Looking down on the Moon

Sr. Betty A. Harbison, a native North Carolinian who grew up in Los Angeles, California, retired in 2021 from a thirty-eight year secondary teaching career with diverse urban, socio-economically challenged student populations. Seven months later, she put that lifetime love and expertise to good use and began serving as the Education Specialist at a homeless and battered women's shelter in Los Angeles. In working with students and adults at the site, she often chuckles and fondly describes it as " 'the little red school house on steroids' because I never know whom I will see, what ages they may be, what they may need, how long I will have to work with them, or if they will still be there the next time I return." She sees herself dominantly as a resource for academic support to assist parents in working with their students and navigating the educational systems, and perhaps a bit more as a teacher determined to instill into/ indoctrinate anyone and everyone she encounters to be "life-long lovers of learning" and confident proponents of his/her own abilities to excel once the individual "learns how s/he learns" "to study smarter not harder," the latter she touts as her original adage probably pilfered by a former student or parent now in advertising. Many of her students have competed and been published in national and international contests and publications, such as ---Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Competition, Creative Communication National Poetry Contest, Celebrating Art National Art Competition, American Library of Poetry National Competition, the Los Angeles Times, and Poetry in Time of Crisis: An International Chinese Poetry Symposium (during the Covid Pandemic Shutdown) and have garnered national medals and regional recognition in Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and local city-wide competitions. Thriving on what she terms, "the pursuit of excellence-our only goal," she loves working with students to prepare their works for competition or performance and delights in exposing them to other experts and professionals who can help them in honing their craft.