"...make this a better world."
By Allen A. Raymond, Publisher

Her ability to remember moments from the past is enormous. I'll ask her where I ate lunch on a certain day last month and, after a moment's thought, she'll tell me where I was and, if we were having lunch together, tell me what I ate. Scary.

That's why I knew she was not making it up when she recently told me about a man from a non-English-speaking country in Europe who, when she met him in 1957, was manager of all manufacturing for an industrial valve company in Bridgeport, CT.

"I will always remember him," Pat told me, "because when he signed his name it looked so elegant – it was Palmer Method Handwriting taken to a new level."

Pat, fresh out of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT, had been hired by the company to teach this man – and others like him – how to read and write.

"We knew he could sign his name," she said, "but his ability to speak English was minimal at best, and we also knew he could neither read nor write...in English, or in any other language."

He'd explained to Pat, in halting English, how bad he felt, "and that's when I took his hand in mine," she said, "and helped him understand that he and I, together, would change all that – at which point we both began to cry."

Challenges like that are red meat for a "doer of good deeds" like Pat – let's face it, she's a missionary at heart –and of course she pulled it off, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

She improved his ability to speak English, helped him to begin to read and write and, in the process and perhaps unconsciously, changed her own life.

She left that company, obtained a degree in Special Education while working for an educational publisher (a subsidiary of Macmillan), and soon knew she'd found her calling – not as a teacher, but as a creator of educational materials that would help teachers teach and children learn.

I met Pat at Macmillan, for I worked there, too, and she became the editorial force when, in 1971, we launched Early Years, the forerunner of Teaching K-8.

I tell you this because last November 30, during a posh breakfast attended by over 250 publishing and educational leaders at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue, Pat was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Association of Educational Publishers for her "lifetime achievement in educational publishing."

Prior recipients of the honor have included the founders of Scholastic, My Weekly Reader, Highlights for Children, Kids Discover, The Journal of the National Education Association and Sesame Street.

Pat's in very good company.

As I introduced Pat, I told the crowd her mission has always been to encourage and inspire teachers so that they will go forth and make this a better world.

That is what you do as teachers – make this a better world.

Pat does that, too.

Allen Raymond is the Editor/Publisher for Teaching Pre K-8.

February, 2007, Vol.37, No.5