Hall of Fame Teacher

Hall of Fame Teacher

            by Collette

I took additional training at the University of Tulsa to teach Advanced Placement American History. All of those taking the classes that year were from Oklahoma except me. I sat with the same group every day, doing research, and sharing lunches. One of the ladies in that group actually taught five classes of advanced placement American History at her high school. If you don’t know, that is an incredible number of students and papers to grade. She was Japanese, but that didn’t come up at that time.

A few years later there was an article in our local paper with the headline about teachers being inducted into the National Teacher Hall of Fame which happens to be in Kansas. I decided to skim the article, but soon slowed down to read the account. My Japanese friend was being inducted. What I learned from the article was that her parents and she had been incarcerated in a detention camp in the desert during WWII. They lived in a railroad car along with other detainees. She had not shared those experiences with my group.

The teacher inducted into the hall had used the lessons learned in the camp and created a simulation she used in her classes that paralleled her time in the desert. Students ate what she ate and did what her family did while imprisoned. They came away from the experience understanding what our government did to Japanese Americans. To say her students were changed for life is an understatement, and one of the big reasons she is a Hall of Famer.