GETTING TO KNOW MRS. SPANGLER....
Madeleine Spangler was born in Brownsville, Texas and lived in Harlingen. Her father managed theatres there which started her lifelong love of film. She attended Harlingen High School from which she graduated in 1966. She then attended the University of Texas in Austin graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She became certified to teach art at all levels and English at the secondary level. She taught English and art in Mercedes and Harlingen, Texas before moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area where she continued teaching. She married her high school sweetheart, Mike.
She taught in the Birdville Independent Schools for the next twenty years at various schools in the district. At North Richland Hills Junior High, she also taught computers and published the yearbook, as well as being the chief photographer for it, for six years. Then she went on to Richland High School after a stint at North Oaks Junior High where she taught only art. At Richland, she taught Art I and II. She was an art club sponsor there and her students were presented with the Meadows Foundation Certificate for community service for painting Dairy Queen windows during holidays and restoring a Bicentennial mural at the City Hall. At this time, she also spent two weeks in Peru traversing the Amazon and Macchu-Picchu.
After her husband was relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, she taught for two years at North Forsyth High School where she taught English, art and journalism. There she and her students published the newspaper The Northern Exposure and painted drama sets for several plays including the musical Oliver. She went to New York City on a Fine Arts Field trip with that department and many of her students.
She ended her teaching career in Texas by going back to Brownsville, Texas and taught at Porter High School in English for three years. There she co-taught a workshop on "The Star Wars Project: Using Archetypes as a Stimulus to Creativity" in conjunction with the University of Texas in Brownsville. She retired from there with 29 years in the teaching profession and returned to Georgia. She is now teaching at Chattachoochee where she filled an extensive long term substitute position in English eight years ago. This led to her present position of teaching 10th grade English, regular Art History and AP (Advanced Placement) Art History.
Madeleine's grandfather, Robert Runyon, was a world famous botanist, photographer and city leader in Brownsville, Texas. His collection of photographs including the Mexican Revolution were donated to the Ed Barker History Center at the University of Texas in Austin. They were also published in a book War Scare on the Rio Grande: Robert Runyon's Photographs of the Border Conflict, 1913-1916. His herbarium is also at the University of Texas. His 8200 photos are now online at the following address at the University of Texas and at the Library of Congress: http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/