FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, DC - Among the more than one dozen educators, public servants and activists being honored by the National Education Association for fighting to promote social justice and dignity for all citizens is VirginiaAnn Greer Shadwick of Pacifica.
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VirginiaAnn Greer Shadwick
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Shadwick, a winner of the Mary Hatwood Futrell Award, realized that librarians at San Francisco State University had all the responsibilities of teaching faculty, but none of the privileges. She stepped from behind the reference desk and out in front to promote the rights of librarians. For more than three decades, Shadwick has worked to ensure that librarians in the California State University system, who are predominately female, have parity with their male counterparts in salary, benefits and professional development opportunities.
Chosen for their tanaciousness in fighting to preserve human and civil rights, Shadwick and the other winners will be honored by NEA at the 38th Annual Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner.
NEA President Reg Weaver will present the honors on July 3 in the Grand Ballroom of the Washington Convention Center. The event, held each year during the Association's Annual Meeting, is expected to attract 2,000 educators and invited guests.
This year's honorees include a former mayor, a well-known children's author and other notable individuals. Each will be recognized for their leadership in reaching out to people from diverse social, racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds. Their work spans the globe from a rural community in the Deep South to an Asian community in the West, and from snowy Vermont to the snowcaps of Alaska.
The awards, which are named after human and civil rights pioneers, commemorate NEA's 1966 merger with the predominantly Black organization, the American Teachers Association. In addition to Shadwick, the following are this year's esteemed award recipients:
Michael Yoshii, Alameda, California: Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial Award
Rev. Michael Yoshii is a clergyman in the mold of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who combines religion with social activism. Indeed, he is not adverse to rolling up his sleeves and fighting for justice, particularly as it affects Alameda's growing Asian community. Like other clergy who are also social activists, he does not confine his church to the building in which he delivers sermons. Rather, he extends his reach into the community at-large and is quick to go wherever injustice beckons. A third-generation Japanese American (a Sansei), Rev. Yoshii has organized and spoken out on a number of issues, such as housing for the poor and racial diversity. Stressing the importance of people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds getting to know each other, he initiated discussion forums among Alameda's politicians, businesspersons and citizens.
Emily Eileen Lester, Plainfield, Vermont: SuAnne Big Crow Memorial Award
Finding money for college is a daunting task for parents and students alike. But Emily Eileen Lester's quest for student aid took her to the doorstep of the Vermont State Legislature. Lester is the young architect of H.171, a recently enacted bill that will establish a trust fund to provide financial aid to students in state foster care. It began as a class project in Lester's 8th grade humanities class at Twinfield Union School in Plainfield, Vermont. Now a senior in high school, Lester continues to pursue this bill, which passed in the Vermont House on May 23, 2003, and has garnered support from 75 percent of the Vermont Senate.
Ben Gray, Omaha, Nebraska: Carter G. Woodson Memorial Award
Ben Gray is a photojournalist and television producer who hosts his own public affairs television show, covering issues of importance to his Omaha community and Omaha's Black community in particular. He also uses his talents and the medium in which he works to improve the lives of Omaha's students. As a speaker, he is always in demand and regularly visits schools and encourages students to learn and achieve. He also chairs the Omaha Public School's African American Achievement Council, which implements various programs to improve the achievement levels of Black students.
Phillip Martin, Choctaw, Mississippi: Leo Reano Memorial Award
Chief Phillip Martin is the democratically elected tribal Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, a federally recognized American Indian tribe. The tribe includes some 9,100 enrolled members living on or near 35,000 acres of reservation land in east central Mississippi. With an eye toward the future, Chief Martin has worked diligently to promote and ensure educational opportunities for his tribe. Back in the early 1960s, no Choctaw could attend public school, so Chief Martin opened the first Choctaw high school in 1964, recognizing that education held the key to the future success of his people. Today, all of the old schools on the Mississippi Choctaw Reservation have been replaced with new buildings, the Head Start Program has been expanded, and the new Choctaw Hospitality Institute has been added, providing vocational training and education, as well as career development, for members of the Mississippi Choctaw.
New Albany/Floyd County Education Association and School Corp., New Albany, Indiana: Rosena J. Willis Memorial Award
Realizing that the challenges of diversity in their Indiana community covered the spectrum, the district adopted a multicultural plan in 1994 that provided a proactive direction for facing the issues of racial, cultural and socioeconomic differences. The plan, which was revised in 2000, identifies five goals-training, hiring, infusing curriculum, improving communication, and providing outstanding opportunities for student achievement. Recognizing that schools cannot do the work alone, the district established a Diversity Advisory Council comprised of members of the community, teachers, administrators and support staff. The plan has expanded the celebration of cultural diversity to include areas of ethnicity, religion and gender.
Camille Taylor, Bloomington, Illinois: H. Councill Trenholm Memorial Award
Camille Taylor has been an inspiration to her students, colleagues and Association for the past 25 years. A guidance counselor at Normal Community High School, she has been an elementary at-risk specialist, a learning disabilities resource teacher, and a professional development academy instructor. But most of all, she has been an advocate for kids. She has gone far beyond the call of duty to assist her students, particularly minority students, and to help her colleagues better understand some of the challenges minority students face. Working in a school with few minority teachers, she has launched campaigns on her school's behalf to recruit more minorities to the staff.
Norman Dale Conard, Fort Scott, Kansas: H. Councill Trenholm Memorial Award
A third generation educator, Norman Conard teaches social studies in Uniontown High School in Kansas. In the fall of 1999, Conard encouraged his students to work on a yearlong National History Day project that would extend the boundaries of the classroom to families in the community while helping them to learn history. Conard found an old magazine and showed several students a clipping that described how Irena Sendler, a Catholic social worker, had saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis during World War II. The students were so impressed by Sendler that they created a play based on her life, which has been performed in more than 110 venues across Kansas, the U.S. and in Europe. Uniontown has little diversity and no Jewish students in the school district. Yet, the community was so inspired by the project that it sponsored an Irena Sendler Day.
Lupe Ramos-Montigny, Grand Rapids, Michigan: George I. Sánchez Memorial Award
Ramos-Montigny is no stranger to hard work. Born in Weslaco, Texas, Ramos-Montigny traveled to Michigan as a young girl to harvest beets in Caseville, cherries in Old Mission peninsula and tomatoes in Indiana. This experience taught her the value of sustained effort, the importance of education and the need to advocate for minorities. First and foremost an educator, Ramos-Montigny has taught in the Grand Rapids Public Schools for the past twenty-five years. Her first assignment was as a migrant education teacher working with students and families who harvest crops. Now a middle school social studies and language arts teacher at Westwood Middle School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she cultivates a harvest of another kind. In the classroom and in the community, Ramos-Montigny serves as a role model of civic action, cultural awareness, gender equity and dedicated leadership.
Kevin Jennings, New York, New York: Virginia Uribe Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights
In a nation where four out of five Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) high school students still routinely experience verbal, physical, and/or sexual harassment while at school, educators know we have a long way to go. But Kevin Jennings sees a day when "every child learns to value and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity." Jennings is co-founder and executive director of GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian Straight Educators Network, which currently provides support for nearly 2,000 high school-based clubs throughout the 50 states. Called Gay Straight Alliances, the clubs' goals are to empower educators and students to put an end to bullying and harassment through education. Mr. Jennings is the author of several books written to help schools, parents and communities gain greater knowledge of GLBT issues.
Maynard H. Jackson (deceased): Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Award
Jackson's legacy embodies the next phase of the civil rights movement by moving the battle from the streets to the realm of elected office and corporate boardrooms. Jackson was only 35 when in 1973 he was elected Atlanta, Georgia's first Black mayor. During his first eight years, he created Neighborhood Planning Units, which gave grassroots neighborhoods a voice in city politics. He tackled police brutality; created a nationally praised public arts program; and expanded Hartsfield International Airport into one of the largest, busiest and most important airports in the world while making sure that aggressive affirmative action programs guaranteed minority participation. Yet, if his heart was in political action, his soul was in educating young people to achieve on every level. He founded the Maynard Jackson Youth Foundation to teach business skills to disadvantaged youth. He established the American Voters League to increase national voter turnout and to encourage more young people, especially African-American youth, to go to the polls. And the world will never forget when all eyes turned to Atlanta as the host of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
Tom Thiery, Adrian, Michigan: Applegate-Dorros Peace and International Understanding Award
Thomas Thiery knows he could have stopped teaching years ago and made a living as a full-time painter. After all, he is a successful, award-winning painter whose works have received rave reviews all over the world. But that was not a priority, because his students are his true works of art. An art teacher at Adrian High School in Michigan, Thiery draws inspiration from the young people he teaches and those he meets traveling all over the world. What Thiery does with his students is unique. He not only helps them to better see their own lives, but also the lives of people all over the world. In the process, he gives them a multicultural education and makes them citizens of the world.
Velma Wallis, Fairbanks, Alaska: Author-Illustrator Human and Civil Rights Award
Less than 650 people live in the remote Athabaskan village a few miles north of the Arctic Circle, where author Velma Wallis was born. Yet her poignant stories of courage, healing and coming of age have reached millions of readers in 17 languages around the globe with messages of resilience and hope. One of 13 children, Wallis had to leave school at age 13 to help raise her younger siblings when her father died. Convinced of the power of education and an avid reader, Wallis passed her high school equivalency exam and began to write. Her first literary project was to write down a legend her mother had told her about two abandoned old women and their struggle to survive. The book received immediate acclaim from readers and critics worldwide. Two Old Women, published in 1993 by Epicenter Press, won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and a Western States Book Award. It has sold more than a million copies and been optioned by Fox Searchlight Pictures for a major feature film. Most rewarding, perhaps, is the realization that this book-written by one who was forced to delay her own formal education-is now part of the school curriculum and is on the high school reading list in nearly every school in Alaska.