A great educator
Recently there was a stunning story about Lori Low, an Ector Junior High School teacher. She had successfully found a way to motivate and galvanize local business people to underwrite the cost of publishing her students’ writings.
Now that is what I call a coup, for sure! She used her creativity, persistent drive and intelligent planning to intrinsically motivate her students to write. What a breath of fresh air in the stuffy, federal bound “hallways” of education!
If it were in my power, I would clone her for the classrooms of Texas. Why? Because by using creative and intelligent planning and obviously “outside the box” thinking, she motivated her students toward success way beyond the usual ditto pabulum perpetuated by the seemingly eternal chase for the almighty scores.
As a superb professional educator, she avoided the horror of “teach-to–the-test” child abuse which rages like a rampant rabies attack in Texas schools. She has taken the terrible TAKS mindset and turned it on its hind end.
She has a true teacher’s passion and joy for her students that shines in her “going the extra mile” in her pursuit of getting her students’ writings published in one volume, despite the great odds against this even occurring. Her kids are so blessed, because by writing their own, yes their own stories they sailed into that realm of their mind where the tremendous nerve wracking pressure of the TAKS’ mindset is nonexistent.
May Lori Low be given the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the classroom climate of “the peace that passes all understanding” Lori Low is one of the heroines of education in Texas. I salute her.
