Joan Nelson Pierotti

Transforming a Life Joan Nelson Pierotti

A journey beginning in a 1930's Swedish immigrant home in Chicago through the height of the Civil Rights Movement, her own psychological and spiritual journey expanded from being a naïve minister's wife trying to keep hold of a faithless husband, to realizing that she'd given away the best part of who she once had been. Her life became a vehicle of learning to live more fully as a single self-supporting woman, mother, and teacher of English in an impoverished section of Washington, where the vast majority of her students were African-American.

Arriving in a rapidly changing Washington, DC in 1965, Joan Nelson Pierotti went on to teach English in the city's public high schools for 28 years. Nationally recognized during the Clinton administration by Tipper Gore for her innovative teaching methods in inner-city schools.

She dared to find her way to becoming an extraordinary, truth-telling teacher, leading her students to discover their own extraordinary potential. Teaching and learning became an exciting journey for her as an independent, activist educator in the public high schools of Washington, DC.