Chevy’s theme for this year’s road tip was inspiration and innovation. When we visited Teresa Fleak and she told us about her teaching style and about what she did for the kid’s art project, we were floored. It was like she read Chevy’s collective minds. Check out the video, and then click her banner on the right of the screen to help support her classroom!
Since we’re road tripping for the sake of our educators, we figured it would be good to actually learn a little something on the way. Only a couple of miles from our base of operations that we call home is an honest to goodness national park that we’ve passed a hundred times but never visited. This weekend we corrected that mistake and visited Stones River National Battleground in Murfreesboro, TN. Who knew that it would also tie in to SXSW? Check out the sections on new technology and music!
In honor of our Chevy/Adopt-A-Classroom roadtrip, we asked several authors about the teachers that made an impact on their lives. Here’s what one of them had to say:
“It’s always intrigued me how moments from a person’s childhood can mark them. In the formative years of a child’s life, words, events and encounters with adults leave a lasting impression on a kid’s young psyche and self-esteem. These life moments – though not always immediate in their impact – nevertheless influence us, and stay with us for a long time . . . perhaps even a lifetime. Allow me to briefly recount one of mine involving a schoolteacher.
It happened in the second grade at Anderson Elementary School in Anderson, SC. We were learning how to write cursive that week, and my teacher Mrs. Sullivan was patiently walking the aisles of the classroom, peering over the shoulders of 6-7 year old little boys and girls, critiquing their work. Upon arriving at my desk, she stopped, picked up my practice sheet and paused. Then, to my amazement, she announced to everyone,
“Look class. Look at how beautiful Jeffery’s “h’ is. Hasn’t he done a good job?”
That was it. She handed the paper back to me with a smile. I don’t recall if she did that for anyone else, and if she had, I wouldn’t have noticed. Me and my freckled-face were too busy grinning from ear-to-ear, beaming inside with pride over my newfound accomplishment. It was a small thing for Mrs. Sullivan to do, just a regular part of her duties as a teacher in a small southern town. But in simply doing her job, she had brightened the day for one boy, and boosted his self-esteem in the process.
That was 45 years ago. Today, I am a writer and author of 15 books that have sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide and translated into several languages. I may never fully grasp the impact my teachers made in my education and life, but I can’t help but believe that on that particular day, Mrs. Sullivan did a whole lot more than just teach me how to write a nice “h”.”
–Jeff Kinley, author of The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook
If you want to help today’s instructors inspire their students, please click one of the links below and donate to one (or all!) of the teacher’s classrooms. We know they will appreciate every kind gesture.
Teresa Fleak:
http://bit.ly/AlDC2o
Cari Sturch:
http://bit.ly/z5Gnxq
Tammy Scott:
http://bit.ly/ADJ4H0
Karen Fry:
http://bit.ly/AznLo0
In honor of our Chevy/Adopt-A-Classroom roadtrip, we asked several authors about the teachers that made an impact on their lives. Here’s what one of them had to say:
“I’ll forever be indebted to my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Parker. She was the first person to recognize the silly poems I was constantly scribbling in the margins of my homework and on the blackboard (“I stubbed my toe and went to the hospitoe”) as more than bored distractions. Identifying my passion for the written word, she set about making sure I saw it in myself.
Going outside the normal curriculum, she introduced me to the short stories of Ray Bradbury, the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, classics likeTreasure Island. She challenged me to be a better reader and writer, encouraging me to observe everything and write about it. When I wrote an article about the Concorde jet landing in the Azores Islands, where we lived, on its maiden transatlantic flight, she sent it to a magazine, without telling them my age. Six months later, I received the published article and a check.
And that was it for me: I knew I would be writer. Through thousands of magazine articles, screenplays, and finally novels, Mrs. Parker’s encouragement, instruction and gentle nudges are in every word.”
–Robert Liparulo, author of the Dreamhouse Kings series for young adults, andThe 13th Tribe (available April 2012)
If you want to help today’s instructors inspire their students, please click one of the links below and donate to one (or all!) of the teacher’s classrooms. We know they will appreciate every kind gesture.
Teresa Fleak:
http://bit.ly/AlDC2o
Cari Sturch:
http://bit.ly/z5Gnxq
Tammy Scott:
http://bit.ly/ADJ4H0
Karen Fry:
http://bit.ly/AznLo0
In honor of our Chevy classroom fundraising roadtrip, we asked several authors about the teachers that made an impact on their lives. Here’s what one of them had to say:
“I arrived for college in New York City, never having been to the “big city.” But I knew I wanted to write, and Columbia, I had heard, was great for nurturing writing. I was so scared as an entering student. That was until Marjorie Dobkin took me under her wing. She asked me about how I had spent my senior year in High School. I replied I had spent the year in Finland on a scholarship, learning the language and culture. So, Professor Dobkin said, “write about that year…a day and a page at a time” Wow! Every day I have to write a page, even if I don’t feel like it, even if I’m tired? Can I do that? Turns out I could. Professor Dobkin’s words come back to me now: a day at a time, a page every day… 365 days of it …and I still live by that motto.”
–Lis Wiehl, Fox News Legal Analyst, author of the Triple Threat and East Salem series
If you want to help today’s instructors inspire their students, please click one of the links below and donate to one (or all!) of the teacher’s classrooms. We know they will appreciate every kind gesture.
Teresa Fleak:
http://bit.ly/AlDC2o
Cari Sturch:
http://bit.ly/z5Gnxq
Tammy Scott:
http://bit.ly/ADJ4H0
Karen Fry:
http://bit.ly/AznLo0
In honor of our Chevy/Adopt-A-Classroom roadtrip, we asked several authors about the teachers that made an impact on their lives. Here’s what one of them had to say:
“My fourth grade teacher Margaret Whittaker was a joy and inspiration. I didn’t like school much; didn’t like sitting still; only wanted to read what amused me. Mrs. Whittaker somehow managed to make a special place for me in a large public school classroom. If I couldn’t pay attention to a civics lesson, she would give me paper and crayons and say, “Go invent a planet.” By the time I was done, I knew what it took to run a community – which had been the subject of the lesson to begin with. She often let me out of classes I couldn’t stand – like music and art – but thereby obligated me to do whatever other work she assigned – reading and writing. I came back to visit her for more than a decade, until she retired. I won’t say she taught me to love school, but she taught me to love learning.”
–Andrew Klavan, screenwriter, pop culture commentator, and author of young adult novels like The Homelanders series (now available) andCrazy, Dangerous (May 2012)
If you want to help today’s instructors inspire their students, please click one of the links below and donate to one (or all!) of the teacher’s classrooms. We know they will appreciate every kind gesture.
Teresa Fleak:
http://bit.ly/AlDC2o
Cari Sturch:
http://bit.ly/z5Gnxq
Tammy Scott:
http://bit.ly/ADJ4H0
Karen Fry:
http://bit.ly/AznLo0
