People
A Great Move

Photo by Chris Seward

A custodian trades his chess skills for a chance to read. Everyone wins.

A year ago, North Carolina custodian Otis Pittman heard one of the best offers of his life: "If you teach our students to play chess," said his school principal Lane Anderson, right, "We will teach you how to read."

Pittman took Anderson up on his offer, and what started with a few students and a couple of chessboards has exploded into a school-wide project. Each classroom at Sedalia Elementary now has a chessboard, and last spring the school held its first tournament.

"Taking time out for kids is what it's all about," says Pittman, who grew up one of 13 children in a sharecropper family. "I've always liked helping kids."

Every time he sits down with kids to play a game, Pittman teaches students critical and creative thinking skills. Chess, he says, requires students to think.

"Chess is not like checkers, where you can move a piece anywhere on the board," notes Pittman.

For his own part, Pittman is working hard to become an active reader.

"At age 62, Otis has taught us that we are all lifetime learners," says Anderson, "and that we are all teachers who can share our individual gifts with others."

Adds Anderson: "By his courage and willingness to learn, Otis has truly inspired all of us."

Photo by Randy Squires

As a music teacher in rural Tutopolis, Illinois, Craig Lindvahl spends his spare time producing, writing, and composing documentaries.

His talents and special "hands-on" approach recently won him the Mid-America Emmy for his documentary titled "Weathered Secrets: Barns of the American Midwest." Telling the histories of German, Polish, and Finnish barns in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Lindvahl goes beneath the wood barn surfaces painted red.

"I explore the life that exists around the barns," explains Lindvahl. "Looking behind the romanticized image of barns reveals the less than perfect, real-life struggles of American families."

Lindvahl has produced two other documentaries, "They Served With Honor" about World War II veterans and "Destination: Marshall Islands," a music video that linked his students and the Peace Corps.

Lindvahl did not intend to make the classroom his career when he first started teaching 21 years ago, but he quickly found a love for the profession and his students.

"By working on documentaries, I spark family discussions across the country," says Lindvahl. "But, with teaching, I affect children's lives every day."

Lindvahl divides his time between teaching music to first through sixth graders, working with the local junior high and high school bands, and his extracurricular filmmaking.

"You don't have to be confined by what you do or what you teach," says Lindvahl. "Kids push you to do things. We can learn from them."

Lindvahl is currently working on another documentary, about his local high school basketball team and its relationship with small-town Tutopolis.

Riding the Airwaves

Photo by Chase Photo

During her 23-year career as an elementary school teacher in Michigan, Betty Smith never dreamed of becoming a radio talk show host. But, for the last two years, Smith has entertained and informed listeners of WSDP Radio (88.5 FM) in Plymouth-Canton through her weekly show, "Lemonade with BJ."

"It all started when the radio station staff visited my local senior citizens center," explains Smith, who's now retired. "They announced they were interested in piloting a senior show and wanted volunteers. I said I was interested. Next thing I knew, I was writing the show and choosing music and guests."

Smith's guest list has ranged from retired football coach Bo Schembechler to local teachers.

"I try to use my show to raise important issues as well as entertain," says Smith. "I also show listeners that retirees are not couch potatoes, they're active in the community, in the schools, in the churches."

Smith's Wednesday morning show has become a staple to seniors and non-seniors alike.

"This has become a great new career, and I'm having a wonderful time," adds Smith. "It just shows you, never say never."

Music Makes the Man

Photo by Fred Solowey

Unhappy in his previous career, San Diego teacher Keith Ballard has found his calling: teaching mariachi music and heading up a steel drum band at a middle and high school just three-and-a-half miles from the Mexican border.

Now 36, Keith Ballard spent much of his 20s selling pharmaceuticals to Phoenix doctors.

"The job was monotonous, boring, easy, and decent-paying," he recalls. "I wanted something more out of life."

So Ballard--who had experience playing percussion instruments professionally--went back to school for degrees in music and secondary education. Now Ballard teaches all five instruments used in mariachi bands--violins, trumpets, guitars, guitarrones, and vihuellas--to seventh and eighth graders.

Last year Ballard started an Island Steel Drum Band at Montgomery High School. The band--one of the largest such groups in the country--has been a great hit, appearing on the nationally televised "Donny and Marie Show" last August and cutting a CD at Montgomery Middle School, which has a predominantly Mexican-American student body.

"I believe that many of these kids feel better about themselves, thanks to mariachi," says Ballard. "They're not alone. I always wanted to do something that could make a difference in people's lives. I feel like I have one of the greatest jobs in the world."

Life on the Bottom

Ever heard of the Strait of Juan de Fuca? High school science teacher Ken Harasty has. Harasty, who teaches in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, spent time last summer off the coast of Canada and Washington State and experienced the local straits from an unusual angle--up from the ocean floor.

Harasty and seven other science teachers accompanied university professors to the Juan de Fuca area last summer. On a series of deep-sea dives, researchers gathered tube worms to study how they can live at 2,276 feet below sea level.

Harasty was the only teacher in the research group to dive to the ocean bottom in the expedition's deep sea vehicle.

"Life at the bottom of the ocean is a whole different world," says Harasty. "Having that perspective gave me personal experience to draw on to teach my students."

Adds Harasty: "These opportunities for real research exist for all teachers. It takes some work, but participating in current research programs allows teachers to get real life experience on what they teach."

To find out more about this teaching project, log on to www.ocean.washington.edu/outreach/revel.