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Barbara Shannon: Teaching by Example
By Terry McLaughlin

Many of us have been given the gift of a teacher who challenged us to be our best and to do our best, not only in school but also in our personal lives. Barbara Shannon is the kind of instructor who seeks excellence from her students in the classroom, but also teaches by example as she constantly tests her own potential.

Barbara, center, and two of her students

Recently, Barbara became concerned with the shortage of teachers entering the field of science education. "We still face a severe shortage of math and science teachers in this country, and many new teachers still leave the classroom after their third year," she says.

Setting a new goal for herself at a point in life when most teachers are anticipating retirement, she was selected as a Holmes Scholar at the University of Southern California where, with nine other Ed.D. students, she will be mentored this year as she prepares to teach in teacher preparation programs at the college level. "Pursuing my doctorate was a way of saying that I feel it is time for me to pass the baton on to younger teachers," she says.

Barbara took six of her students and one parent co-chaperone to South Africa a couple of years ago. Here they are posing at Cape Point. Barbara's the one peeking through, front row, second from the left.

The baton she'll pass on is an impressive one. For more than thirty years, Barbara has been bringing her unique combination of amazing energy levels, creative problem solving, and a passion for math and the sciences to classrooms throughout California, most recently at the Westridge School in Pasadena. A list of some of her awards hints at her success: Tandy Technology Scholars Outstanding Teacher, a DuPont Challenge Certificate of Merit, an ExploraVision Certificate of Merit, and inclusion in the University of San Diego's Outstanding Teacher Recognition Program. If you want to see her in action, keep an eye on Nickelodeon reruns. You may catch her demonstrating how to cook using insects.

Barbara and some science class students work

at the Long Beach Aquarium.

Few teachers are so devoted to their profession that they spend their "summer vacation" in school. Barbara has used experiences and connections gained during her summers at the Science and Society Teacher Institute at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, as a Teacher Research Associate in the laboratory of Dr. Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, and in the laboratory of Dr. Ted Krontiris at the City of Hope's Beckman Research Institute to enrich her lab classes and arrange for some awesome science class field trips. Her goals for these excursions include the chance "to expose the students to folks

After she returned from South Africa, Barbara arranged for the Soweto Dance
Troupe to come to her school and perform for/interact with the students.

actually working in the field and to have an opportunity to ask questions." Her students have been able to ask questions at such places as the Stanford Linear Accelerator, NASA/AMES, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and the Los Angeles Zoo. She also has led science interims at the Olympic Park Institute and the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program founded by Michel Cousteau.

However, her contributions to her school communities aren't limited to the sciences. She is deeply committed to helping her colleagues incorporate multi-cultural curriculum into their lessons, and she assists teachers in developing service-learning opportunities. Some of the speakers she has brought to campus include Debra Hoffman, author of the 2000 Sundance Grand Jury Prize documentary about apartheid, Long Night's Journey into Day; Helie Lee, the author of Oprah's Book Club selection, Still Life with Rice; Donzaleigh Abernathy, the daughter of civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy; and nationally known arbitrator Michael Henderson.

Here are a couple of Barbara's students with kids from the Khayelitsha, South Africa neighborhood where they worked

on the Habitat for Humanity house.

Barbara's interaction with her students also can involve a great deal of travel. She escorted a student group to Hawaii to attend a Student Diversity Leadership Conference; she planned a trip for students to South Africa, where they worked with Habitat for Humanity; and she took a group "to experience the South" in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and Atlanta, hoping that her students would better understand the civil rights movement and what it meant "for those who took part in it and continue the fight for equality."

It's hard to imagine, when considering her accomplishments, that Barbara finds time for a life outside the classroom, but she also has volunteered her time in parish confirmation and Eucharistic minister programs. She loves to sing in her church choir, and she once shared her vocal talents with the community as a pirate of Penzance in a light-

Barbara, center with the black bag, poses

with some of her students at the airport

when they returned from the diversity conference in Hawaii.

opera production. A devoted wife, mother, and the grandmother of ten, she keeps in touch with many of her former students. Those of us who are privileged to know her treasure her humor, her generosity and her loyalty - even though we can't always keep up with her.

Barbara Shannon is passing along exciting challenges and a terrific role model for future teachers with that "baton," in both her personal life and her professional one.

Terry McLaughlin's 2006 Harlequin Superromance, LEARNING CURVE, tells the story of a jaded master teacher, his idealistic young student teacher, and the lessons they both learn about life and love.

To read last month's SuperHeroine article, click here

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