Barbara Firestone
is honored with a Medium Paver from friends of Barbara Firestone.
"Future citizens are important to me. The purpose of education is to promote good citizenship. Everything I did in my teaching career was focused on that goal, good citizenship."
Barbara Firestone attended Friends University and graduate studies at Wichita State University. She has 100 classroom hours in constitutional law from the Center for Research and Development for Law Related Education (CRADLE) at Wake Forest. She has served on the board of CRADLE for five years.
She taught fifth and sixth grades at McCollom Elementary School for 30 years. She taught social studies at WSU for five semesters. As I give you information regarding Barbara you will see a great love of social studies:
1989 National Elementary Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Senator Appointee on the Board of Directors for the Congressional Youth Award Council. Kansas Teacher of the Year 1990. Recipient of the 1991 State History Teacher Award given by that D.A.R. Recipient of the l992 Daughters of Colonial Wars Teacher Award given by the National Society of the Daughters of Colonial Wars.
On November 21, 1989, a proclamation was given by the city of Wichita as "Barbara Firestone Day."
Her class spent time with former President Gerald Ford when he visited Wichita .
She was involved with drama in her class starting in 1969, when they presented "Hamlet" followed by "My Fair Lady." She helped produce and direct Broadway musicals with two other teachers. In 1976, they produced "Oliver" followed in other years with "Fiddler on the Roof," "The Sound of Music," "Wizard of Oz," and "Peace Child." These musicals involved over 200 children in fifth and sixth grades and were extensions of classroom learning.
Her class presented a mock trial in the 18th District Courtroom. In 1988, her classroom wrote a Classroom Constitution, which was hung in Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
She was awarded a mini-grant for "Armchair Interviews Anywhere in the World." A conference telephone was placed in her classroom. Some notables her class had conferences with were Maria Von Trapp; the President of the Tylenol company; a Nebraska football coach; and Daniel Nelson, an underwater archeologist who discovered an 1812 warship.
Her class visited Topeka and witnessed the Kansas Supreme Court in session. Numerous political figures have visited her classroom, including Dan Glickman, Mayors of Wichita, City Commissioners, and former Senator Nancy Kassebaum.
She has served on the National Board of Teaching Standards. She served as Chairman of Wichita State University Literacy Project. She was President and Vice President of Kansas Council for the Social Studies.
She co-chaired the Nancy Landon Kassebaum Excellence in Teaching Awards banquet for three years.
She has presented at many conferences. She was the moderator of the Kansas State Geography Bee at Kansas State University.
She is currently serving on the board of the Maude Carpenter Children's Center.
She is a writer of social studies articles that have been published. A lesson was presented on television for the South Carolina Bar Association in Colombia.
Her students have addressed the City Commissioners on how Wichita could be improved at little or no cost to the taxpayers. Her class wrote and filmed public service announcements for the I990 Census for district television.
Organizations that she is a member of include NEA, UTW, National Council for Social Studies, Kansas Council for Social Studies, Phi Delta Kappa, Kansas Teacher of the Year Organization, and the National State Teacher of the Year Organization.
Barbara always felt teaching was such an awesome responsibility that she never considered it as a career until Marjorie Morgan, a teacher at Friends University, thought she might enjoy it and encouraged her to join the field. She always wanted to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for starting and ending her career at the same school. She is now teaching children of children she has had.
Barbara states, "My administrators have always encouraged me, and my fellow teachers conveyed the message that teachers should be as successful as kids. I always felt their full support and encouragement. I read once that a man told his son, 'Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.' I'm ending 30 years of teaching; it's been my life. I've loved every minute of it. I hope my future will include other ways of serving children and people."
September 5, 1998
