Famous Educators, Notable Teachers, Posters & Prints “Mi...-”
educational posters for social studies classrooms, home schools, and theme decor for office.

Gabriel Mistral

Maria Mitchell

Gabriela Mistral,
née Lucila Godoy Alcayaga
b. 4-7-1889; Vicuña, Chile
d. 1-10-1957; Hempstead, New York (pancreatic cancer)

Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga. A poet and educator, she was an activist on behalf of homeless children, reorganized the library and rural school systems of Mexico and represent Latin America in the newly formed Institute for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations.

She was also the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945), “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”

Gabriela Mistral quotes ~
• “Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.”
• “We are guilty of many errors and many faults but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow’. His name is ‘Today’.”

• Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral

Maria Mitchell
b. 8-1-1818; Nantucket, MA
d. 6-28-1889; Lynn, MA

Maria Mitchell, who became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1848 and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850, first gained international attention for discovering a comet (Comet 1847 VI or C/1847 T1) in the fall of 1847 and winning a prize offered by King Frederich VI of Denmark.

Mitchell later worked at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office and in 1865 became professor of astronomy at Vassar College, the first person (male or female) appointed to the faculty; she was also named as Director of the Vassar College Observatory. When Mitchell learned that despite her tenure, reputation and experience, her salary was less than many younger male professors, she insisted on a salary increase, and got it.

FYI - Mitchell, who was a distant cousin of Benjamin Franklin, also travelled to Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.

• Maria Mitchell in Women of Science Composite poster
• Maria Mitchell: A Life in Journals and Letters

Maria Mitchell quotes ~
• “I would as soon put a girl alone into a closet to meditate as give her only the society of her needle.”
• “I was born, for instance, incapable of appreciating music.”
• “The greatest object in educating is to give a right habit of study.”
• “Question everything.”
• “We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own.”
• “We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.”