Teacher
Spellman's years as a teacher and president of the PTA for Happy Acres Elementary School (renamed in 1991 the Gladys Noon Spellman Elementary School), as well as civic association activism as a young mother and housewife in Cheverly during the 1950s led to leadership positions in the reform movement that seized control of the county's government during the 1960s, ousting the old guard Democratic organization that had managed affairs in Prince George's for decades. Spellman was active in the fight for a home rule charter form of government for Prince George's, and in 1962, running on a reform slate, served as a member of the Prince Georges County Board of Commissioners from 1962 to 1970. She served two years as chairman, effectively the head of the county's government. After the establishment of the County Council, Spellman served as councilwoman at large from 1971 to 1974. She was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in 1967 and was awarded the highest honor that could be bestowed by county officials nationwide when she became the first woman elected president of the National Association of Counties in 1972.
Read more about this topic: Gladys Spellman
Famous quotes containing the word teacher:
“To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.”
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“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
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