A Cup of Comfort for Teachers

Heartwarming stories of people who mentor, motivate, and inspire

Colleen Sell

• Publisher: Cup of Comfort
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781598696981
• eBook ISBN: 9781605504001
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

"It's the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." —Albert EinsteinEvery single day in countless classrooms all around the world, teachers inform young minds—and transform young lives. In this moving collection of true stories, you'll meet more than fifty remarkable people who've made a big difference in a struggling student's life—one hour, one lesson, one "good job!" at a time.In today's challenging world, being a good teacher is harder than ever—and encouragement may sometimes be hard to come by. But this unforgettable celebration of the trials and triumphs of the world's toughest profession is sure to delight and inspire you. Whether you're a teacher on the front lines or a student grateful for the dedication, passion, and generosity of a favorite mentor, A Cup of Comfort for Teachers is just what the principal ordered.

Contributors

Michelle (Mann) Adserias (“In the Light of a Master”) was born and raised in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. She received her secondary teaching certificate in communications at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. She now resides with her husband, Peter, in Menasha, Wisconsin. They have four children: Ryan, Kyle, Madeline, and Hannah.

Greg Beatty (“Because It Matters”) has held an assortment of odd jobs, including massage therapist and bartender on a charter boat. He supports his writing habit by teaching for the University of Phoenix Online. When he's not at his computer, he enjoys cooking, practicing martial arts, and having complex interpersonal relationships.

Kathy Briccetti, Ph.D. (“The Power of One”), works as a school psychologist in Oakland, California, and as a freelance writer from her Berkeley home. Her writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines and on public radio. She is at work on a memoir about her search for roots among three generations of absent fathers and adoption in her family.

Harriet Cooper (“I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak English … Eventually”) is an instructor of English as a second language (ESL) for the Toronto (Canada) District School Board. She has written humorous and technical articles on teaching that have appeared in national newspapers and educational newsletters, and she has written and edited several educational handbooks.

Vicki Cox (“Guns and Roses”) retired from public teaching in 2000. Since then, she has written four children's biographies for Chelsea House Publishing and one anthology, Rising Stars and Ozark Constellations, a collection of essays about the nation's heartland. She hangs her clothes in Lebanon, Missouri, but mostly lives in her car.

Jacqueline D. Cross (“The Joy of Learning”) lives in Connecticut with her husband, children, dog, and cat, where she works as an office manager for elderly residential housing. When not being Mom, she can be found cloistered in her den, writing — that is, when she is able to kick one of her kids off the computer.

Diana Davis (“Extra Credit”) is the assistant director of admissions at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She holds undergraduate and master's degrees in writing, and her poetry, short stories, and articles have appeared in numerous periodicals. A mother of three grown daughters and grandmother of two, she lives quietly with her dog in Florissant, Missouri.

Rita DiCarne (“From Intro to Coda”) teaches music and language arts at St. Catherine's school in Horsham, Pennsylvania. A fellow of the Pennsylvania Writing project, DiCarne resides in Horsham with her husband, Chuck, and children, Angela and Charlie. Her articles have appeared in Today's Catholic Teacher.

Cecilia M. Dobbs (“The Beauty Beneath”) currently teaches sixth-grade science in the South Bronx. She plans to start journalism school and hopes to write for the science section of a New York newspaper. She lives in Manhattan.

Samantha Ducloux (“Grieving the F”), a lifelong teacher and student of many things, including languages, family relationships, writing, and dance, has published fiction and nonfiction under the names Samellyn Wood and Samantha Ducloux. She lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon, where she is learning to grieve the Fs and celebrate the As.

Julie Dunbar (“Grade School Lessons for a Lifetime”) is a Colorado-based freelance writer. She tracked down her fourth-grade teacher after having children of her own. She found that Mr. Sparato's laugh lines were a little deeper and that he was even more generous, genuine, and silly than she had remembered.

Kathleen Edwards (“Show-and-Tell”) left behind the teaching life many years ago and is now a wife and artist. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she indulges in ceramics, painting, and writing.

James Eisenstock (“A Lesson Learned”) is an Air Corps veteran who flew twenty-six missions in World War II. He shares a home in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and two sons, two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren with his wife of nearly sixty years. He enjoys golf and creative writing.

Madeleine Enns (“Walk Softly, Children Working”), a retired teacher, lives in Winnipeg, Canada. Her stories have been published in several magazines, including Rhubarb and Sophia.

Kathleen Ewing (“A Pair of Nothings”) was an aerospace manufacturing engineer when the world tilted on its axis on September 11, 2001. Now an office coordinator, she resides in Arizona's central mountains, where she enjoys horseback riding, target shooting, and four-wheeling the back country in her Dodge pickup truck.

A. Ferreri (“Dial A for Effort”) teaches English as a second language (ESL) at a school in Wisconsin to kids aged eleven to fifteen from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Asia, and Africa, who struggle daily to conquer both a new language and a new culture.

Dawn FitzGerald (“There's No Substitute”) is a freelance writer and substitute teacher in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of five biographies for children: Angela Bassett, Ben Stiller, and Destiny's Child for Chelsea House Publishers; and Julia Butterfly Hill: Saving the Redwoods and Robert Ballard: Discovering the Titanic and Beyond for the Millbrook Press.

Tammy Glaser (“A Spoonful of Sugar”), a 1985 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, lives in Minnesota with her husband, Steve, and children, Pamela and David. She runs an e-mail list for families homeschooling autistic children.

Whitney L. Grady (“Why I Teach”) resides in Kinston, North Carolina, with her husband, James, and their dog, Shug, where she teaches seventh and eighth grade at Arendell Parrott Academy. She gains inspiration for her writing from her students, friends, family, and weekends at the beach. This is her first published story.

Michele Griskey (“Pass It On”) lives with her family on Orcas Island, Washington, where she writes and teaches writing for the University of Phoenix. In her free time, she gardens and makes up stories with her two young sons.

Elisabeth Rose Gruner (“Mama Mentor”) teaches English and women's studies at the University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia. Her academic writing has been published in SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Children's Literature, and other periodicals. Her personal writing has been featured in magazines and anthologies, including Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers and Toddler: Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Urgent, Irrational, Tiny People We Love (Seal Press).

Evan Guilford-Blake (“Field Trip”) is an awardwinning, nationally produced playwright and professional storyteller who has also published short fiction, poetry, and journalism. He lives in the Atlanta, Georgia, area with his wife (and inspiration) Roxanna, a jewelry designer and freelance writer, and their two doves, Quill and Gabriella.

Glenn Hameroff (“Testing My Mettle”) is a retired teacher living in Delray Beach, Florida. With the advance of Parkinson's disease, writing became the focus of his retirement. He believes that humor is a necessary tool to enrich the classroom.

Mikki Hollinger (“Champion of Children”), a native of New Orleans, resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband. A healthcare project manager by trade, she considers herself, without hesitation, a writer. This is her first published work and a tribute to her favorite teacher, her mother.

Julie A. Kaiser (“Flight Dreams”) is a freelance writer who still stargazes each night. She lives in Chatham, Illinois, with her husband, Scott, and son, Jakob. She received her MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University.

Carol L. F. Kampf (“What This Teacher Understands”) holds two master's degrees, one in counseling, and is the owner of a human resources consulting firm. She lives with her husband and two sons in Alpharetta, Georgia. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including Attention Magazine, the Harrisburg Patriot News, and ParentToParent.com.

Jolie Kanat (“Back to My Future”) is a music specialist, mom, producer of two original children's music CDs, and author. She now teaches everything from the hot dog song to Beethoven to hundreds of young children in the San Francisco Bay Area, in California.

Erin K. Kilby (“Lost and Found”) is a freelance writer who resides in Kingwood, Texas. She teaches English and enjoys writing, reading, crocheting, and spending time with her husband, Michael, her stepson, Tyler, and her dog, Chelsea. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines, including Reminisce, Obadiah, and Your Family.

Debbi Klopman (“What I Never Learned in Kindergarten”) is an immigration lawyer in Great Neck, New York, where she lives with her husband, Tom, and her eighteen-year-old son, Jeremy. While the rest of the world is sleeping, she writes stories.

Christine Guidry Law (“Lizard Boy”) is an elementary school teacher, freelance writer, and editor of Baton Rouge Parents magazine. She lives with her husband and three children in Zachary, Louisiana. She now homeschools six children in kindergarten, first, and fifth grades.

Emmarie Lehnick (“Ant Bites”), of Amarillo, Texas, is a retired English/speech teacher who holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree. She and her husband have a daughter, a son, and four grandsons. She is a member of Inspiration Writers Alive.

Beverly Carol Lucey (“Snapshots”), originally from New England, now writes from the Land of Lard and Peaches, having chosen to follow her husband south, to Arkansas. Like Flannery O'Connor, she knew that the line from the old song was true: “A good man is hard to find.”

George Malsam (“I Can't Read”) taught senior high industrial arts for twenty-seven years in Denver, Colorado. He holds a master's degree in education, a bachelor of arts degree in industrial arts education, and an associate's degree in building construction technology from Oklahoma State University. Now retired, he teaches woodworking skills to his nine grandchildren in his home woodshop.

Don Mitchell (“The Broken Heart”), originally from rural Arkansas, now lives in West Monroe, Louisiana, with his charming wife, Dixie. As freelance telecommunication engineers, Don and Dixie travel around the country solving industry problems. In their spare time they enjoy singing karaoke, performing stand-up comedy, and writing funny movie reviews.

Mary Paliescheskey (“A Matter of Trust”) lives in Southern California with her family. Once upon a time, she was a research scientist. Today, she is homeschooling her three sons — hoping to follow in Mr. Roach's footsteps.

Tony Phillips (“They Wanted to Teach”) is a middle school science teacher from Indiana. In 2003, he published his first novel, Superior Species: Evolution Defies Creation, a Christian science-fiction novel addressing the real-life conflict between science and religion, through PublishAmerica. He also writes short stories.

Hattie Mae Ratliff (“The Gift”), a mother of three and grandmother of four, has been writing for many years but only six years ago began sharing her stories, often about children, with the world. She makes her home in San Marcos, Texas.

Cheryl Reed, Ph.D. (“Piranha Class”), has taught at the high school, community college, and university levels. She has published articles and presented seminars on teaching strategies and has written or coedited several books. Her deep love is teaching students to think things through and to communicate their ideas to people who need to hear them.

Tanya M. Showen (“Moment of Truth”) resides in East Texas with her husband, Keith. She wrote this story in honor of her second-grade teacher, Loretta Vancleave.

K. Anne Smith (“Clown School”) is a retired speech/language pathologist who currently teaches public speaking at the college level. Her short stories, poems, and articles have appeared in numerous magazines, including BlueRidge Country, GreenPrints, and Family Fun.

Thomas Smith (“Innocence and the Divine”) has a wife he is crazy about and two dogs that are (mostly) housebroken. He is an award-winning writer, reporter, TV news producer, playwright, and pretty fair banjo picker. He divides his time between Raleigh and Topsail Island, North Carolina.

Paula Sword (“The Sound of One Door Opening”), a speec...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Why I Teach
• A Pair of Nothings
• Guns and Roses
• Clown School
• Because It Matters
• The Sound of One Door Opening
• The First Day
• Snapshots
• What Teaching Justin Taught Me
• Flight Dreams
• What I Never Learned in Kindergarten
• The Gift
• Ant Bites
• From Intro to Coda
• Dial A for Effort
• Pass It On
• Grieving the F
• A Lesson Learned
• Lost and Found
• Testing My Mettle
• The Creative One
• What This Teacher Understands
• There's No Substitute
• They Wanted to Teach
• Grade School Lessons for a Lifetime
• A Little Child Shall Lead Them
• The Educated Dude
• Champion of Children
• In the Light of a Master
• Show-and-Tell
• Lizard Boy
• The Beauty Beneath
• Field Trip
• A Spoonful of Sugar
• The Power of One
• I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak English … Eventually
• A Matter of Trust
• Last Day
• Moment of Truth
• The Other Two Chairs
• Extra Credit
• I Can't Read
• The Joy of Learning
• Mama Mentor
• Innocence and the Divine
• Piranha Class
• Walk Softly, Children Working
• Truth and Consequence
• Back to My Future
• The Broken Heart
• Last One Out
• Tell Your Story in the Next Cup of Comfort!
• Contributors
• About the Editor
• Now more Beautiful — and Inspiring — than ever!