Rev Rush's Palm Sunday Sermon amd UCC Daily Prayer.

In the sermon,(Moral Courage), last Palm Sunday, Rev Rush mentioned thirty African American men who grew up in the gheto and are now very sucessful men. When asked about the secret for their sucess one mentioned a fourth grade teacher.  It shows how important teachers are in children's lives.  With all the conversation that is going on in New Jersey, I think it is important to remember our teachers.  As this prayer says remember the good teachers, but I think we can also remember teachers who may not have been the best but we suceeded in spite of them.  I remember a guidance counselor who advised me to go into teaching.  I told her I was going to be a doctor or a chemist!  This also happend to anotherAfrican  woman who is in my book.  She succeded in spite of some bad advise from teachers.  She became not only a PhD chemist but a lawyer and mayor (selectman) of her New England town.  Her name is Dr. Esther Hopkins.
Another book that I used for reference is "Swimming against the Tide : African American Girls and Science Education" by Sandra Hansen.  In this book Dr. Hansen followed middle school African American girls who were interested in science and they pursued their studies in spite of the fact that some teachers did not think they would suceed!  This is true for all the women in my forthcoming book "African American Women Chemists", to be published by Oxford University Press.
So when I saw this Daily Prayer from the United Church of Christ I thought of these things and decided to share them with you.
Happy Easter
Jeannette Brown

April 20, 2011

Who Was Your Favorite Teacher?
Excerpt from Isaiah
50: 4-9a
"The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word."

Reflection
by Christina Villa
The current budget battles in many states have focused a lot of attention, much of it negative, on teachers. I have a theory about why people are so ready to jump all over teachers for being
"glorified baby-sitters" who work "part-time" (out at 2:30!) and "take summers off."

Ironically, teachers may be singled out this way because they are not just glorified baby-sitters but instead crucially important figures in our lives.  Everyone reading this, no matter how old, can probably name a teacher they have never forgotten, one who opened up some new world to them,
took them seriously, or just plain looked out for them.  Many of us are lucky and can name several.

But you don't turn into a saint just because you go into teaching, and there are also some bad teachers out there. With all the influence and power they have over the young, a bad teacher can do some serious human damage.  My theory is that a lot of the anti-teacher people in the budget debates aren't ready to forgive the really bad teacher who humiliated them or singled them out for abuse or turned them off to learning altogether.  And now they're getting their revenge.

It's too bad, because by some weird physics of education, one really good teacher can go a long way toward counteracting the effects of several bad ones.  A great teacher really does "sustain the weary with a word."  They are never boring, always enlivening, even in such subjects as, say, Geometry or Biology (thank you Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Nelson).  They stand up there and talk—it appears that’s all they do—but oh what a life-long difference it makes if it’s the right person standing up there
talking.

Prayer

Dear God, please bless all teachers, guide those who shouldn't be in the classroom to another profession, and give my regards to Mr. Beardsley and Mr.
Nelson.  Amen.

 http://www.ccsnj.org/Sermons-2011/110417-RealMoralCourage.html#_edn6