Cathy Johnson

My background in libraries began in middle school when I volunteered as a student aid. During high school I worked at various specialized jobs for the school librarian. I had always wanted to teach history though and had not thought of a career in libraries. In college I chose library science as a minor to accompany my history major. It was a blessing because although I have taught history the library was always what got me the job.

After moving from my home state of Montana to California, I returned to school and got my MLS. I have spent the last 5 years as the school librarian at Horace Mann Middle School, where I have worked collaboratively with many teachers and have automated the library. I have also been an active participant in the district wide librarian's group and have served on several committees.

The American Memory Project is a wonderful opportunity to work with creative and energetic people. I look forward to the experience and the challenge.

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Judy Drummond

I'm Judy Drummond and I'm just coming off the best year of my life. After 33 years of teaching I was finally able to swing a Sabattical Leave for the '97-'98 school year. I wrote three teacher's guides, one for the new Cesar Chavez film "The Fight in the Fields," another for the book "500 Years of Chicano History," and the last for the film "Viva La Causa." I am half Coahuilla Indian and half Scotch-Irish and grew up in the Chicano community of East Los Angeles. I have been active in civil rights issues since the 1960s and working on these projects has been a dream of mine for many years.

Most of my career has been in elementary education, working with third to fifth grade students as an Art teacher (3 years) a regular classroom teacher and 16 years as a Spanish Bilingual teacher at Paul Revere Elementary in San Francisco where I piloted the first Conflict Managers Program. Eight years ago I moved to Horace Mann Academic Middle School to work in a 6th Grade Family situation. I am the Language Arts teacher and work with a wonderful group of people. We have initiated units of study based on the "challenge" model most with a service learning focus. I am particularly interested in teaching writing skills to our fairly low-skilled students and think the American Memory project will be an outstanding vehicle to help Cathy Johnson and me create some strong, rigorous curriculum.

I am very excited about the American Memory fellowship program and all that it offers and I look forward to meeting the other fellows this summer.

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