Скачать или смотреть Interview of Carol Strickland by Mark Tallman, June 9, 2025

In Carol Strickland’s first teaching job her principal told that she had to do two things “You have to let the students know that you care about them, and you have to treat them all the same.” That advice set her up for success. She also had mentors, veteran teachers who helped her organize, who gave her the structure she needed in her classes. She noted that there is not one program that works for everyone because “children learn differently”. In this 2025 oral history interview Strickland provides examples of including special education children in regular classrooms, teaching immigrant children who need English instruction, and the changes that technology brought to teaching. Strickland discusses how to teach children to read as well as how to train teachers. She makes a case for recognizing teachers through the National Teacher Hall of Fame. She ends the interview asking, “How do we make school a ‘joyous’ experience again?”

A printable copy of the transcript of this interview can be accessed at https://ksoralhistory.org.

Carol Strickland was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated from Texas Christian University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Speech. She received her Master’s in Speech Communications from TCU in 1976. Ms. Strickland taught English and Speech at East High School in Denver, Colorado for seven years and then moved to Warner, Oklahoma where she taught for ten years. In 1986 she began a 20-year tenure as an English and speech teacher at Emporia High School. She has also served as an Adjunct Instructor for Emporia State University and as the Executive Director of the National Teachers Hall of Fame. In 1998 Ms. Strickland was named a Kansas Master Teacher and in 1999 she was selected as the Kansas Teacher of the Year. In 2001 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the Kansas Speech Communications Association and in 2003 was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. Ingram’s Magazine named her as an Icon of Education in 2019.

This interview was conducted by the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. (KOHP), a non-profit organization (501(c)(3)) that records, transcribes, and makes available to the public, oral histories of various aspects of life in Kansas. KOHP is supported by grants and donations, including grants from Humanities Kansas, Evergy, and ITC Great Plains. KOHP does not charge for non-commercial use of the oral histories it collects.

Suggested citation: Strickland, Carol (June 9, 2025) interviewed by Mark Tallman. Video file of an oral history interview conducted for the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. Retrieved from   • Interview of Carol Strickland by Mark Tall...  .

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