National Commission on Teaching & America's Future. (1996). What matters most: Teaching for America's future. New York: Author.

"Of all human talents, among the most precious...is the ability to discern opportunities around oneself, when others do not. In a given situation, one person will say 'there is nothing to do,' whereas another will find dozens of things to do and enjoy. The individual who is truly engaged with the world--interested, curious, excited--is never at a loss for opportunities to experience flow" (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003, p. 46).

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). Good business: Leadership, flow, and the making of meaning. New York: Viking.

Connections: We may never know the good we do

Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876, photo on the right below) was a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a political reformer. He taught Laura Bridgeman, a young deaf and blind woman (frontispiece photo on the left below), and his teaching techniques became the foundation for the methods used at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the first school for students with disabilities in this country, which Howe helped to found.

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922, photo below) did not think of himself as the inventor of the telephone but as a teacher of children who were deaf. Bell came from a family of speech teachers, and his mother was deaf, so it was natural for him to use his skills to teach deaf children to speak.

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936, sketch below), Helen Keller's beloved "Teacher," who had a serious vision impairment until her teenage years, attended the Perkins School for the Blind and was recommended to Helen Keller's mother through Alexander Graham Bell. Annie Sullivan carefully studied Samuel Gridley Howe's records from teaching Laura Bridgeman before she went to work for the Keller family.

Those methods, and Annie Sullivan's intelligence, dedication, and ingenuity, helped Helen Keller (1880-1968, photo below) emerge from the prison of her disabilities to become the person that she was.

“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

“The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.”

Edited from Hunt, N., & Marshall, K. (2005)
Great teachers of the past. Retrieved Friday, December 12, 2008 from http://college.hmco.com/education/hunt_marshall/except_child/4e/students/great_teachers/index.html
Helen Keller quotes excerpted from the website of the Royal National Institute for the Blind
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_keller.hcsp