Planet Earth has been my home for many years, 80 to be exact. That’s 29,200 rotations of Earth as it travels around the Sun. I was born on June 1, 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts. I grew up in the Boston area in the town of Natick and graduated from Natick High School. After undergraduate school at Bridgewater State University (MA), I started teaching physical science at Weston High School, and then at Lexington High where I taught earth science and was the 9th grade basketball coach. Completing my master’s degree at Boston University in 1966, I went on to graduate school at The Ohio State University were I earned a Ph.D. in science education and geology in 1969.
For the next 33 years (1969-2003) I was professor of science education at Georgia State University in Atlanta. During this time I had visiting research sabbaticals at Florida State University, the University of Vermont, and the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research. I developed science teacher education programs, including the TEEMS secondary mathematics and science teacher education degree. The Global Thinking Project was another focus of my research for nearly 20 years.
In 2003, I retired from GSU as Emeritus Professor of science education. Since then, I’ve continued my work as a science education writer , managed several websites on science education here, here, and here. I also began a journey as an artist, learning online and publishing my paintings on this website. Most importantly and interesting is working with my wife, Mary-Alice Hassard in her antiques business, Anne Charles Antiques. We’ve traveled to England for the past 20 years to purchase antiques, and ship them home, followed by pulling a trailer or van full of antique treasures to sell at antiques fairs throughout the Southeast including North and South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Our favorite show is the Marburger Farm Antiques Show, a semi-annual gang-buster of an event in Round Top, Texas.
I’ve used my subscription to Newpapers.com to screen copy the headlines of newspapers where I was living in five year intervals. For me, doing this research has been very interesting and sobering. I’ve made comments about each time period, including biographical notes and important social, government, and scientific events during that interval.
Newspaper Headlines on June 1 from 1940 – 2020
I was born on June 1, 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts to
Margaret Helen and Russell John Hassard
The headline announced that 130,000 soldiers were rescued from the Dunkirk beaches. More than 360,000 British soldiers were rescued and evacuated from Dunkirk from May 26 – June 4, 1940. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII a year and a half later. For the next 3 years the world was at war that killed nearly 85 million people, or 3% of the world’s population. Arrival on planet earth was dangerous mission. My parents moved my sisters Anne, Patty, and Mary and me to Natick, MA. Our sister Claire was born in 1950.
I live in Marietta, just a few miles NW of Atlanta. For 33 years I was a professor at Georgia State University, which is located in the central Atlanta area. For the past week the Black Lives Matters’ protests have brought out thousands of people outraged over the murder of Mr. George Floyd. America needs to deal with racism that is dominating our country. This is a revolution and the federal government needs to deal constructively and to avoid at all costs the use of military equipment and soldiers to quell the demonstrators and to offer them multiple seats at the table. Trump has incited violence accusing the protesters of being thugs, when the real thug is Donald Trump. The narcissist is incapable of showing understanding or empathy. People of color need to be supported at all levels of government and by the citizenry.
Quite a day to have your 80th.
Yet, on June 2nd, two of our grandsons, Charlie and Chris Wilson graduated from Helena High School, Alabama. Chris will attend the University of Alabama, and Charlie will attend Junior College. And granddaughter Hannum Price will graduate from Lambert High School in July, and head to Georgia Southern University.
Later in this summer I read the headline in the Boston Globe: A-BOMB. The U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Einstein said “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
First day of school East Natick Elementary: Kindergarten, with Miss Batty as our teacher.
Senator Joseph McCarthy gains power, and McCarthyism (1950–1954). The Korean War begins in 1950. I was a pitcher for the Yankees in the first Little League in Natick in 1952. I broke my wrist playing hockey the next year when I was on the basketball team. Oops. My best friend’s (Jim Goldrick) dad was our janitor in elementary school. He let us play basketball in the school gymnasium on Saturdays. Just the two of us.
Rosa Parks, an African American woman, is arrested after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest sparks a bus boycott led by local minister Martin Luther King, Jr., and sets the American civil rights movement in motion. Fidel Castro installs the first communist regime in the Western Hemisphere. Sputnik in 1957. High school graduation in 1958, Natick High School. Begin undergraduate school at Bridgewater State University. Bought my first car. Played baseball for Cotuit Kettlers, in the Cape Code Baseball League.
African American and white volunteers, many of whom were college students, rode on interstate buses into the segregated South to test the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia that outlawed racial segregation in interstate bus stations and railroad terminals. A total of 436 freedom riders were arrested by local authorities for trespassing, unlawful assembly and violating state and local Jim Crow laws. John F. Kennedy elected President of the United States.
I graduated from Bridgewater State University and begin my career in education by becoming a high school science teacher.
First men in space – Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union becomes the first man in space, beating the U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard by one month. In August, 1963, 250,000 freedom marchers descend on Washington, DC, and hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. Lyndon Johnson is sworn in as president and wins reelection in 1964.
President Lyndon Johnson announces his Great Society program, creating Medicare and expanding his “war on poverty.” Also, the U.S. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, attacking voting restrictions aimed at African Americans. The first U.S. ground troops arrive in Vietnam when 3,500 Marines land in Da Nang. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. Riots erupt across the U.S. Apollo 11 lands on the moon. I receive my Ph.D from Ohio State, and In September, 1969 I moved to Atlanta as a professor of science education at Georgia State University.
This was a tumultuous period of time. Nixon widens the war in Vietnam by invading Cambodia. Kent State. University riots. Busing to achieve racial desegregation of schools ordered by Supreme Court. The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. Watergate. Nixon indicted and then resigns his office. Ford is sworn in as president. Work on two NSF writing projects. I spend a year as Visiting Professor at Florida State University as a writer on ISCS, and researcher on the Florida Assessment Project. Summers of 1974 and 1975 I joined summer writing teams at Xerox, in Lexington, MA, and Florida State University developing high school science books.
Jimmy Carter Elected President of the United States. In the late 1970s, I collaborated with Joe Abruscato to write three science education books: Loving & Beyond, The Whole Cosmos Catalog of Science, and The Earthpeople Book. Joe & I joined with Don Peck and Joan Wade Fossaceca to write Holt Science, a K-6 elementary science textbook series. Microsoft and Apple Founded. I bought an Apple II, my first computer purchase. I bought a modem and connected to a very primitive Internet. Compuserve and BRS Afterdark.
First of more than 20 trips to the Soviet Union, starting in 1981. Formation of the AHP-Soviet Exchange Program in 1983. Met my wife, Mary-Alice on February 9th, 1984 in Portland. We married on December 1, 1984 in Atlanta. We share 5 children and 10 grandchildren.
Moved to the Bay Area (Oakland) for a year and a half with Mary-Alice. Worked at the Far West Lab, and visited elementary schools throughout the West teaching about science. Mary-Alice worked as a Reading Specialist in the Hayward Unified School District.
The Global Thinking Project was developed by teachers, and professors from the U.S. and Soviet Union. Perestroika & glasnost.
Reagan & Gorbachev. Soviet colleagues invited to Atlanta. Conferences on Soviet and American Education at GSU; Agreement to do research with the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Conferences held in Leningrad and Moscow which led to formation of the Global Thinking Project.
Publication of Science Experiences, and Minds On Science. Developed with Hiram Johnston the GSU TEEMS mathematics and science teacher preparation degree program.
Established the GTP telecommunications network linking schools in the U.S. and Russia via the World Wide Web. Spain, Australia, Czech Republic & other countries.
Soviet Union collapses.
Collaboration with Russian colleagues continues and intensifies with more exchanges and international conferences. Many schools from the Barcelona region of Spain, and Australia join and participate in the Global Thinking Project.
Develop and present seminars on cooperative learning and using the Internet in science for the Bureau of Education and Research over the next ten years.
Funding from United States Information Agency Supported GTP student & teacher exchange between the U.S. & Russia 1995 – 1998.
Science As Inquiry, and Environmental Science on the Net: The Global Thinking Project published. Completed 30th year at GSU.
Supreme Court enables George W. Bush to be elected president. 9/11 attacks. War in Afghanistan begins and hasn’t ended. Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq. Retired from GSU in 2003.
Anne Charles Antiques expands to do antique shows in the Southeast including Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and Texas.
Wrote and published The Art of Teaching Science, Oxford University Press, 2005. Established a blog, The Art of Teaching Science in March 2005 which continue to this day. Second Edition of The Art of Teaching Science with Michael Dias, Routledge, 2009.
Great Recession. Barack Obama elected President of the United States in 2008 and is re-elected 2012. Science As Inquiry, 2nd Edition published by Goodyear, 2011. Published a series of eBooks on Kindle based on articles I wrote on my blog. The eBooks are: Extreme Earth, The Artistry of Teaching, Evolution as Design, Why Do We Teach Science, The Enigma of High Stakes Testing in Science, Science Standards, Investigating the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Wrote Citizen Diplomacy to Youth Activism: The Story of the Global Thinking Project, In the fall of 2015 I took my first online art course on the Craftsy online network (now, Blueprint) of courses taught by professional artists. I’ve continued my work as an artist by specializing in acrylic painting taking courses online at Arttutor, Will Kemp Art School, and Richard Robinson’s Painting Club. Theo’s Art Space is a website that I designed to document my journey into the world of art. Theo is a name I use to sign my art work. The name Theo was inspired by the name of my favorite coffee shop, and Vincent Van Gogh’s brother’s name.
In 2016 an authoritarian with a narcissistic personality disorder who I’m afraid is the most dangerous man in the world at this time. You can read what I’ve written about the Authoritarian on my blog.
There are 234 days to go when the Authoritarian will be out of office. It is my deepest desire that he is defeated in the Fall, and a new president is sworn in in 2021.
UPDATE. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be inaugurated on Jan 20, 2021.
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