Date
October 4, 2024
Time
6:00 pm
Hear a message of inspiration to deepen your spiritual and moral explorations on this very special Shabbat between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.
Our guest speaker will be Bobbi Samuels.
About Bobbi:
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York until she was 12, Bobbi was surrounded by loving family. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins all lived nearby. Her mother served as a role model. A high school teacher, Bobbi’s mother sometimes even allowed Bobbi to help correct her students’ papers. Although for a while she thought she might want to be a veterinarian, it was inevitable that Bobbi would decide to become a teacher.
In their early married years in Houston, much of Bobbi and Vic’s attention was focused on improving education in the public schools. Both equipped with Master of Arts in Teaching degrees, they were involved with a group called Citizens for Good Schools which worked to overturn a right-wing, segregationist school board. Afterwards Bobbi was one of the early chairs of VIPS, Volunteers in Public Schools.
Children are a theme throughout Bobbi Samuels life. After a short stint as a high school English teacher, Bobbi got a doctorate in education and spent twenty years as a professor of reading, language arts, and literature for children and young adults at University of Houston Clear Lake School of Education. As Director of the Greater Houston Area Writing Project at UHCL, a federally funded project, Bobbi helped teachers learn to teach writing by becoming writers themselves. She mentored teachers in their development as enthusiastic guides for student reading and writing. She is the former Chair of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of National Council of Teachers of English (ALAN) and of the Special Interest Group: A Network on Adolescent Literature of the International Reading Association (SIGNAL
Dr. Samuels retired from her professional educator life in 2001 and since then has transferred her education expertise to the non-profit volunteer world. Through the years, even as Bobbi taught high school and then university students, she became more and more convinced of the importance of early childhood education.
She served a two-year tenure as President of the Board of the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center. The Houston Children’s Museum, Houston Zoo, Collaborative for Children, and Inprint have also been places where Bobbi has volunteered. She and Vic established a Samuels Family Foundation with their children.
Bobbi enjoys travel, but loves nothing more than spending time with her children: Ben and Marci, Josh and Cheryl, Jeremy and Suzan, and seven grandchildren: Megan, Ethan, Zachary, Nathaniel, Leah, Mimi, and Gabby.