<BACK
General Information
|
Printed
19 October 2000 |
|
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."
|
|
