The Emporia Gazette

October 10, 2008

• Headlines
• Sports
• Weather
• Classifieds

• Help
• Log in
• Home

• E-mail story to a friend
• Comments on this story
• iPod friendly version

In Emporia State University President Michael Lane’s mind, Friday was a night for a special group of stars.

The five inductees in the National Teachers Hall of Fame class of 2008, for at least one night, were honored for their work just like superstar athletes, actors and singers as they joined 80 previous inductees as education hall of famers.

“Millions of people know the names Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tom Cruise and Madonna,” Lane told the crowd at Albert Taylor Hall. “We all know that they can earn millions by attaching their names to products or services.

“Far fewer people know the names Ronald J. Blanchard, Kathleen Faye Engle, Dr. Penny B. Ferguson, Dr. David Lazerson and Suzanne Ransleben. These individuals... do not earn millions of dollars from Nike, or Jockey, or from movies or from music. All that these extraordinary people do is place their brand on hundreds of children each year.”

Ovations, mutual praise and more than a little emotion filled Friday’s ceremony as the educators happily welcomed each of their fellow inductees as new “family” members and expressed gratitude for those who had brought them to where they were on Friday. Introductory videos for each inductee, including testimonials from current and former students, gave ceremony goers a Cliff’s-Notes look at what made each educator so special.

The feeling that the inductees are stars in the education world wasn’t unique to Lane. Blanchard said his fellow inductees were the most dynamic group of teachers he had ever seen, and he was so intimidated that once he arrived in Emporia, he “almost got on the plane and went back home” to Lake Charles, La.

Lazerson, a special education and music teacher from Hollywood, Fla., was originally a New York state native and, with the invitation of New York City’s mayor, had played a role in attempting to pacify rioting between Hasidic Jews and blacks in New York in 1991. His introductory video showed him in that role, as well as in his job of helping special-needs children in the classroom. He credited a professor he had in his master’s program with teaching him two important concepts that have carried him in his teaching. Those concepts go by the acronyms FID and GOK.

FID, Lazerson explained, means that all people have their idiosyncrasies and require special needs; the only difference is that some “do it F, more Frequently, I, greater Intensity, D, longer duration in time.” GOK stands for what special-needs children are capable of: “God Only Knows.”

Blanchard, an Earth science teacher, made reference to gaining, in his fellow inductees, “one brother and three new sisters,” whom he would collaborate with to promote the hall of fame.

“We want this to be of the magnitude that everyone knows, and everybody’s aware, that teachers are the most important on this planet,” Blanchard said. He also stressed that teachers should rise beyond the political considerations of education, such as No Child Left Behind Act debates, to serve as role models for children.

Reflecting on the formative years of their teaching careers was a common theme for the inductees. Ransleben, now an English teacher in Corpus Christi, Texas, said she grew up in a small town and wasn’t ready for what lay ahead of her as she began teaching at age 20.

“One of my 14-year-old girls arrived every morning in a limo driven by her pimp,” Ransleben recalled. “I learned before very long that I had to (become) relevant to their lives or I was gonna lose them.”

For Ferguson, the longest-tenured teacher in the group with 38 years of classroom experience, the fact that she’s now teaching with some of her former students is a great source of pride for her.

“I am so proud that they are teachers, and that they’re giving back to the inner-city school system,” said the English teacher from Maryville, Tenn.

Engle’s speech was the most emotional. The physical education teacher from Newcastle, Wyo., choked up and eventually had to wipe tears away as she talked about her family’s role in her life, thanking her daughters for the waterproof mascara she was wearing. When talking about teaching experiences that shaped her, she told the story of a second-grader who, during stretches, told her that his back hurt.

“And I looked, and I was so devastated — someone had thrown an iron at him,” she said. “And the holes — they had thrown so hard that the holes had embedded. So of course, I had to take him, and we did lots of in-house stuff.

“But it taught me to always ask, ‘Are you OK?’ Because if they’re telling you, you need to know, are they OK?... I feel very blessed that I learned that early on. Not that he was hurt, but I always ask now, ‘Are you OK?’”

With 151 total years of experience between them, the newly enshrined educators have helped thousands of children to be more than OK. A congratulatory video message from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, coming near the beginning of the ceremony, illustrated Lane’s point about the evening’s honorees being stars in their own right.

“Few people can name their favorite lawyer or favorite doctor,” Sebelius said. “But everyone can name his or her favorite teacher.”

Advertisements

• © Copyright 2006 The Emporia Gazette. All rights reserved.
• Customer Service
• Contact Us
• Privacy
• Advertise with us
• Subscribe