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School
administrator honored for achievements |
| By
Sharon Woods Harris
Pekin Daily Times staff writer
PEKIN -- It was a lucky day for music major Chuck
Bowen when his voice failed him at Illinois State
University in the early 1970s.
Bowen,
who is Assistant Superintendent at Pekin School
District 108, said, "Two things happened at the
same time, One, I developed voice trouble and had
to rest from singing for a while, and two, I got
a job at the Victory Hall Boys Home for young boys
who were having difficulties at home or with the
law. "I found that I could be pretty successful
working with kids and helping them to learn what
they needed to know. That made me look at careers
that involved children."
After
he graduated he started teaching second grade in
Morton. Bowen has apparently done a lot of things
right. He was elected on Oct. 7 to membership in
the ISU College of Education Alumni Hall of Fame.
The Hall of Fame is the way the university acknowledges
alumni members who excel in education. Bowen's honors
include Illinois Teacher of the Year in 1986 and
Illinois Distinguished Education Award in 1988.
Bowen,
49, started with District 108 as Broadmoor school
principal in 1989. His job still allows him to influence
young minds and help them make the right choices
in a changing world. Bowen now teaches the teachers
who will teach the students.
"I
mostly work with adults now," Bowen said. "Learning
isn't just teaching, you have to learn alongside
those you are teaching.
"That's
what I did as a teacher in class -- I learned with
my students. In order to catch the skills and the
joy of learning you have to do things with the students.
Traditional teaching is not all there is to learning.
You have to find exciting things to learn about."
After
teaching for a few years at Morton, Bowen went back
to ISU for a master's degree in clinical psychology
-- a second idea he had for a career. He found that
what he learned there fit into the classroom --
including how kids learn, how they develop behavioral
patterns and how they mature and develop. Even though
his time in front of students has diminished over
the past few years, Bowen still misses the early
days when he ventured into the classroom to see
eyes light up with new concepts. From time to time
he is invited into a classroom to read to students
or fill in as teacher for a day. The challenges
for educators are changing, Bowen said.
"Knowledge
is expanding at unbelievable rates," he said. "It
has to be understood and translated for use by students."
Bowen
said that parents and schools have always been able
to control the material students get from newspapers
and magazines, but that has changed with television
and the Internet. He said news happens fast and
in an effort to get the news first, news agencies
don't always take the time to think about how the
material presented will impact children. Talk shows
are a constant on television where issues are debated
with obvious slants, he said. The Internet is a
wealth of information, but the material presented
there is hard to control for young eyes, he said.
People often take the source of such electronic
media as accurate and precise.
Bowen
said it is the job of educators to help young people
learn to question and decide when to be critical.
That is the challenge, he said, for educators today,
as well as for parents.
"I
think we need to prepare kids for a world in which
change is rapid and much more complex than it was
for us," Bowen said. "The reward is seeing the results
in the kids we send out into the world."
Bowen
recently received an article in the mail about the
Morton District 709 teachers contract dispute. The
article was written by one of his former fifth-grade
students at Morton. In the article she spoke of
Bowen and her years there at Morton.
"She
remembered me," he said. "That is the reward --
she remembered me. "Just to be remembered and remembered
as someone who helped a student gain the confidence
and the knowledge to succeed. That's what it's all
about." |
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