The third book of Jerry L. Jones, “They Included Me”, profiles his fifty-two-year teaching career. Jones, a native of Glade Spring, Virginia, had only three fulltime jobs in this very long time period: high school business teacher in Baltimore, Maryland; a professor at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia; and a professor at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia. Each of these jobs were in teaching, not in administration. There are many stories to be told!
An added feature of this book centers around Jerry Jones' own educational journey-from the segregated public schools of his childhood and adolescence to his bachelor's and master's degrees from the historically-black Virginia State University. There are also discussions of his experiences while earning a doctorate from Virginia Tech as well as studies, seminars, and workshops from several universities: Morgan State, Indiana, East Tennessee State, Virginia Commonwealth, Purdue, and the University of Memphis. The book contains teaching suggestions, student evaluations, sample assignments, words of wisdom, and curriculum analyses.
There are lots of stories about the personal, civic, and spiritual aspects of the life of Dr. Jerry L. Jones. Even in his last book, “Go and Come Again”, there was at least one chapter devoted to self-analysis and related discussions. Similarly, in this latest book, there are sufficient discussions about what makes Jerry tick-playing church music, community service, public speaking, local history, and miscellaneous issues of the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
