PITTSBURGH (PTTP) – Dr. Chuck Herring is a University of Pittsburgh alumnus (1997) currently working as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the South Fayette School District in Western Pennsylvania. Herring, the winner of the 2021 Innovative School Leader Award from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, has over 25 years of educational experience, but he hasn’t gone about it alone. Dr. Herring has the help of his own personal superhero.
Dr. Herring noticed early into his career that his classrooms struggled with parts of speech, but had an infatuation with the rap-based musical culture of the mid-1990s. Thus, to help his students learn critical parts of the English language, Dr Herring invented Grammar Man, along with his sidekicks Edit and Delete. Grammar Man flies around and saves students who struggle with grammar by rapping about concepts such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Grammar Man was an instant hit, allowing Dr. Herring to help his students grow. It also was the first step in creating his third space classroom model, where he believes that teachers can learn from students as much as students can learn from teachers, and a classroom environment is only truly successful if both parties can take out of the class as much as they put in.
Dr. Herring continues to strive to help students learn and grow each day, through countless sponsored programs run through the school, or even just small lunch talks. Dr. Herring believes that an educated classroom is critical to today’s society, because as he says, “the more you know, the less you have to be afraid.”