Tag Archives: Teacher Authors

Teacher Angela Duckworth studies “grit”

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Angela Duckworth, former high school math teacher and current CEO of Character Lab, developed the concept of “grit” as an indicator of student success. Photo credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

There are many examples of individuals successful in the world of business who leave lucrative positions to teach in America’s high schools. One of these is Angela Duckworth, a psychologist, social scientist, author, CEO of a nonprofit,  who also taught mathematics in a San Francisco public school.

Angela was born in 1970, the daughter of immigrants from China. Her father was a chemist with the DuPont Chemicals Company. Angela was raised in New Jersey and graduated from Cherry Hill High School East. After her graduation from high school, Angela attended Harvard University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Neurobiology in 1992. She earned her Master’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Oxford in 1996. She completed the requirements for her PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. In 2013, Angela garnered a MacArthur Fellowship.

Originally, Angela accepted a position as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, but she left that job after about one year in order to accept a teaching post at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Lowell is the only public high school in San Francisco that admits students on the basis of academic merit. The school is the largest feeder to the University of California system, and many of the school’s graduates go on to enroll in the country’s most selective universities. She also taught at schools in Philadelphia and New York City. In all, her career as an educator spanned five years.

Angela left the classroom to become the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit organization that studies the importance of what she called “grit”—the quality that contributes to an individual’s success in life. Angela defines “grit” as passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals. As a result of the studies, Angela published a best-selling book entitled Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance in May, 2016. In fact, she is credited with introducing the concept of “grit” to the conversation of education policy.

Today, Angela continues to run Character Lab, and she also instructs courses in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

English teacher Erin Gruwell helped students compose The Freedom Writers

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Just about everyone has heard of the best-selling nonfiction book The Freedom Writers Diary, written by former high school English teacher Erin Gruwell and her class of inner-city students. This collection of student experiences, which will tug at any teacher’s heart strings, was also depicted in a highly-acclaimed movie starring Hollywood celeb Hilary Swank. When I think about the movie, I am reminded of the great importance a teacher plays in the lives of his or her students, whether they are low-income or at-risk or not.

The setting of the story is an inner-city school, Woodrow Wilson High, located in Long Beach, California. The volume was published in 1999, and it was an instant success. The story line still has relevance for those who are in the teaching profession today. This book really zeroes in on some of the challenges our kids face when they are not in school, and how much a caring and dedicated teacher can help them overcome those challenges. The movie delves a little more into the personal life of this particular educator, and aside from the suggestion that you have to work three jobs and give up your marriage to be a good teacher, it’s pretty inspiring. (Nobody could be more hardworking and persevering than teachers who have wrestled with the pandemic, in my opinion.)

What I think is truly amazing is that many high school students love this book just as much as teachers do! The Freedom Writers Diary is easy to find on amazon and at just about any brick-and-mortar bookstore. Erin has also published a book about her professional experiences entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers. Any teacher who can find a few spare hours (I know, that’s impossible, right?) could find one of these books helpful for inspiration and rejuvenation.

Perhaps you know someone who would welcome these books as a Christmas gift! Give it some thought!

Colorado teacher Cara Mentzel authors book with sister Idina Menzel

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Anyone who works with kids surely knows the actress and singer Idina Menzel. Her Tony award-winning Broadway roles include Elphaba in Wicked and Maureen Johnson in Rent. Her blockbuster songs include “Let it Be” sung by the character Elsa in the Disney animated feature Frozen. Or maybe you know her from her many appearances as Shelby Corcoran in the television series Glee. But not many people know Idina’s sister, Cara Mentzel, an elementary school teacher in Boulder, Colorado. At least, they didn’t know the younger sister before now. (And her name really is spelled with the extra “T”.)

Cara earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, magna cum laude, from the University of Colorado in 1996. She earned her Master’s degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis on Children’s Literacy from the same university in 2008. In addition, she was designated a National Board certified reading teacher in 2011.

After earning her degrees, Cara taught elementary school, primarily second and third grades, for 13 years in classrooms in the Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado. For her work in the classroom, Cara has earned some prestigious recognition. She garnered the Barnes & Noble “My Favorite Teacher” award in the 2010-2011 academic year, and she was named to the Superintendent’s Honor Roll in 2011.

Former elementary teacher Cara Mentzel and her sister, singer and actress, Idina Menzel, have just published Loud Mouse, their first children’s book together. Photo Credit: Emejo Madrid

Cara and Idina have recently been interviewed on numerous daytime talk shows because the sisters have co-written a new book for young children. The volume, written for an audience aged 3-5 years, is entitled Loud Mouse. The book, illustrated by Jaclyn Sinquett, was published last month by Disney-Hyperion Press. The storyline revolves around the main character, a mouse named Dee, who was born to sing. Usually she performs just for herself, but when her teacher asks everyone to share something with their classmates, Dee decides to share a song. And as Dee sings la, la, la, la, LOUDly in front of her class for the first time, something extraordinary happens. . . .

Loud Mouse is not Cara’s first published book. Voice Lessons: A Sisters Story is a first-hand account of a younger sister growing up in the shadow of her larger-than-life older sister—looking up to her, wondering how they were alike and how they were different and, ultimately, learning how to live her own life and speak in her own voice. The book was published in 2017 by St. Martin’s Press.

Today, Cara devotes her considerable talent to writing, but on occasion she can still be found back in the classroom, speaking to kids about her favorite books. Idina and Cara are currently working on their second book together,  a sequel to Loud Mouse entitled Proud Mouse.

Missouri teacher and author Ellen Gray Massey shared her love of the Ozarks

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Ellen Gray Massey, English teacher and prolific author of juvenile fiction, expressed her profound love of the Ozarks in her classroom and in her novels. Photo Credit: ellengraymassey.com

Many talented authors have also worked as dedicated educators. Ellen Gray Massey, a high school English teacher from Missouri, is one of these. She has published numerous award-winning novels and publications with settings in her beloved Ozarks.

Ellen was born on Nov. 14, 1921, in Nevada, Missouri, although she was raised in Washington DC. As a youngster, she spent her summers at the family farm, Wayside, near her birth town of Nevada. While there, she fell in love with the Ozarks, a lifelong appreciation which was reflected in her later writings.

After she graduated from high school, Ellen earned her Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Maryland. After she married Lane Massey in the 1940s, the couple settled on a farm in Laclede County and started their family. Unfortunately, Lane died while he was still a young man. After his passing, Ellen and her three children ran the farm by themselves.

When Ellen decided she was ready to go into the classroom, she accepted a position as an English teacher at Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Missouri. For ten of the years she taught there, Ellen led her sophomores, juniors, and seniors into the writing and publishing of their own periodical, Bittersweet Magazine. Through this project, her students interviewed older residents around the Ozarks in order to preserve in writing and photographs the history and stories that were dying off with their generation. “She sent those kids out into the boonies interviewing old time Ozarkians about how rough it was, how they made do with what they had, how they embraced the culture. It was wonderful,” remembered friend and fellow author Veda Jones.

After retiring from Lebanon High, Ellen continued to share her vast knowledge of the writing process and her love of the Ozarks at Drury University, where she taught graduate education courses.

Over the course of her lengthy career as an author, Ellen earned numerous accolades for her writing. She won 15 First Place awards from The Missouri Writers Guild and was awarded their annual Best Book Award five times. She also earned three finalist awards from the Western Writers of America. In 2014, she garnered the Western Spur Award in the Juvenile Fiction category for her novel Papa’s Gold. In addition, in 1995, she was one of the charter inductees into the first Writers Hall of Fame of America.

Sadly, Ellen Gray Massey passed away on July 13, 2014, in Lebanon, Missouri, at the age of 92. To learn more about this Chalkboard Champion, visit her website at ellengraymassey.com.

Pioneer, author, and rural schoolteacher Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Pioneer and author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the popular Little House series, once worked as a teacher in a rural one-room schoolhouse. Photo Credit: Public Domain

Most Americans have heard of famous author and pioneer Laura Ingalls Wilder. They have either read her Little House books, or they have watched the syndicated television series called Little House on the Prairie, which was based on her books and was popular in the 1970s. But did you know that Laura was once a rural school teacher?

When Laura was a child, her family relocated frequently to wilderness areas, because her father wanted to indulge his desire to settle land in unknown territory. The Ingalls family traveled into thick woods, across vast prairies, through raging rivers, and over icy waters in their covered wagon. Their journeys included settlements in Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, and Iowa. Finally, the family settled in De Smet, South Dakota, where her father claimed a homestead. These pioneer experiences became the source material for Laura’s children’s books, which have been read by millions over the 60 years they have been in print.

Laura was only 16 years old in Dec., 1883, when she took an examination with the county school superintendent and was granted her teaching certificate. She taught her first term at the Bouchie school, a rural one-room schoolhouse, that winter. She taught her second term in the spring of 1884, and her final term in the spring of 1885.

Laura’s first teaching job was a difficult one fort her. Her school was located in a small settlement 12 miles away from her family’s home, and she boarded in the home of a family who was always arguing. The students she was expected to teach were nearly her own age, and Laura felt that she had little control over her class. Laura was also very homesick.

After Laura married her husband, Almonzo Wilder, she left the teaching profession. But she continued her work as an educator by home-schooling her one surviving child, Rose Wilder.