Tag Archives: Teacher Politicians

Chalkboard Politician Daniel Kahikina Akaka of Hawaii

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Akaka-072806-18268- 0032Throughout history there have been a number of educators who have gone on to serve in political office. One such educator is Daniel Kahikina Akaka, a Native Hawaiian born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1924.

Daniel Akaka is also a veteran, having served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. When the war ended, he used his GI bill to enroll at the University of Hawaii, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in education in 1952 and his master’s degree in 1966. After earning his teaching credential, Daniel was employed as a high school teacher in Honolulu from 1953 to 1960;. In 1960 he was promoted to a position as a vice principal, and in 1969 he became a high school principal. In 1969, Daniel went to work in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare as a chief program planner.

A multi-talented individual, Daniel Akaka was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976, serving seven terms. In 1990, Daniel was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the US Senate that occurred upon the untimely death of Senator Spark Matsunaga. Subsequently Daniel was elected to that position in his own right, and he served there until 2013 when he retired.

Daniel Akaka, an outstanding chalkboard champion who was also an outstanding politician.

Hannah Jensen Kempfer: The Abandoned Child Who Became a Chalkboard Champion

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kempfer[1]Hannah Jensen Kempfer was born on a ship in the North Sea, the daughter of a sailor and an unwed mother who was working as a stewardess. Shortly after her birth, her mother abandoned the child in an orphanage in Norway. Hannah was adopted the next year by a Norwegian family who immigrated to America in 1885. The family settled in Minnesota, where Hannah grew up in abject poverty.

When Hannah was only twelve years old, she took a train to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where she was taken in by the family of a local milkman. There Hannah attended Fergus Falls High School, and then enrolled at Park Region Luther College, where she graduated at the age of 17. After she earned her teaching certificate, Hannah taught from 1898 to 1908 at a small rural schoolhouse. She married farmer Charles Taylor Kempfer in 1903, and although the couple never had any children of their own, they fostered eleven orphans.

In 1923, Hannah was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, where she served from 1923 to 1930 and 1933 to 1942. She was one of four women elected to the Minnesota House following the passage of women’s suffrage. She is best known for championing the causes of children, the conservation of natural resources, and the official selection of the Showy Ladies’ Slipper as  Minnesota’s state flower.

Hannah Jensen Kempfer is remembered today as a true chalkboard champion.

Henrietta Szold: The Chalkboard Champion Who Saved 22,000 Jewish Children from Nazi Concentration Camps

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Szold[1]Henrietta Szold was born on December 21, 1860, in Baltimore Maryland, the eldest of eight daughters born to her father, a respected rabbi. She graduated from Western Female High School in 1877, and then taught school for fifteen years at Miss Adam’s School and Oheb Shalom Religious School. She also established the first American school in Baltimore to provide English language classes and vocational education courses to Russian Jewish immigrants.

Henrietta is probably best known, however for founding the international volunteer organization known as Hadassah. This organization sponsored Youth Aliyah, a program designed to rescue Jewish children from Nazi Germany, and, later, from all over Europe. This organization was able to save an estimated 22,000 children from World War II death camps.

Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007, Henrietta Szold is truly a chalkboard champion. You can read more about this remarkable teacher in my upcoming book, tentatively entitled Chalkboard Heroes.

Pat Nixon: The Pretty Teacher of Whittier High School

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cvr9781416576051_9781416576051_lg[1][1]I was really surprised to learn that former First Lady Pat Ryan Nixon had been employed for several years in the 1930’s as a business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. In fact, she was working as a teacher when she met her future husband, a young and ambitious city attorney named Richard Nixon. Pretty and popular, the former Miss Ryan instructed courses in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, and stenography. Her students remembered her fondly, writes Julie Nixon Eisenhower in a very detailed and very personal biography about her mother published in 1986. You can read all about Pat Nixon’s teaching career in the book Pat Nixon: the Untold Story, available on amazon.com.

LBJ, the Schoolteacher

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9780679729457_p0_v1_s260x420[1][1]I was very surprised to learn that President Lyndon Johnson had once been a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas, where he taught a class junior high school class comprised primarily of Mexican American students, and then as a high school speech and debate teacher in Houston. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher, and, had he stayed in the profession, probably would have enjoyed a very successful career there. I enjoyed learning all about his challenges and successes as an educator. When I read this book, I learned a lot of scandalous things about this president, too. Stuff that would be juicy enough for any daytime drama or prime-time reality show. You can read the detail about LBJ’s career as a teacher—and the scuttlebutt, if you’re interested—in The Path to Power, Book One of Robert A. Caro’s trilogy about this intriguing historical figure.