Touchdown Teacher

Photos by Gary Emord

Laurel Beaty vividly remembers how she felt stepping onto the field for her first game as a quarterback for the Nashville Dream.

"I was scared to death," says Beaty, "but I would do it all over again. We made history, and you don't get the opportunity to do that very often."

Beaty, a circulating teacher in Owensboro, Kentucky, joined the Dream three years ago for the inaugural season of the National Women's Football Association (NWFA). She's been dedicated to the game ever since.

"I played flag football in college, so when I graduated and I heard there were tryouts for a pro team in Nashville, I tried to convince my friends to come with me," she says. "Of course, I ended up trying out by myself."

Beaty now plays for the Evansville (Kentucky) Express, an NWFA expansion team closer to home. The NWFA is the fastest growing sports organization in the country, with more than 30 teams signed on for the 2004 season, which runs from April to August. Teams play with rules almost identical to those of the NFL.

Juggling three practices a week, up to a dozen games a season, and the daily demands of teaching certainly isn't easy, but Beaty has no misgivings. The thrill of competition, the camaraderie of the team, and the publicity of the blossoming professional league are just a few reasons Beaty looks forward to putting on the pads.

"Some of my students even get their parents to drive them to my games," she says. "There are definitely several who say, 'man, I wish I could play.'"

For more information on professional women's football, check out www.womensfootballcentral.com.

--Tamara Zakim

Family Ties

Photo by Kathy Lacy

When Christine Lacy's son told her he wanted to build a school in Dissan, a small village in Mali, West Africa, Lacy didn't ask why. She simply asked, "What can I do to help?"

Members of the Lacy family have raised more than $10,000 for a village school and started a nonprofit organization to build schools in other parts of the country.

"We're a close family so when we get involved in something we all jump in," says Lacy, a training coordinator for the County of Summit Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities in Ohio.

Lacy's son, Scott, first visited Dissan as a member of the Peace Corps and returned as a graduate student. During his second trip, Scott organized a chapter of the Cleveland Browns fan club to share his love of the team with his new host country. News of the club spread quickly to other Browns fan clubs, whose members wanted to support the village.

That's when the Lacy family got involved by designing a T-shirt for the village's club, which they sold to raise money for a school. Christine supervised production and distribution of the shirts and tracked the funds raised. In October 2002, the family traveled to Mali to present the first $6,000 they had collected. Scott returned to Dissan in September to dedicate the school.

"It was exciting to think we could do something that would make a permanent impact in that village and thank them for taking such good care of our son," Lacy says. "They embraced him and that's a nice thing for parents to know."

--Kristen Loschert

Star Struck

Photo by Earl Richardson

Michiel Ford has stars in his eyes. With the help of a $31,200 Christa McAuliffe Fellowship Grant, Ford, a science teacher and astronomy buff, brought a robotic observatory to Holton High School in Kansas. Students in his space science class designed and built the observatory.

Now, they can take a closer look at the night sky. Students even collect data for NASA astronomers.

But the project also connects the school with the community by bringing hundreds of local residents out to look at the planets on public observing nights.

"Astronomy has been a great public relations tool for the school district," says Ford. "Now, my students are working with the public and explaining what they are seeing."

To share the cosmos with a larger audience, Ford captures images of the sky with a camera attached to the telescope. After downloading the images to a computer in the observatory, he projects them onto a screen.

Ford's students also download images from telescopes located around the world through NASA's Telescopes in Education (TIE) program. The program provides schools with software that allows students to access and control telescopes online for real-time observations, Ford says.

"So if it's cloudy here in Holton, we can access a telescope in California where it's clear," Ford says. "It's a way for students to learn and partner with astronomers."

For more about TIE, visit http://tie.jpl.nasa.gov/tie/.

--K.L.

Advocate for the Arts

Photo by Tanaka/Photoplant

Helen Inada Fujie knows what it means to give in a time of need. She began teaching in 1940 at Lanai High School and Elementary School, the only school on the island of Lanai, Hawaii. A year later, Pearl Harbor was bombed.

"They needed most of our teachers in Lanai to go to Pearl Harbor and Honolulu to help rebuild the school programs," recalls Fujie. "So for part of World War II, only my principal and I remained in Lanai to teach everything from kindergarten to 12th grade. We managed, but I was glad when things got back to normal and I could focus on seventh grade again."

Since retiring in 1980, Fujie has continued to contribute to her community--as a substitute teacher and, more recently, as a volunteer with the Lanai Art Program, a gallery and school where she does everything from conducting tours to teaching painting. The program is dedicated to preserving and promoting Hawaiian art.

"I love it," says Fujie. "I'm there every weekend and everything I do is exciting. Whether I'm showing visitors a gallery or teaching kids about art, it's all very satisfying."

Fujie has put so much time into helping the gallery that the governor of Hawaii presented her with a special award for volunteerism in 2002. "I'm lucky to have so much in my life," says Fujie. "I could never stop being active with the Art Program. I'll do it till I die, no doubt about it."

--Matt Simon