Robert Coleman taught English and social studies to grades nine through twelve in Middlebury's Pomperaug High School Alternative Education Program. Mr. Coleman believed that "today's teacher must respond to the physical and emotional needs of the child before any real learning can take place. Our Children, " he said, "must become the national agenda. Our leaders must help us focus on the throwaway children society in creating. Children must become our real points of light. If we accomplish this mission, we will have done something magnificent for American children and American education." Through community service in soup kitchens, state prison training programs, and recovery programs, he met people like Emily, a severely retarded forty-seven-year-old women in incarceration and who taught him "that not everyone knows what grass is and that a good teacher shouldn't assume that everyone does." Mr. Coleman wanted to leave behind a generation of students skilled enough and confident enough to find and implement solutions for change.
St. Mary's University, B.A.
