About the author
Becky Horner is an ESOL teacher at Richmond Elementary. This is an excerpt from a presentation April 16 at the Spring PennTESOL Conference, Community College of Philadelphia.
Email this article to:
Remembering Miriam Hershberger
by Becky Horner
The School District has lost one of its finest ESOL teachers, Miriam Hershberger. On March 10, as Miriam walked to Southwark School, she was struck and killed in a tragic accident.
Miriam was a legendary teacher – one of a kind.
I first met Miriam Hershberger when I participated in a workshop, and she was the facilitator. Miriam presented a way of doing Shared Writing that used the students’ names as references for the consonant sounds. She kept a list of her students’ names next to her writing easel. We pretended to be her first graders, and she modeled how to stretch out the sounds, slowly, all the while encouraging us with that 1000-watt smile of hers.
A year later, I found myself in Miriam’s classroom – taking her place while she took a sabbatical. A sabbatical – sounds restful, doesn’t it? Not for Miriam. She packed her bags and moved to Cambodia for a year to better learn Khmer. After all, Khmer was the language of the majority of her students and their families, the door she could enter to better know their culture and their lives.
And Miriam knew her students. She had extensive portfolios on each student that showed growth and progress over the course of the years. Miriam knew the strengths and weaknesses of every child in detail – and, most importantly, she knew what each child needed to get to the next level. Miriam also collected the students’ writings.
Miriam’s classroom was an oasis filled with books for Guided Reading, tubs of books for author studies, and so many children’s books in Chinese, Vietnamese, even Khmer! Her collection put most school libraries to shame. She had written countless successful grants, which afforded her this literary treasure trove.
Miriam was so dedicated to her students, whom she loved. She came to school early every day and stayed late every day. She made very big deals about each festival or holiday which her students celebrated and shared this joy with the rest of the school.
During the year that I tried to fill Miriam’s shoes, I was called upon by the Philadelphia Folklore Project to write a grant so that Chimroeun Yin could continue teaching Cambodian dance in that South Philadelphia neighborhood. Corresponding by email, Miriam and I together wrote a successful grant, which allowed Chimroeun’s connection to Southwark’s Cambodian students to flourish for many more years.
Miriam had a rich and diverse cross-cultural experience as an educator, which began with student teaching in Puerto Rico and took her to Thailand and Vietnam. But we will remember her for her 17 years of dedicated service at Southwark Elementary.
Miriam exemplified the highest ideals of an ESOL teacher. She never stopped thinking of her students and of what she could do to make sure they succeeded. She encouraged the classroom teachers to collaborate with her and provided great support to her colleagues. In her quiet, private way Miriam made a real difference in the lives of her students.