Marilyn Rhames, Teacher, Third Grade, Chicago, Illinois

“I feel somewhat like a doctor, that what I’m doing is a matter of life and death,” says Marilyn Rhames, a third grade teacher at Chicago’s Sherman School of Excellence. “Education means the difference between a good quality of life for these kids in the future or enduring suffering and poverty for the rest of their lives.”

Rhames, an African American who earned her undergraduate degree from Dominican University and a master’s from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, left behind a glamorous career writing for Time, People and Newsday to work in Chicago’s high-need schools. It was just the cure she needed, she says, for the burn-out and frustration she experienced in corporate America. She participated in an alternative certification program for career changers, earning her teaching degree in a year, while interning at two Chicago high schools. Now, she says, teaching is a perfect fit for her life as a working mom with two small children.

“As a teacher, I have a sense of meaningful work that I didn’t have in journalism. Teaching allows me to be who I am, to be as creative as I want to be,” Rhames observes. Her challenging assignment at Doolittle included working with students transferred from a failing school, including, she says, kids who didn’t know the alphabet and learning-disabled students who had never been assessed. “By the time a child reaches third grade, his or her attitude toward learning is pretty much defined. Some have already given up on themselves,” Rhames says. “I’m trying to tap into the youthfulness that I know is there. You can’t teach a child who is upset about Mom and Dad fighting; you have to take their minds off it with something that is fun and exciting. You have to make school something that they want to do. And when it works, you can see it in their eyes.”