News

Outstanding Teacher Award winner has ties to Lakelands

January 4, 2010

Lemuel Patterson, a Burton-Pack Elementary School science instructor in Columbia, has been named the Mary McLeod Bethune Outstanding Teacher Award recipient by the National Alliance of Black School Educators.

Looking back over his life thus far, Patterson said, “I am humbled at how I have been the beneficiary of someone’s contribution to the well being and uplifting of my race.”

Patterson was born in Abbeville and attended Ellison Elementary School, named for the family of Oscar Ellison. His early education years were in segregated schools. Each morning he would ride 14 miles to school with six black teachers who taught at Ellison.

Patterson was one of 12 black students who attended Abbeville High School during the early years of integration. He received an associate’s degree in early childhood education and went to work for Head Start, a job that instilled in him the belief that all children can learn.

Five years after it had been integrated, he entered Lander College and received a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. From there, Patterson taught fifth grade in Greenwood at Central Intermediate when Tim Watson was principal.

After the school’s closing, he taught at East End Middle School. Later, he continued teaching fifth grade in Charleston for 13 years at Sanders-Clyde Elementary. As a result of his principal’s interest in the subject, he taught a unit in geology and from there Patterson became interested in teaching science. “My first love is teaching about earth and space science,” Patterson said.

He has catalogued mining at the Mackey School of Mines, University of Nevada at Reno; served as an intern in astrophysics at the Brandt College of the University of Florida; and worked on a team of interviewers with the Shoemaker Levy 9 at the Johns Hopkins University’s Hubble Space Telescope.

In partnership with National Geographic, students in some of his classes photographed the earth from the space shuttle Endeavour and put student payloads in the shuttle. His master’s degree is from the University of South Carolina, and his doctorate is from South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.

Each summer he participates in the Center for Ocean Science Excellence for Education summer workshop, which identifies the contributions of blacks to oceanography and ocean science.

Patterson served as a teacher specialist for the S.C. Department of Education wherein he shared his expertise with science teachers by conducting demonstration lessons and coaching them. He was a commander at the Challenger Center, which is a simulation of the Johnson Space Flight Center Mission Control and the international space station.

Currently, he is a science laboratory instructor at Burton-Pack Elementary School, working with child development through fifth-grade students.

He received the award because of his dedication and commitment to student achievement.

Originally post by the Index-Journal