailed evaluation reports on each school she visited.

It was because of her work that Elaine just happened to be visiting the Pine Ridge Reservation when the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre took place. As a result of this tragedy, more than two hundred men, women, and children from the Lakota tribe were killed, and another fifty-one were wounded. In addition, twenty-five government soldiers were also killed, most by “friendly fire,” and another thirty-nine were wounded. Following the massacre, she and her fiance,  physician Charles Eastman of the Santee Sioux tribe, cared for the survivors and wrote detailed government reports to accurately describe what happened.

In her later years, when America was experiencing a back-to-nature revival, Elaine and her husband operated Indian-themed summer camps in New Hampshire. Read more of the life story of this fascinating educator in Theodore D. Sargent’s biography The Life of Elaine Goodale Eastman, or an encapsulated version in  Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students, both available on amazon.

 

Rebecca Pawel: High school English teacher and acclaimed novelist

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I love to tell stories about amazing teachers, and one that certainly fills the bill is Rebecca Pawel, a New York City high school teacher who has published four widely-acclaimed mystery novels.

PawelRebecca Pawel  was born in 1977 in New York City and raised in the Upper West Side. She once revealed that her love affair with all things Iberian began in junior high school, when she studied flamenco and classical Spanish dance. While a teenager at Stuyvesant High School, Rebecca spent a summer abroad in Madrid. Once she graduated from high school, she enrolled at Columbia University, where she majored in Spanish Language and Literature. She then attended Teachers College to earn her teaching credentials.

Rebecca began her professional career as a teacher of English, Journalism, and Spanish at the High School for Enterprise, Business, and Technology in Brooklyn. She was employed there from 2000 to 2011. Between 2011 and 2013, she served as a college advisor for High School for Services and Learning at Erasmus Hall in Flatbush. In 2013, Rebecca returned to the Graduate School of Arts and Science at Columbia University, where she is currently working on a PhD in English and Comparative Literature.

Rebecca’s detective novels are set in a time period immediately after the Spanish Civil War. Her first book, Death of a Nationalist (2005), earned an Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Author. She followed this triumph with Law of Return (2004), The Watcher in the Pine (2005), and The Summer Snow (2006), which was named one of Publisher’s Weekly Best Mysteries.

“I’ve always told stories,” Rebecca once confessed. “I dictated stories to my parents before I knew how to write them down. When I was in third grade, my dad taught me to touch-type on a Brother electronic typewriter.” The rest is history.

Meet the first Black woman to join the Screen Actors’ Guild: Teacher Mary Elizabeth Vroman

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220px-Jet_Vroman_October_13_1955_coverMany talented educators can also claim fame as accomplished authors. This is true of Mary Elizabeth Vroman, an elementary school teacher who was also the author of several books and short stories, including “See How They Run,” an award-winning short story that became the basis for a movie entitled Bright Road.

Mary was born circa 1924 in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in Antigua in the British West Indies. Like three generations of women educators in her family before her, Mary attended Alabama State Teachers College, now known as Alabama State University, in Montgomery, Alabama, where she graduated in 1949. After her graduation, Mary accepted her first teaching position at an elementary school in rural Alabama. She later taught in Chicago and New York. Her teaching career spanned twenty years.

Mary published her first short story, “See How They Run,” in the June, 1951, issue of Ladies’ Home Journal. The story, based on her experiences in the classroom, generated five hundred enthusiastic letters from readers. Like most of her works, the story depicted the challenges of poverty and disadvantage. The plot revolves around a young, idealistic teacher who encourages her students to escape their poverty through education, and compares the forty-three third graders in the story to the blind mice in the familiar children’s nursery rhyme. Mary describes the teacher’s struggle to provide academic, financial, and emotional support for her students and their families so that they can achieve success. The piece earned the coveted Christopher Award in 1952 for its humanitarian quality. It was reprinted in the July, 1952, issue of Ebony.

Next, Mary served as a technical adviser and assistant screenwriter for the 1953 film version of the story. The title of the piece was changed to Bright Road, and starred Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. Mary’s work on the film earned her admission to the Screen Actors Guild; she was their first African American woman member.

Vroman’s “See How They Run” tells the story of a young, idealistic teacher encouraging her students to escape from their impoverished environment through education. Comparing the 43 third graders in the story to the blind mice in the familiar nursery rhyme, Vroman details the teacher’s struggle to provide academic, financial, and emotional support for them and their families so that they can achieve success was published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in June, 1951. The piece earned the 1952 Christopher Award, and it was subsequently made into a 1953 film entitled Bright Road. Her work on the film earned her admittance to the Screen Writers Guild, the first African American woman to become a member of the distinguished organization.

Mary was married to Brooklyn dentist Dr. Oliver M. Harper. Sadly, Mary Elizabeth Vroman passed away on April 29, 1967, from complications following surgery. She was only 42 years old.

Chalkboard Champion Albert Cullum: He Introduced an Element of Play Into the Curriculum

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teacher_recentOftentimes a gifted educator serves as an inspiration not only for his students, but for other teachers as well. Such is certainly the case for chalkboard champion Albert Cullum.

Albert Cullum was born in November of 1921. His career as an educator began in the 1940’s, after a failed attempt at a career as a Broadway actor. He accepted a teaching position at St. Luke’s School in Greenwich village in New York City, but quickly realized this would be no easy gig. “I knew after the first month [at the job that] something was missing,” he once confessed. “I realized, ‘I’m not having fun. If I’m not having fun, no one in the room is having fun’…. I realized there should be more play during the day… more learning that is playful.” After that, the neophyte educator completely changed his style of teaching. Instead of the prevailing Dick and Jane style, he opted to introduce his children to classic literature such as Shakespeare and Greek drama.

After St. Luke’s, Albert taught at the Midland School in Rye, New York, a suburb of New York City, from 1956 to 1966. As a trailblazer in American education, Albert ignited the imagination of countless young students. Through his passionate use of poetry and drama, he helped build students’ self-confidence and inspired them to new heights of originality and joy. It was during this time that he and his close friend Robert Downey, Sr., filmed the footage seen in the movie A Touch of Greatness, an Emmy-nominated documentary about Albert’s work in the classroom.

Eventually Albert became a professor of education at Boston University and Stonehill College, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts. At Stonehill, he trained aspiring teachers for more than thirty years. In addition to his teaching, Albert worked with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services using poetry and drama as a therapeutic tool for incarcerated male and female adolescents. He also authored numerous books on education, including The Geranium On The Windowsill Just Died But Teacher You Went Right On (Harlin Quist Books: 2000), which sold over half a million copies, and Push Back the Desks (MacMilan: 1967), considered a classic in the field of education.

After teaching his final class for the semester in May, 2003, Albert’s health began to fail. The innovative and prolific educator passed away on July 13, 2003.”Teachers can be the bearers of gifts,” Albert once said. “Not only do we have the privilege of introducing great literature to young imaginative minds, but we also have the priceless opportunity of giving each child the gift of believing in him or herself.”

Marcia Brown: Teacher, Renowned Children’s Book Author, and Illustrator

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Marcia_J._BrownMany talented educators earn recognition for achievements outside their classrooms. Marcia Joan Brown is a spectacular example of this. She is an internationally renowned author and illustrator of children’s books. Marcia has published over thirty books in her lifetime, and she is a three-time winner   of the coveted Caldecott Medal, the highest award for excellence in children’s picture book illustrations bestowed by the American Library Association.

Marcia Brown was born in Rochester, New York, on July 13, 1918, one of three daughters of the Reverend Clarence Edward and Adelaide Elizabeth (Zimber) Brown. As a young child, Marcia lived in several small towns in upstate New York, including Cooperstown and Kingston, as her father moved from one ministerial post to another. She was raised in a family that supported artistic expression, and she decided at an early age to become an artist. In a videotaped interview in 1996, Marcia reminisced about the books and artworks in her local public library in Cooperstown, New York, that as a child nurtured her sense of wonder and joy in beautiful things.

After her high school graduation in 1936, Marcia enrolled in New York State College for Teachers (NYSCT), the University at Albany’s predecessor, where she majored in English and Drama. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1940. While in college her literary and artistic talents blossomed, as she made numerous contributions to the college’s literary and humor magazines.

After graduating from NYSCT, Marcia accepted her first position as a high school teacher at Cornwall High School in New York City. In 1943, she began working in the New York Public Library’s Central Children’s Room. She spent the next six years gaining valuable experience as a storyteller ,while also delving into the library’s extensive international and historical collections. She published her first four books while working in the library’s Central Children’s Room.

During her long career as a writer and illustrator, Marcia produced over thirty children’s books, and many of her titles have been reprinted in other languages, including Afrikaans, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Xhosa-Bantu. Critics have marveled at her use of spare texts, strong images, and a variety of media, including woodcuts, pen and ink, and gouache. Her characters are described as lively, humorous, magical, and enchanting, and they include handsome princes, sly cats, evil sorcerers, flying elephants, and snow queens.

From 1955 to 1983 Brown won a total of three Caldecott Medals, the award bestowed annually to the illustrator of the year’s “most distinguished American picture book for children” by the American Library Association. She had been a runner-up six times from 1948 to 1954, and those six books have been designated Caldecott Honor Books.

Today, Marcia Brown lives in California and continues to produce works of writing and illustration.