Years later, after her father had died, Sue asked her then 90-year-old mother, "How did Dad go through all he did and still carry on a normal life?"
"He fought the war every night for 60 years," her mother replied, turning away.
Sue Gelber is Susan Gelber Cannon now, married for 38 years to artist J. Kadir Cannon. She is the mother of two grown sons and lives in Narberth. She is also a middle school teacher of English and history at the Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square.
But her passion for peace - rooted in her childhood recollections of her father's anguish - undergirds all she tries to do in the classroom. In her recently published book, Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future, she describes peace education as "an umbrella" that encompasses a wide range of learning, including critical and creative thinking, conflict resolution, and multicultural and antibias education.
"My interest in teaching students to think, care, and act is that it contributes to their well-being and the well-being of society," says Cannon.
"If they can think and they know how to care, they won't be overwhelmed by the negativity around them, and once I get them thinking and caring, I can inspire them to act and give them the confidence that they can change the world for the better."
Trained in moral development at Harvard, Cannon, 59, has taught middle school students in China and Japan and given presentations and workshops at numerous international conferences. She began researching the book during a sabbatical six years ago. She spent five summers writing and revising it. While the book is designed as a resource for teachers, with the requisite theory and philosophy, it also offers plenty of examples, practical advice and responses from students, and its larger lessons about the importance of peace - especially the possibility and necessity of achieving it - are relevant and applicable to everyone.
